Sex Tourists In Thailand

[george]

Sexual Tourism Outside Bangkok

There is plenty for the sexual tourist to do outside of Bangkok. Many believe that other locations in Thailand provide the sexual tourist a "better" experience than Bangkok itself:

Pattaya was the first real expat attraction for the sex industry.

Phuket has one of the country's most developed sex economies.

Ko Samai is another beach resort/sex tourism site.

Manila competes with Bangkok for the title of sex capital of the world. The Metro area is covered with places like Gilley's Roadhouse in Angeles City, The Tahiti Club, and the various locations offered by The Champagne Club.

Even in some place as sterile and politically correct as Singapore, legal sex for sale is not unknown. Sammy's guide to Sex in Singapore explains:

Contrary to popular belief, the commercial sex scene is alive and well in Singapore. For a country known for its clean and green image and nothing much else, this may come as quite a surprise to a visitor. The government has taken a very pragmatic view of the world's oldest profession.

If you can decide on a particular location, or if you're not sure you want to go it on your own, there are many guided tours which take you through a guided tour of a variety of locations. Love Tours promotes "Asian pleasure tours to Thailand or the Philippines" or both; and you can ask about Cambodia. They are a company "dedicated to the needs of single men and swinging couples." They also offer "Thai marriage" and Philippine Penpals. The web site is in both English and German.

Pleasuretours.com offers almost identical services. They claim to have arranged over 100 marriages.

While we have focused on heterosexual offerings in the region, there are also plenty of homosexual tours. Bangkok is famous for its transvestite scene. And if you are unconcerned about the legal consequences in country or the possibility of prosecution at home, Bangkok is infamous as a haven for pedophiles, as well.

When someone mentions cost in a conversation on sex and tourism, most people think the discussion is going to be about whether $10 hookers are better than $5 hookers. The price that a sex worker pays is not the first thing that comes to mind.

Poverty is the leading reason why young Thai girls end up as prostitutes. The Young Northern Women's Development Foundation explains the situation this way:

Poverty and lack of education is forcing poor girls from upcountry Thailand into a life of prostitution. But with a little help from you, they can be given a much brighter future.

Thailand has an undeserved reputation for sexual exploitation, but the sad fact is that girls as young as 12 years old from rural poor regions of Thailand are constantly being recruited to work as prostitutes.

These girls mostly come from Northern Thailand. They almost always enter prostitution for economic reasons. Their families are very poor, they lack education and/or their family situation is bad. Many girls come from broken homes and, most tragically, some are willingly sold by their parents into prostitution. This problem is recognized by government and various concerned institutions, yet it remains.

The situation is essentially the same for many Filipino women. Jean Enriquez, in the essay Export of Filipinas to Korea to work as prostitutes around US bases, says this:

In the recent years, Filipino women have been migrating in flocks to neighboring countries... Push factors ... include the feminization of poverty wherein the Filipino women suffer the worst impacts of structural adjustment programs, on which loans from World Bank and IMF are contingent.

Enriquez points out that only 46.8% of women are employed, as compared to 85.7% of men. Once an Asia woman leaves the setting of her home and extended family to work, she tends to lose most control over her own situation. This is especially true if she leaves her country.

The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women maintains a web site which includes a library on issues related to the sex industry. A 1998 article there on Health Effects of Prostitution, by Janice G. Raymond, Ph.D. (Co-Executive Director of CATW) outlines some of the consequences of the sex industry for the actual prostitutes:

STDs (including HIV/AIDS, chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, human papilloma virus, and syphilis) are alarmingly high among women in prostitution. Only 15 % of the women in the Minneapolis/St. Paul study had never contracted one of the STDs, not including AIDS, most injurious to health (chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrheal, herpes). General gynecological problems, but in particular chronic pelvic pain and pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), plague women in prostitution. The Minneapolis/St. Paul study reported that 31% of the women interviewed had experienced at least one episode of PID which accounts for most of the serious illness associated with STD infection.

Among these women, there was also a high incidence of positive pap smears, several times greater than the Minnesota Department of Health’s cervical cancer screening program for low and middle income women. More STD episodes can increase the risk of cervical cancer.

If prostitutes in Minneapolis have problems this severe, what must it be like in Bangkok where the value of human life is cultural much lower?

One of the best articles on the what sex workers live with is Kelly Holsopple's Stripclubs According to Strippers: Exposing Workplace Sexual Violence. The article is based mostly on the U.S. interviews, but the experience is comperable.

Holsopple herself worked as a stripper for 13 years. She presents a run down of the typical activities of a stripper, explains how the line between dancing in strip joints and actual prostitution is difficult to draw (if it exist at all). She also details different forms of physical abuse against strippers and gives a statistical analysis of how strippers suffer from violence.

The essay Prostitution in Thailand and SE Asia includes a quote which sums up the status of many young, rural women in the region:

Ultimately, what it comes down to, is that "young Thai country women are just another kind of crop."

SE Asia can't find enough women to meet the growing demand for sex workers in the region. Cambodia has recently become a dumping ground for women from Russia and Eastern European nations like Romania. The Asian sex industry imports them as products to meet demand.

At least one out of every 17 women in Thailand between the ages of 15 and 34 makes their living from prostitution. The number may be as high as one out of every 11. But the more insidious number is the number of child prostitutes - under the age of 15 - in Thailand. Officially, Thailand estimates that about 30,000 children work as prostitutes in the country; but independent estimates place the number at least 200,000 and maybe much higher.

David Helcher, in his article Child Sex Tourism, makes some enlightening remarks:

Child sex tourism is not new. For years pedophiles seeking to avoid severe punishment in the United States have taken trips to countries where prostituted children are plentiful and sexual abuse laws are lenient or unenforced or (with the help of a bribe or two) easily circumvented.

The reality for children in Thai brothels--whether or not they are shackled--is that they are indeed slaves. Many are from small villages far from Bangkok--so many, in fact, that some entire villages are devoid of young girls...

Once they are warehoused in the brothels, the captured children have this in common: their lives are completely controlled by their "employers," who often enforce their will with violence. For this reason, the term child prostitute is really a misnomer. These children have been prostituted--and the responsibility lies solely with their exploiters. For adults, prostitution may be a career choice, and some may call it a "victimless crime." But for children in sexual servitude, there is no choice--and they are the victims.

Many of the child prostitutes in Thailand are not even from within the country; they are bought or abducted from Thailand's poorer neighbors. A 1997 article by UPI estimates that 100,000 children from other countries work in Thailand - many in the sex industry. The children meet the demand created by a decline in the number of girls from North Thailand entering the sex trade.

It is difficult to exaggerate how hideous and repugnant the slave trade in young children is in Asia. China regularly executes slave traders. But one positive thing does come out of the prevalence of child prostitution: the true character of the industry is brought to light.

Slavery is difficult to define. And the exploitation of women with limited (or no) economic options may not always look like slavery. But it becomes clearer when the sex workers are 11 or 12 years old and miss their mothers that the industry as a whole is founded on the devaluation of the culture's women.

To participate in Asia's sex industry is to participate in that devaluation of women and children.

Souce: About.com

[rstrauss]

There goes again the story of poor girls. I live in Pattaya and i have yet to find a girl, that is really that poor. Most are just disenchanted by their males or bored.

[tomy]

most poor girls are import into thailand, they are not thai, they are from surrounding country

[dr_Pat_Pong]

most poor girls are import into thailand, they are not thai, they are from surrounding country <_<

Hey Tomy ...are you certain that your survey is even remotely close to being accurate ?

[tomy]

I dun't knooooo, that what i saw on 60minute

[dr_Pat_Pong]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh ......well it must be true if it was on 60 minutes or featured in a Readers Digest article .

[Guest IT Manager]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh ......well it must be true if it was on 60 minutes or featured in a Readers Digest article .

Doc I love it when you get like that..

[KevinN]

Now GEORGE you are really in for it,,some liberals will be on you for your behavior,talking about slaves in the pedophyle sex places,if you were really "tolarent" you wouldn't talk like that..

Dr.Pat,,don't you know that all those girls in those places come from poor countrys,never from here as people here in the upcountry have plenty of scratch.Thats why they won't work over 12 hrs. a day planting rice for less than 125 baht. all this money is just spoiling the people..

[tomy]

between 60 minute and you Dr. i'll take my chances with 60 minute

[dr_Pat_Pong]

between 60 minute and you Dr. i'll take my chances with 60 minute

Thank God for that Tomy. Does this mean that you and your unintelligible posts will go away?

[tomy]

please Dr. if you wanna win so bad just say soo, no need to erase, i know that admin have to keep face too

[red]

11 out of 17 girls get paid to have sex!!!!! man i cant wait to go to thailand j/k

[Guest IT Manager]

please Dr. if you wanna win so bad just say soo, no need to erase, i know that admin have to keep face too

As a new admin, and normally above such tripe, Tomy, I would normally not say that you are proving more and more, to be a &lt;deleted&gt;. So like a good admin, I won't.

[tomy]

IT, the person i really respect in this forum was the Dr. himself, I know that sometime I make joke and have fun, im young and full of it, but never meant to hurt anybody feeling, as for the Dr. every time he disagree on something he put people down in a way that it got nothing to do with the post itself, calling people stupit, what make him so good to call people in that manner. im sorry to say that my respect for him has faded.

[francois]

Don't look at me, i aint know nothing

sure .. we have seen this

Tomy, I would normally not say that you are proving more and more, to be a &lt;deleted&gt;.

a leader in his category

[Begs]

Ahh That's it Tomy...you see you are young in a forum full of old folk, only the old are permitted to take the Piss.......

In 40 years you also will be able to Bash people verbally and be accepted...it's just the way it is, i am 48 and i am just a boy here ......

[tomy]

anyways lets move on we have many other topics to discuss, i'll do my share keeping it cool.