The FARANG Speaks 2 Much

This is another view of life as a sex worker in Bangkok written as a counterpoint to the article with the same name published on the BBC News web site :

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6360603.stm).

Pan’s story is true but I changed the characters’ names. Pan is a good friend but I have never been her customer. Her baby is due in May.

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Bangkok is a popular tourist destination and many of the tourists are single men looking for enjoyment and sex in the bars and clubs. Many of the city’s sex workers who cater to these customers have difficult and sad lives. But there are also remarkable stories of success and hope.Pan, who recently returned to visit her home from Oslo with her Norwegian husband, has an interesting story.

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“I grew up in the countryside in Buriram province (in the north-eastern region of Thailand called Issan.) I have a big family with two sisters and four brothers. My mother died when I was 15 but my father is still alive. Yes, my brothers don’t work much and like to drink but my father doesn’t drink or smoke. One of my sisters takes care of the family in our village. My other sister works in a factory in Bangkok. I love my family so much.”

I interviewed 28 year old Pan in her hotel room in Bangkok with her husband Jarle and her daughter. They have been married for six months and this is her first visit home. She’s pregnant with their child and has recently secured a visa so her daughter can come and join her new family in Norway.

Pan continued: “I think most of the girls I went to school with, the pretty ones anyway, went to work in the city at some time. Many of the came back after a few months with nothing to show for it and no one talked about it. But a few married farangs (foreigners) and brought them to our village. I remember meeting my best friend’s American husband. He’d given her money to build a new house for her whole family in the village. To him it wasn’t a lot of money but it made all the difference for her family. No one asked how they met but of course there were rumours about what she was doing.”

“I knew that I didn’t have any hope for a good life and taking care of my family if I stayed at home. The only jobs were working on the farm. That was heavy work and only paid a few baht a day. When I was 18 I met a Thai boy and thought that he loved me. But he left as soon as he saw I was pregnant with my daughter. After my daughter was born she got sick and we could not afford for her to get a good doctor. She nearly died. It was then I decided I had to do something different with my life.”

Her daughter is a healthy happy girl, but she is small for her age as a result of her childhood illnesses. Pan said her greatest hope is that her daughter can go to university, get a good job, a kind husband and never have to go work in a bar. Pan continued:

I talked to my friend who had the American husband. First she told me she met him when she was a waitress, but she could see I didn’t believe her. So she told me the truth: she met Skip when she was working in a bar in Bangkok. He paid her to have sex with him and when they first met she hated him. But he liked her and kept coming to her bar to see her. Over time they grew to love each other. He paid the bar so she didn’t have to work there any more and paid for her to take English classes. Now they are married and are talking about getting her a visa to come and live in America. It all sounded like a fairy tale to me.

My friend wasn’t keen on telling me about the bar life in Bangkok. She said it could be hard and sometimes dangerous. “It’s like playing cards” she said. “Sometimes you win a lot but most of the time you lose a little all the time. I was so lucky that I won Skip and was able to stop playing.” She said I should not work in a place that caters to Thai men. “Nobody gets rich there, and the men treat you like dirt.”

“Farangs (white skinned Westerners) are best” she said. “Not too young though, find older men with a good heart. They like to take care of you and won’t mind you have a baby.”

She gave me the phone number of the mamasan of the bar where she used to work. She said the bar would lend her money for her ticket and some sexy clothes. She could stay in a small room above the bar with other girls. She would dance and serve drinks to men six days a week. She wouldn’t have to have sex with men if she didn’t want to, but that was the way to make real money as the salary was small.

“It took me a week to decide to call that number.” Pan continued. “When I did the mamasan was friendly. She said she’d send me a ticket to Bangkok and would meet me at Mo Chit bus station. I agreed to go the following week. She advised me to tell my family I had a job as a waitress.”

“I didn’t enjoy working in that bar. It was dark, smoky and noisy. I’d never had to stay up so late before. I had to dance on stage with other girls and was so scared to take my clothes off. Some of the customers were really gross and said things to me I couldn’t understand. But the mamasans and other girls took care of me and made sure I didn’t get into trouble. I wasn’t a virgin so it was not too hard for me to go with customers. Usually I did not enjoy the sex and closed my eyes and waited for
him to finish. But some times the man was kind and generous and handsome and I enjoyed myself too much!”

“Yes, I saw some girls who drank too much, took drugs and didn’t send money to their families. But most of them were like me – young girls from the country who wanted to take care of their families and come home. I never thought of marrying a farang. They were from another world and I thought I was too dark skinned for them. Everyone thinks Bangkok is a crazy city, but for me it was a big place full of hard-working poor people who are trying to make money for their families.”

Pan said that she had problems with Thai people in Bangkok because of her dark skin. “I joked I am from Africa” she said. Many Thai people value light clear skin and dark skin is associated with the lower social classes. “I stopped taking the bus and Skytrain and took taxis everywhere because of the mean remarks I heard from other Thais” she said. “That made me sad. Thai people should love each other.”

Her ex-boyfriend heard that Pan was working in Bangkok. He contacted her and asked for money. She said she told him no and not to call again. “I felt torn because he promised he would help take care of our daughter. But I didn’t believe him. I don’t like Thai men any more. Some of the taxi drivers are from Issan. They said bad things to me. I did not feel safe with them.”

“I didn’t speak much English. I could count money and say things like “Hello, where you from?” and “You buy me drink?” but I couldn’t talk about my life or understand what my customers said.” Pan said the best thing she did was to take free English classes at a charity called Goodwill Foundation (http://www.goodwillbangkok.com/) in Bangkok. “It was hard getting up early once a week to go to school. But I went with other girls and I thought the teacher was handsome.

Once I learned some English it was easy for me to get a better job. I went to work in a bar where I didn’t have to dance. I talked to customers and played pool with them. There wasn’t any pressure to
have sex with them unless I wanted to. We had health checks once a month and could not work if we had a problem.”

“For the first time in my life I had money and could take care of my family and my daughter. I went home once every three months. I was able to put down a deposit for a motorcycle for my brothers to get around. I made all the payments for two years. Not one of them was late!” she said proudly.

Pan enjoyed working in the bar and stayed there for three years. She rented a small apartment shared with another girl she worked with. Some of her customers took her out of the bar for a week or more and she was able to visit places in Thailand she’d never been. “I really like Chiang Mai” she said. Some of her customers wanted her to stop working and offered to send her money. “I tried it with one Englishman” she said. “But he called me every day and was so jealous if he heard music in the background. He never trusted me and I was so bored staying at home all the time.”
The relationship ended when her visiting brother answered her phone once when her boyfriend called. “He accused me of having a Thai boyfriend and stopped sending me money. I was so sad he didn’t trust me.”

After that Pan went back to work in the bar and didn’t take any more offers from men. “I enjoyed the money and my freedom. I didn’t like to be tied down.”

Pan remembered the day when Jarle first came to her bar. “He wasn’t like other customers” she said. “I think he was serious man.” Jarle said that he came to Bangkok to look for a Thai wife to keep him company in Norway. “Norwegian women are not friendly any more.” he said. “They don’t like to take care of a man. One of my friends married a Thai woman and they were so happy together. I thought maybe I could do the same.”

Jarle is almost 20 years older than Pan, an architect in Oslo with a child from his first marriage. When he met Pan it was his first visit to Thailand. “I read about this bar on the Internet” he said. “It looked friendly and they had pictures of the girls. I liked Pan’s picture because of her dark skin and great smile.” Pan laughed out loud when Jarle said that. “You’re so light, like a ghost! Thai men don’t like dark ladies, but you do.”

Jarle was the first man than Pan took home to her village. He was shocked how poor the people were. He got on well with her father and treated him with respect. “All my family liked him” she said “and of course they wanted me to marry him.” Jarle didn’t propose marriage on his first visit: “I think he wanted to butterfly” Pan said, winking at him. But they kept in touch and he sent her small money for things for her family.

On his second visit to Bangkok Jarle took her to Chiang Mai and they talked about marriage. He wanted to bring her and her daughter to live with him in Norway. “I told him he needs to talk to my father” she said. So she took him back to Buriram and arranged for the local schoolteacher to act as the translator when he asked her father for Pan’s hand in marriage. “My father pretended not to like the idea, but I knew he really did and I whispered to Jarle that everything was okay.”

Pan and Jarle got married in a ceremony in their village in June 2006. He got her a visa to come to Norway but she had to leave her daughter behind. “I was lonely at first in Norway and missed my family and friends. I cried every day but I never let Jarle see me cry. But I got used to it and his family were so kind to me. To get my residence visa I had to take lessons in the Norwegian language. Imagine that – a farm girl from Buriram speaking Norwegian!” I asked her what she didn’t like about her new life. Pan thought for a minute and said: “Norway food is so boring, not spicy at all. And Jarle, he like boom-boom too much!” she joked, using the bar-girl slang for sex.

“When I got pregnant I wanted to come home and go to the temple for good luck. Jarle came with me and he does not let me do anything. He’s so different from my Thai boyfriend.”

I also talked to Pan’s sister Noi who works in Bangkok as a supervisor in a garment factory. She doesn’t think she’s beautiful enough to work in a bar, so she wants her sister to find her a nice Norwegian man. Jarle gave Pan money so she could pay temporary workers to finish the rice harvest. He’s also promised to give her the cash to build her family a new house in the village. “There are three houses built by farang in my village already” Pan said.

Pan and Jarle flew back to Oslo with her daughter a few days after my interview. I spoke to her by phone a month later. She said her daughter was homesick and didn’t like the cold, dark Norwegian winter. “My daughter’s tough like me” Pan said. “She’ll get used to it and will soon have a baby brother to take care of. We’ll make a family here in Norway, but I’ll always be an Issan lady.”