Now for prostitution in Thailand. I think the best way to describe the difference is to tell you story that a girl told me. Let’s just say her name is Lek (not her real name). Lek was 16 when her mother took her to Pattaya to look for a ‘job’. For those who don’t know, Pattaya is a city known for prostitution.   Anyway, Lek was quite ignorant of the world and didn’t know about Pattaya’s reputation. Her parents had run into financial trouble and were about to lose their home (or whatever). So anyway, she just thought she was going to get a job as a waitress. I mean, being Thailand she wasn’t exactly well educated, and she being Asian it’s normal to respect and obey her parents without question. In the end she ended up working at a ‘show’ that demonstrates shooting ping pong balls across the room . . . amongst other things (you look it up, I’m not explaining it). But she wasn’t in the show, she was a cashier. She told me how over the two years she worked there that surprise police visits would force her to run out the back door to avoid getting caught. The legal age is 18 at these establishments, which she wasn’t.

Despite those two years of ‘bad influences’, she didn’t actually ‘sell herself’ (ขายตัว, kaai5 dtua1). It was afterwards when she found herself without a job and no money, and parents that couldn’t support her, that she became desperate. She described the feeling as “I was really hungry – I had no money to pay for food.” Think about it. If you have zero job skills due to your upbringing, and your parents took you to work in Pattaya because they considered it acceptable, it’s very hard to say “I want to work for $1.25/hour as a respectable waitress.” I mean, when the other option is ~$33/hour as a prostitute it can be quite tempting. Rent alone starts around ~$100/month in the cities (for a dirty rundown place), so you do the waitress wage math.

language notes: A rude way to refer to a prostitute is ‘saow5 haa5 gin1’ สาวหากิน, which means ‘a girl looking for something to eat.’ It’s important to understand culture when learning a language, no?

to be continued . . .