The FARANG Speaks 2 Much

Our good friend Stickman recently wrote a column discussing how many working girls are there in Thailand? He came up with a number - 29,265. I thought it was low myself given that he had left out Suttisan - a row of Karaoke and gogo bars that are mostly frequented and owned by Thais. That street alone would add at least a 500 to the Stick count. Well one of our esteemed readers who happens to be an analyst decided to take another shot at it. Here we go…

Right - well I think he is way off.

He has neglected to mention places
like Forte, Sopranos, Piano, Pegasus, Exotica, etc. Reasonable numbers
of westerners go to these places. Must be another 500 girls. I think he
has drastically underestimated freelancers - add in all the clubs,
bars, etc and I think he is less than 50% of total number.

He also forgets the massage parlors
and turkish baths! About 150+ of these in Bangkok alone - some with
literally hundreds of girls. I reckon that alone adds at least another
5000 to the count.

editor - I wonder if the massage parlour count is actually higher than that given that there are a bunch of them on the outskirts of Bangkok that mostly are for the Thais.

When you also factor in the girls who
are temporarily unavailable due to sponsors (I have two of these myself
right now) that must add another 5000-7000 best guess to the total as
well.

editor - my only comment to this is you can’t count these girls out because when the sponsor is away the sponsees will play. Good on them - keeps the free hook-ups coming nice and steady.

I think the true number is close to 50,000 at any point in time.

There are 64 million people in
Thailand. 32 million women - about 6 million in the 18-30 age bracket,
and I guess 25% of these would be considered attractive enough to work
as hookers. That makes about 1.5 million potential hookers, of which
about 50,000 actually work as hookers just for Westerners - you’d have
to figure at least half of that for Japanese and double for
Thais/Asians.

So - very roughly, perhaps 175,000
girls working in total as hookers, 50,000 for westerners, or about 1
out of every 30 attractive women you would see across all of Thailand
between the ages of 18-30. I think this is probably about right. I work
in an office with dozens of good looking women, and I’m pretty sure
none of them have every worked as hookers. Of course, perhaps as many
as 2-3 more of the 30 would sleep with a westerner if approached right,
even if they are not hookers.