I would like to comment on several themes appearing recently on the Stickman site and discuss several differences between my own and Stickman’s views about the Thailand Girl Scene.
(note: the term Thailand Girl Scene is used here to describe and encompass the full range of activity between farangs and Thai women—both short balling and long balling, activity that occurs within the context of an actual business e.g. GoGo bar, Beer bar, Massage Joint, etc., and the big wide world of freelancers and everyday Thai women willing and wishing to bang and date farangs1 .)
You can read Stickman directly but a fair executive summary of his recently expressed view is All Thai Women who work or participate in the Farang dating scene are prostitutes and any type of relationship except short time sex for money is destined for failure and disaster-both emotionally and financially.
http://www.stickmanweekly.com/StickMarkII/ThaiBargirlSheIsntDifferent.htm
One point of disagreement is the PROSTITUTE label Stickman attaches to all Thai women participating in the Farang Dating Scene.
The English word prostitute has dimensions and connotations that make it inappropriate and inaccurate when used to describe all Thai women in the Thailand Girl Scene.
In The World prostitution is illegal. Prostitutes in The World are engaged in an illegal activity which can get them and their customers arrested and jailed. In The World, prostitutes are criminals.
Because prostitution is illegal in The World, prostitutes in The World depending on the situation sometimes need protection from the police and sometimes cannot seek protection from the police, e.g. when they get raped they can’t go to the police and when they are soliciting they need protection from arrest. Prostitutes in The World typically live and work in a pimp/whore relationship and are involved with gangs, organized crime, and frequently are drug addicts2.
(note: the term The World is used here to describe the Western World i.e. the United States, Europe, etc. This term originated among American G.I.’s in Vietnam to capture the contrasts between combat in SEAsia and day to day existence back in the States and was first popularized in the Stanley Kubrick Movie Full Metal Jacket)
These ubiquitous aspects of prostitution in The World do not apply to The Thailand Girl Scene. What Thai women are doing is not illegal, does not require protection from being arrested, does not involve organized crime, and does not force them into the slave type pimp/whore relationships ubiquitous among actual prostitutes in The World3.
Sexual activity between farangs and Thai women typically involves money but there are two aspects of this exchange which distinguish it from prostitution in The World.
The first is the difference in income/wealth between the typical farang and the Thai women he meets and encounters. Most Thai women, especially the ones participating in The Thailand Girl Scene, have no money. What I mean by no money is not that they only have a little money but they actually have No Money.
If something prevented them from working for 3 months and they could not rely on loans or gifts from friends and family they would end up on the street and starve to death. It is hard for most of us to wrap our heads around this Thai woman fact of life but it changes how I view Thai women who accept money from farangs after banging.
If farangs didn’t give Thai women money the Thailand Girl Scene would collapse. It would be impossible for most of the girls to continue to frequent venues where they can meet and match with farangs. They couldn’t afford to buy clothing to go out, couldn’t pay for drinks, etc.
The second difference is the Thai/Asian view of the link between money and banging/dating/marriage.
In The World, a woman who publically admits a pre-condition for a relationship/banging is wealth or affluence would be shunned. Women might think this secretly but openly expressing or acknowledging it is taboo—especially in mixed company. In The World, it is only acceptable to be interested in a relationship “for love.”
In Thailand/Asia the role of money and wealth in matching between men and women is much more acceptable. Giving money and wealth a large weight in decisions is acceptable and normal.
Thai/Asian girls are raised by their mothers and live within a culture/value system that teaches them money/wealth should be the primary criteria in matching/banging.
In fact, the whole Thai/Asian system of massage parlors, short time hotels, G-Clubs, etc. exists to make marriages between men and women who are not “in love” more tolerable.
For these reasons, the label PROSTITUTE does not apply to Thai girls in The Thailand Girl Scene.
A second point of disagreement is Stickman’s thesis that all relationships between farangs and Thai women in the Thailand Girl Scene are destined for financial and emotional disaster.
This isn’t the place nor am I qualified to dispense relationship advice, but I will mention one factor which biases opinions on this issue.
In statistics there is the idea of a sample bias. A sample bias occurs when a sample from a population appears to be but is not random.
An example is a poll where people are asked who they intend to vote for in the next US presidential election but the pollster inadvertently stands in front of a black church on Sunday and his sample includes a disproportionate share of black church goers. His poll shows Obama winning over Clinton in a landslide but his poll data is skewed and his conclusions will be wrong because the number of blacks in his sample is much higher than in the general voting population.
The information most farangs, especially the ones who do not live in Thailand, base their opinions on suffer from sample bias.
Sample bias comes from the prevalence of Hometown Heroes on the internet4. A Hometown Hero, as it applies to the Thailand Girl Scene, is a newbie farang who in The World does not have much experience with women and is not capable of defending himself emotionally and financially from women— especially women who are experienced at pursuing men and have a good arsenal, e.g. youth, looks, etc. to work with.
The initial Thailand experience of Hometown Heroes is frequently not good and it is the unhappy Hometown Heroes who make up the bulk of farangs sharing their experiences on the internet.
In the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, they had a term called seasoning. When blacks in Africa were abducted for transport to the New World as slaves, they came from populations that had little exposure to European diseases such as smallpox, cholera, etc. When newly enslaved blacks arrived in the New World, 1/3rd or more of them died in the first year of diseases that most Europeans had developed immunity from as children. Slaves which survived the first year were seasoned and commanded a premium5.
A similar process occurs among newbie farangs in Thailand.
The probability of any particular newbie farang ending up a Hometown Hero is a function of how green and emotionally vulnerable he is when he arrives in Thailand and what particular Thai girl gets first shot at him.
A particularly vulnerable newbie may first hook with a nice Thai girl and everything is copacetic or he may unfortunately hook with a real grifter and get fleeced. Vulnerable newbies roll the dice and sometimes they get lucky and sometimes they don’t—ca la vie6.
Hometown Heroes are not limited to newbie farangs in Thailand.
I know several poker friends fortunate enough to win a big chunk of money in poker tournaments and end up being targeted and taken by gambler girls who are an order of magnitude better looking, more experienced in manipulating guys, and more sexually accomplished than girls they dated in the past. On the bright side, my financially fortunate poker friends had some banging fun on the way to getting bilked of some of their money.
I also have several very intelligent long time friends whom I met when they were in college and had no money. As they have gotten older, more educated, and become financially successful, the class and type of women coming on to them has changed. The women are better looking, present themselves, dress, speak and entertain better, and are experienced and talented at manipulating guys.
A few of my friends have been financially and emotionally trashed because they were playing in a game over their head for the first time.
The second source of sample bias is that those with a negative experience are more likely to post and typically exaggerate to elicit sympathy and cast themselves in a better light.
The number of apocryphal accounts of farang being bilked by Thai women on the internet gives a false impression of the prevalence of such events.
If one’s views on Thai women derived solely from the numerous skewed exaggerated internet accounts written by disgruntled Hometown Heroes, it would be practically impossible to come away with a positive outlook on banging/dating Thai women in the Thailand Girl Scene.
Unlike Stickman, I do not think relationships between farangs and Thai girls in The Thailand Girl Scene are destined for financial and emotional disaster.
I think the proper analogy for The Thailand Girl Scene is a hardware store. It contains all the tools and raw materials a skilled craftsman needs to construct whatever he wants.
With a little bit of money, some raw materials, and simple tools, the hardware store allows you to experiment, construct what interests you subject to the constraints of your wallet and the bounds of your knowledge and skill.
Of course, if one is careless or fails to read the instructions, you can hurt yourself playing with power tools, but a normal prudent person should not worry about getting into trouble.
Sometimes you start on a project, completely screw things up and end up with an unusable mess. Other times you build something but the end result is just not that great. Sometimes you have to build something multiple times, each time improving your product, until you produce perfection. You can get really good at making a particular thing and then just get bored and move on to building something completely different. Or you can have several projects under construction simultaneously and on any given day work on whichever piques your interest.
There is no reason to ever get bored or jaded because you can always move on to something new and different or return to something you enjoyed in the past.
Some of the things readily constructed in the Thailand Girl Scene are:
- a traditional monogamous marriage with kids and a family.
- a long term monogamous girlfriend.
- a mistress whom you stash in a apartment and is at your beck and call.
- a rotation where you regularly bangs a string of girls.
- banging a different girl every night.
- banging a different girl a different way every night.
- banging two different girls the Y-way and the Tri-way simultaneously every night7.
- banging a dude surgically altered to look like a chic.
The great thing about The Thailand Girl Scene are the tools and raw materials are plentiful and cheap—several orders of magnitude cheaper and more plentiful than anywhere else in the world.
In The Thailand Girl Scene, the only limits are your creativity, ingenuity, and personal preferences. The phrase, “It’s Up to You” really does capture The Thailand Girl Scene.
If you are not having fun and enjoying yourself in The Thailand Girl Scene, it is not the fault of the girls, Thai culture, or the Thai government. It is your own lack of imagination, creativity, and vision that is responsible for your condition.
More importantly if you are not having fun and enjoying yourself in The Thailand Girl Scene, there is no reason for your condition to continue.
Rather than condemn The Thailand Girl Scene, I celebrate it. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world.
———————————————————————————————————————–
notes:
- See User Guide to Gullivers for a definition of Long balling and Short balling.
- See Yabaa Daba Doo for a post about Yabaa use.
- The SWSM and the Russians at CM2 are possible exceptions.
- See In Defense of Thai Women Part 1.
- See The Atlantic Slave Trade (New Approaches to the Americas) by Herbert S. Klein and Plagues and Peoples by William McNeil.
- See John Gault, My First Time in Bangkok Part 2.
- See Yabaa Daba Doo for an explanation of the difference between the Y-way and the Tri-way.
Wow.
Wrong on so many points that it’s difficult to know where to begin.
For starters, prostitution certainly isn’t illegal in most of Europe, Canada, most of South/Central America including Mexico, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, etc etc, as well as a couple of states in the USA.
It IS illegal in Thailand.
All Stick says in the linked article is that trying to have a traditional long-term relationship with a hooker is usually a bad idea. On the whole, I agree with him. There are exceptions, of course - I know a few personally. The majority of cases that I’ve personally witnessed tend to end rather unpleasantly.
Love him or hate him, Stickman has been living in Thailand for more than ten years, and knows what he’s talking about. How long has BBK been here?
Yes, have fun with bargirls. But be on your guard.
Which is I think the point of the article. Only shorter, and without the obligatory poker reference.
View all comments by TAFKABBB
Very nice. Obviously, there is room for argument on some points but I think the overall message is great. And an interesting point about the sample bias from “Hometown Heroes”
Being a prospective farang newbie myself, this serves as a great reminder to watch myself on arrival. I imagine it could be difficult to keep your head on straight the first few, weeks surrounded by droves of beautiful girls doting on you who would never give you the time of day in “farangland.”
Or something like that…
Cheers.
View all comments by X-tian
I stopped reading as soon as i came across the first poker reference.
Im suprised it wasnt in the first sentence. How many were there BTW?
View all comments by Young Penfold
I’ve enjoyed your past posts.
But……..
This is total nonsense.
It’s obvious that you don’t have access to an Oxford or Websters dictionary.
Please refer to the word “prostitute”.
The word “delusion” came to mind as I read through your post.
I would never say that your opinion was wrong, but I reserve the right to disagree with that opinion.
Just a comment from a bloke who has spent over 38 years rooting around Thailand.
View all comments by samba
I stopped reading even before the poker reference
Just the idea of comparing “The World” and SEasia or Thailand, as if this wasn’t the real world, is unacceptable.
The fact that this is a G.I.’s “heritage” doesn’t really help…
View all comments by Suk Psycho
I’m amazed at the need to constantly theorize encountered here and elsewhere: there are some serious tracts on this site, not to mention some Stickman submissions! With references, sidebars, quotes, metaphors, and all. I wonder if Japanese travelers to Thailand are similarly reflexive or this is a farangs-only characteristic.
View all comments by julian
Sorry BBK - I always enjoy your posts but this one was not up to your usual standard. You lost me almost straight away with your assertion that prostitution is illegal in the World and that it isn’t in Thailand - as TAFKABBB says - wow.
At work I am forever being ridiculed for my use of analogies instead of straight talking so I know where you are coming from - but there were too many different ones in this piece and it served to confuse.
Sorry again - I know you are a nice fella because werewolf told me so
View all comments by doctorbond
Total crap. Prostitution isn’t illegal in Thaialnd? Is there some other Alternate Universe Thailand I didn’t know about?
As Penfold’s much more entertaining post said yesterday, if you take cash for fucking someone you wouldn’t fuck for free, then you’re a prostitute, a whore, a hooker, whatever.
And I didn’t read Stickman, as I doubut Paul actually writes any of it anymore, but if it was Marc or whoever is writing said that any “relationship” with a whore/prostituate/hooker/working girl/etc. is doomed from teh start, I completely agree. Only idiots and newbies think their rent-a-girlfriend is actually a real girlfriend.
View all comments by Nobody You Know
I’ve got to say, I stopped at “What Thai women are doing is not illegal” and skipped down to the comments. I don’t think I’ll be going back to finish reading.
Judging from the early comments this post sounds like it’s on the fast track to the discount rack. TAFKABBB seems to have gotten it right in his eight concise paragraphs.
Kenny is definitely a nice guy, but I don’t think that fact will be enough to save the thesis of this blog.
View all comments by werewolf
Let’s not be too hard on the guy, usually, his posts, with their mock-scientific tone and painstaking attention to detail, are a great read.
I think in this case BBK let his passion for the scene overcome reason and fact.
I think the point he was trying to make - which he has already made convincingly - is that prostitution in Thailand is not as we recognise it in the West.
When recently I came back from an inaugural two week visit and was summing it up for my mates, one phrase kept coming out of my mouth when describing everything from prostitution to gender, ‘the normal lines are blurred there’.
Certainly we see a lot more girls engaging in casual, part-time prostitution, but does that make them a prostitute as we would recognise it in the West?
Then again, BBK makes assumptions about prostitution that do not hold. Firstly, there are far less pimps operating in the West than people imagine.
If you carve up the scene in a provincial Northern English city where police and the council have taken a permissive attitude, what you find is a street scene, where the girls might have a pimp, which really tends bloke they are dependent on, like a crack dealer, or a bloke who is dependent on them, like a crack addict. Neither wear gold lame suits and needle-point shoes.
Second up you have the ‘parlour economy’. Here you will find plenty of well-run knocking shops offering half-hours fuck and suck with varying levels of service for about £100. A person will run the operation, typically called a receptionist but closer to a mamasan, but neither they nor the owner, who is often almost female, co-erce or exploit the girls. You want to see the cars the girls arrive in.
On the top tier you have the escorts - who have even more freedom.
It’s much more simple than prostitution in the West = bad, not-really prostitution in Thailand = bad. It’s just more fun - and cheaper in Thailand!
View all comments by Milo
Correction - I meant to say £50 for the going rate in my Northern city.
View all comments by Milo
I would like to make a couple of points.
The first is about the legal status of prostitution in Thailand vs. The World.
In the USA, prostitution is illegal everywhere except in some small towns in Nevada and there it is only legal inside a licensed brothel. Nowhere in the USA do you have a scene like the Biergarten, Nana parking lot, or the Thermae.
More important than the technical legal status is the enforcement and consequences of being detained by the police for prostitution.
In the USA, an arrest for prostitution means a felony conviction on your record and your effective exclusion from most legitimate areas of society, e.g. a job at a large company which requires a background check, getting a loan which requires a credit check, marriage to any person with a public job, even being a contestant on some mindless TV reality show.
In Thailand, I have never seen or heard of any Thai girl being arrested in Gulliver’s, CM2, Conrad, Q-Bar, etc. for asking for money for sex.
I have never heard of any Thai girl being imprisoned for freelancing.
I have seen police rounding up girls out of Nana parking lot and the SWSM but the only consequences are having to pay a 1000-2000 THB bribe to the police. There are no long term consequences.
Second, I acknowledge that some part of The Thailand Girl Scene is PROSTITUTION in the sense the word is used in the West. The TG’s giving BJ’s at Lolita’s and doing threesomes at The Eden Club are prostitutes according to the Western use of the word.
But another sample bias that affects what you read about on the internet is that most internet content is about the Bierbars and GoGo’s of Nana, Soi Cowboy, and Patpong.
The girls working in these venues, although they are the subject of the vast majority of internet posts, do not comprise the majority of the TG’s in the Thailand Girl Scene.
There are far more TG’s working as full time freelancers or participating part time than there are girls working in Nana, Soi Cowboy, and Patpong.
What these girls are doing does not fit neatly within the Western definition and use of the word PROSTITUTION.
One thing that happens the longer you hang around Thailand is that your world expands beyond the GoGo’s and Bierbars into the freelancer market and into the general dating market.
A second thing that happens is that you get to know more about the girls you meet and you get beyond the BS that is part of the small time scamming of most GoGo and Bierbar TG’s.
The vast majority of TG in the Thailand Girl Scene especially the ones outside of Nana, Soi Cowboy, and Patpong are just normal girls with normal ambitions with the bad luck to be born in a backward third world country where most individuals prospects for improving their lot in life are limited and severely proscribed.
Among freelancers and normal girls who date farangs and accept money and support from them, you encounter many more stories of girls who have hooked into long term relationships with farangs, get married to farangs, settle down, and have a family and find what by any definition of the word would be a “normal” relationship in The West.
A third thing that happens is that you begin to realize that there are many types of long term relationships that do not require monogamy that are possible in Thailand that are not possible in The West.
So IMHO, the broad brush labeling of all girls in The Thailand Girl Scene and everything that happens between the TG’s and farangs as PROSTITUTION is incorrect.
To say that any relationship between a TG in The Thailand Girl Scene and a farang is inevitably headed toward an emotional and financial shipwreck is also incorrect.
Finally, I would like to point out that the Big Mango Blog is the only place where there is anything resembling an interesting debate about subject matter like this.
The nature and quality of the dialogue on the Big Mango Blog is head and shoulders above anything available on any other site.
I wrote in another response to some long ago post that I would never get excited about someone disagreeing with my point of view.
I enjoy and usually profit from hearing the point of view and arguments of those who think differently and have different opinions.
Most peoples view of the world metamorphoses over time as they have new experiences, internalize more knowledge, and interact with others. Mine certainly have.
BigBabyKenny
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
I stopped at “Because prostitution is illegal in The World”
Umm, LOL
View all comments by james
It’s legal to some degree in 32 countries. Yes Illegal in Thailand & Philippines, tolerated yes but legal no.
On the bright side Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, and Estonia… its legal (with stipulations in some)…
Sorry BBK, i too only got to the poker reference and went to the comments. But at least you are writing.. i posses no such skill.
GL
View all comments by GoodLife
BBK, no offence meant but your piece seems written by a total newbie (not only RE LOS, but “The World” as well :o) )…
).
As to the subject at hand, it’s all very simple, for me.
Would “she” still be fucking/having a relationship of any kind with “him” if NO MONEY was involved?
If the answer is “no” then she is a whore (not that there is anything wrong with whores! I LOVE whores!!
View all comments by BAF
And then I gave him a second chance and read the comments above.
And yet still I feel like a big ol’ LOL is in order
View all comments by james
I brought my wife to Thailand, took her to a bar, where she instantly labelled them prostitutes, dirty and disgusting. After a few beers, she was dancing with these prostitutes and saying what lovely girls they are! I am not saying they are all lovely, but Prostitute is a harsh word. BTW, I pushed for a threesome but fell short!
View all comments by auk
I made this point on another thread, but saying that ANY situation where money is a factor = girl is a whore is silly. The example I used was one that is thinly disguised and about people I know personally. A 25 year old runner up beauty queen married a guy I know vaguely through work. He’s 46 (I think) and is a partner at a major long/short US/European stock fund. He’s balding and chubby and not especially attractive but is robber baron rich. I don’t think she’d go home with him if they met in a club. Is she a whore? I don’t think so. They’re planning on having kids and spending their lives together. You don’t do that with a hooker. If all she wanted was money she could have gotten more (maybe) and she certainly could have gotten a lot from another guy closer to her age and better looking. If all he wanted was friction with a hot girl he could set up a rotation of a half dozen knockouts at $10k/month and not miss the money. Sorry, I don’t buy it that he’s a trick and she’s a whore. The old school 50’s phrase used to be ‘He’s a good provider’ which was to say he took care of his family well financially.
@BBK - Thanks SO MUCH for the tip on Orchid massage. That little soi off 31 figured prominently on my last trip. Jaysus. I’d hit the Londoner on the way back to the train for a pint or two and then LEVITATE to the BTS station I felt so good. And you’re right, Japanese as a barrel of miso soup, I don’t think I saw another cracker the whole time I was there.
View all comments by tosh
You think too much.
View all comments by Khun J
I would say the most women working in the farang orentatieted sex scene are cleary there because they come from very poor families. The “Thai girl scene” isnt a good thing, its a bandange solution for the poverty and corruption of a third world country.
It’s fucking prostution alright. The girls are there to fuck strangers for money.
Sure its not the peophille haven you hear about on CNN, and sometimes women (foolishly mind you) use it has a way to find a husband. But its fucking prostution.In a better world the farang orentated sex scene wouldnt be nessary. Deal with it. You fuck hookers, I fuck hookers, its a blast. Dont try to gloss over this fact.
View all comments by yesman
@tosh: you said it yourself, she wouldn’t be with him if it wasn’t for his money.
).
That’s “P4P” to me.
…And it certainly IS NOT LOVE (for her, that is
@yesman: are you looking for a “better world” without a sex scene? What the hell are you doing in a 3rd world country like Thailand then??
View all comments by BAF
Editor’s Note: MC: had to edit out your link. Safer not to go there
i for one cant understand the fairer sex from my own farang country, let alone those in Thailand. so to (attempt) to apply labels and definions to them imo is stupid and ignorant.
surely the more important issue in all this is people’s saftey and wellbeing. people (adults) should be free to do as they wish, so long as they dont harm one another.
View all comments by Mr Carpet
sex for money is “prostitution.” however the “prostitution” in thailand is “open ended” rather than “closed ended” as in the west. (bj, st, lt, llt, marriage up to you). i prefer the term sex worker because of the lack of the pejorative implication in “whore” or “prostitute.” i prefer to think of them and refer to them as “sex worker” or even “bar girl” to more closely describe their employment. there is “dignity” in all work. Sex workers do tend to be lazy. but as they say in LOS, up to you! only persons with a very good relationsip with the Luck Gods should marry one. AI
View all comments by angryirishman
@BAF - So the fact that the 25 year old is committing to a lifetime with the guy, having kids with him, waking up with him, probably taking care of him as he dies, all of that means nothing? She might as well be a go go girl in a bikini on stage at Rawhide? Sorry, I don’t buy that.
I think what BBK was saying, and I won’t put words in his pen, but this is my interpretation–is that money in our modern world is part of many relationships. Not all, but many. The straight up short-time girl from Soi Cowboy is clearly prostitution, but the girl taking money for sex in a different context is, well, different. BBK has gone to great lengths in other posts to point out that your ‘p4p girl’ in BKK could be making a very rational decision when entering the ‘p4p scene’ when her other economic options are brutally limited. As he said in one other post, the smartest, prettiest, most ambitious 25 year old chick in BKK could easily be taking your 1 baht coin to use the bathroom in MBK, because for her, because of background, (lack of) education, family ties, experience, and so on that’s the best she can do. In America she’d get a scholarship to law school, but in that situation looking to find Big Whitey might be a shrewd, if risky, decision.
I find all of this interesting as over the past few years a) I’ve been to BKK a few times and dabbled in both the pure p4p scene and the ‘gray area’ scene where the pay is in handbags and nice dinners instead of cash, and b) because of my professional trajectory I’ve started making some real coin in the past few years. This has greatly changed my stateside dating pool, not always for the better, and my finances are clearly a part of that. I don’t think when I bang a criminal litigator from a top 15 NYC law firm she’s a hooker, but she wouldn’t have done me five years ago when I was a dead broke writer/musician. So I find these discussions interesting.
View all comments by tosh
aux: “BTW, I pushed for a threesome but fell short!”. Sorry dude, I took a shower and was wearing my best threads that night so I don’t understand why she didn’t go for our threesome. Perhaps if smitty was working that night.
angryirish: well said
bbk: Stirring up the replies as usual, love it. Not a big fan of the last piece but love the comment threads.
View all comments by pmmp
sorry for the link. i was just trying to emphasise what we all already know in that theory and reality can be 2 entirely different things. i just dont get all this trying to put people into boxes stuff.
View all comments by Mr Carpet
I nominate this a “Green Star Submission!*”
View all comments by But Different
BBK touched on a few thing that did ring true. I have been around this old flag pole since the mid 60’s, and have seen and known many, many guys who married Thai bar girls, most have weathered the test of time. Having done it once myself I wound up with the other type, who could not or would not change her ways, but being a lucky man I escaped with my bank balance intact.
The problem with Stickman is that there is no difference in Thai working girls, their all the same and as of late he has become very Tea Shoppe in his opinions and writings he seems seems to be speaking to all of the newbie’s, but is of no value to an old hand. Those of us that have been here, have seen all of the temples, flora, fauna, quaint customs, out of the way locations, to last a lifetime. We’re here for the action!!!
View all comments by The Man
“YR pops his head out the trench”.
“I think the proper analogy for The Thailand Girl Scene is a hardware store. It contains all the tools and raw materials a skilled craftsman needs to construct whatever he wants.”
Brilliant way to think about it and it’s not poker. Well done.
“One thing that happens the longer you hang around Thailand is that your world expands beyond the GoGo’s and Beer bars into the freelancer market and into the general dating market.”
Rings very true.
“In a better world the farang orentated sex scene wouldnt be nessary. Deal with it. You fuck hookers, I fuck hookers, its a blast. Dont try to gloss over this fact.”
Amen.
There the highlights. Can’t be bothered to get into the rest.
View all comments by Young Royal
@MrCarpet: it’s stupid and ignorant only for someone who admits to not understand the fairer sex…
@angryirishman: “open ended”, “closed ended”… what are you talking about?? What happens in Thailand is ALSO happening in the West! Look at the tosh’s example or the young stunning models with older fugly celebrities
The ONLY difference (as with pretty much every other thing comparing LOS to the West) is the *degree* to which it all is happening.
@tosh: your example about the criminal litigator from a top 15 NYC law firm is different and it relates to something different! It means that your money have allowed you to join the social circle she herself is in and dates from (the reasons for which could be many).
And about “the fact that the 25 year old is committing to a lifetime with the guy, having kids with him, waking up with him, probably taking care of him as he dies, all of that means nothing? She might as well be a go go girl in a bikini on stage at Rawhide?”
Well, the go-go girl in a bikini on stage at Rawhide might well end up in exactly the same situation as that 25yo girl and *for exactly the same reasons*.
And none of this is a “fact”, tosh. Marriages based on love often end when the love ends (and is not replaced by something else). Marriages based on interest even more often do end when the “interest” is not there anynmore (and is not replaced by something else).
@The Man: what “old hands”?? Even this blog which I thought was a hang out of clued up hard core mongers has turned out to be “infested” by naive ignorant (in the good sense of the word, guys) newbies
Elsewhere, in the past, I have given lectures (I am using the term jokingly but that has actually been my field of study) on the social aspects of the broad wide sex scene in Thailand (of which the farang catering one is just the much smaller part although the most visible one to the foreign eye) and on the social dinamics at play in the diverse kinds of Thai on Thai and Thai/foreign relationships…
If I ever manage to put my ass into gear I might write a short handbook for newbies ot at least an essay on here
View all comments by BAF
bbk
there are archetypes and then there are stereotypes
i feel the article stereotypes the bargirl.
“…starve to death” if they’re not involved in prostitution? that’s not the typical story i know. i know of quite a few factory operators, t-shirt salesgirls, robinson’s salesgirls … etc who became bargirls because they could make better money. they weren’t starving to death before they joined the world’s oldest profession
it feels to me the article is tinged with the “hometown hero” sentiment; that prostitution in thailand is not really prostitution. and by paying for sex, you’re saving someone from dying from starvation
that said, i enjoy your lengthy articles and the debates they stimulate
View all comments by roddy
BBK, I also couldnt read the whole post, too many mistakes from the beginning. And reading your comment I think to read one of your posts is enough to know your world-view, you repeat basically the same stuff in each of your posts.
You say you grow by other’s views but you never admit a single fault in your posts but defend them without giving up any ground, strange.
You say “The World” is the “USA, Europe, etc.” in your post, then in your comment you only refer to the USA. Same as the 18-20 year-old GI’s: “The World” meant basically their home-town to them, which they mostly never left before they were sent ot Vietnam. In this meaning the word “The World ” is simple cultural chauvinism.
Just say “USA” instead of “The World” in the future if you like, since that is what you mean, BBK.
By using Poker (a game based on US-American cultural values) to evaluate the culture of Thailand, to equate “The World” with the USA and to generally assume that human behavior is almost exclusively driven by making more and more money, you reveal that you are a truly stereotype US-American guy (which I don’t say is bad), but lack understanding of the rest of the world including Thailand.
All this of course only being MHO
But the discussions you create with your posts are truly stunning, honest congratulations!
View all comments by Phoenix
Let’s be fair to BBK here, usually “The World” (i.e. The West) is a very “homogeneous” society when compared to ANY other country of the rest of the world…
He just picked up (obviously out of “naiveness”) a matter to which the US approach is pretty “peculiar” and retrograde compared to the average Western country.
American “puritanism” is one of the few things that I strongly dislike about the USA which is otherwise, for me, the greatest nation on Earth. Ever.
View all comments by BAF
America is pretty heterogenous when you think about it actually…and yes, it is puitan in a way, but have you seen any gonzo porn lately? Its just not the best place for p4p action.
View all comments by Milo
@Milo: of course American society is heterogenous and there are (very) many “aspects” and “facets”, this is true pretty much everywhere.
).
In my homecountry (Italy) prostitution is legal but “organized prostitution” and the “exploitation” of prostitution are illegal so it’s perfectly legal for *single* prostitutes to run ads in the local newspapers advertising their services BUT at the same time we don’t have the “chicken farms” which are legal in *some* places of the same “puritan” America!
What I meant to say is that “puritanism” is mainstream enough in the US as to make prostitution illegal in most of America.
As to gonzo porn etc, I have always found the Western minds (and the Western women) MUCH more kinky and “apt to sex” than anyone else (Japs are just weird
Asian pornos are just plain boring and what’s more important and revealing: I find the average Asian girl MUCH less good in the sack than the average Western girl… YMMV
View all comments by BAF
To better clarify: both the best and the most “extreme” sex I have ever had haven’t been in Asia (or with Asians) and haven’t been in the P4P. It’s been with my ex Italian and US (WASP) girlfriends.
In Asia (and in the P4P) I have got quantity (which is a quality on its own!!) not “quality”
View all comments by BAF
Interesting BAF. Admittedly, I’m a newbie and not an old hand, but a boyhood pal of mine has been ‘living the dream’ in Bangkok since he was 22. one of those elusive types that never pays for it, he gets everything from hi-so sex to off-duty freelancer sex, but would rarely describe it as particularly good. Maybe one is limited only by one’s imagination - or maybe Thai girls are naturally sexually conservative, despite their willingness to put out.
View all comments by Milo
the talk about who is better in bed and all that seems kind of silly. I think all girls possess the ability and some are good and some are not. I do find that the farangs tend to be less shy and more aggressive - the Thais take some time to come out but I think they do just fine. I think all of this is pretty circumstantial. I think sometimes some guys who have never had a white girl who is hot tend to then think that thai girls are hot in bed but that is their yardstick.
I love a yummy white girl in bed. amazing.
however 3 yummy thai girls is even better.
View all comments by smitty
Smitty - I agree all girls have the ability to be good in the sack but you do get variance and patterns according to ethnicity. How you respond to this is all about mileage. Even Thai girls low body fat and soft skin offer pluses in the mobility and tactile sensation departments, but a Thai ‘good girl’ may be less good at giving head than a black or white counterpart. Then again an English guy might prefer to bed a Thai girl because English girls have rogue bulges, plainer faces and they often drink too much. Ergo for him, Thai girls are better in bed.
View all comments by Milo
To say 1 race of girl are better in bed then others is madness.
If your into screamers and rough sex, a 40year old old nympho housewife from north england with a face like a rock will be better in bed in your eyes then a 21year old russian supermodel with a sensual touch.
I had a soapie from Emmanuelle a few weeks back, and despite her being dick stiffenly beautiful, the girl was just too OTT when it came to bumping uglies.
She was talking filth in an american accent, and being all to dramtic about it all. Call it cheesy porn sex if you will. For me it was still ok but a bit offputting, but for another guy it would blow his mind
Different strokes
View all comments by Young Penfold
Funny stuff!
View all comments by Milo
@Milo: I turned 24 the month following my move to Thailand, I lived there for a total of 4+ years and I believe to have pretty much seen it all and done it all… I am a keen observer, much interested in social dynamics and also have a knack for languages (my English is largely the product of my 2 years stay in the US) and quickly learned a good Thai and a honest Isaan main dialect (languages tell us a lot more about the culture of a society than people normally think…).
The answer to why sex with (*and amongst*) Thais is, on average, “plainer” is too long and complex to go into here but the short, partial and (I know) “cryptic” answer is: because Thais are shallow.
They rarely go truly deep into any matter, be it work or *pleasure* related.
Just as an example, I see more professionalism and knowledge (let alone dedication) in the average Western hobbyist than in the average Thai high level professional
@smitty: of course each girl is different from the other (and “farang” ones, again for cultural reasons, even more so…), that’s why I talk about “averages”. In my opinion and experience your average Western girl who goes to bed with you because she genuinely likes you will most likely show you a better time, in the bedroom, than her Asian counterpart.
[does my original "quantity is a quality on its own" make any sense in English?]
“I love a yummy white girl in bed. amazing. however 3 yummy thai girls is even better” I concur. As I said, quantity has a quality all its own!
I’m crazy for 3(and plus)somes and this is one area where LOS blows almost any other place (that I know of) out of water!
As an example, I have lived 2 months in a rented villa on the darkside in Pattaya with 3 girls (2 of whom were cousins and the other was a friend of theirs, when they all share some kind of relationship/connection it usually works better, and longer…). I have been having “reversed gang-bangs” by the private swimming pool almost daily until even that, eventually, got old…
@YP: it’s not about race, it’s about culture. And no, I’m not particularly into 40yo housewives…
I’ve just turned 32 and have a 24yo luk-k’n “Thai” wife. Those farang chicks I was talking about were late teens and early twenties and unfortunately I was banging them when I was their age or slightly older so I was not in the best position to fully appreciate what I was getting… 
View all comments by BAF
BBK - Now, that was a long post which could have been summed up in far less than half the words, but insightful in many ways and still more stimulating that reading about getting charged an extra 50 baht in a taxi.
Most of the comments though were quick to attack on how you defined the word prostitute and I found reading those almost as exhaustive as getting through your whole post.
What most fail to understand is that Thailand is a place of many shades of gray. It also doesn’t conform to Western logic or definitions in most cases. So in a case like this arguing about one Western perspective or another on an Asian way of doing things is just semantics. There is no absolute dividing line and once that is realized the discussions can be much more meaningful. But Western nature is to try to always compartmentalize everything with a label and tuck it away in a neat little drawer somewhere, which alas explains many of the meaningless definitions above.
Where I felt the insight came into this post though was in how you explained the upbringing and motivations of Thai women in regards to men an money. In a male dominated society women must find their own path, and a way of achieving equal success and stature, so this is much of the driving force as well.
So we can discuss motivations all we want and we may get close. But what we will never reach a conclusion on is the definition.
View all comments by CheapCreep
cc - although it pains me to no end.
that is so what needs to be said. thanks.
I have always called this place the twilight zone and many things just can’t be explained.
I think another topic in this vein is why guys who may never visit a so called prostitute in their own world somehow manage to break down in Thailand. Seems no different to me than why Thai girls may do what people say good girls never do.
Strange place this is. lots of gray.
View all comments by smitty
“why guys who may never visit a so called prostitute in their own world somehow manage to break down in Thailand”
Because they feel/are treated like those fugly celebrities I was talking about!
“Seems no different to me than why Thai girls may do what people say good girls never do.”
?
View all comments by BAF
baf - I don’t think it is that simple. I have seen guys go to gogos- go to MPs and wherever else the trade is and do nothing. But they may meet a hottie in q bar and eventually go with her and tx and somehow think it is different.
It is the circumstance or the environment.
Same with the girls really - there is an environment here that fosters it.
View all comments by smitty
@smitty: that’s exactly what I was saying. I don’t think those fugly celebrities and tosh’s businessman are meeting their gold-diggers where “the trade is”…
And the environemnet here that fosters it is the whole cultural setting. In LOS tosh’s businessman would have probably been offered that 25yo beauty queen by her very father
View all comments by BAF
baf - that is my point. I think tosh summed it up well and illustrates it but just from another angle.
The environment does foster it and it does create the gray that I think some of us see or experience. The black and white of it seems to come from how one might define a tx.
I was offered a girl. a virgin by her father. I was introduced to her father by the man that had married her sister. The rationale was that whether or not the girl goes into the trade they wanted to capture some money for her virginity knowing that they only had once chance to do that. They also wanted it to be a good experience for her. I was just too wacked by it all to even consider it.
I have seen many a mango waitress go down and you know how pushes them - their mothers.
I also find that guys love to label the girls and many time equate the label to meaning bad or immoral. Yet these same guys will date normal girls, the “good girls” as well as partake - how is that not a gray area folks?
But somehow a girl cannot herself separate work or service work from when she might actually love someone or like someone? Seems guys want their cake and eat it to but are not allowing the girls the same luxury.
That is why I find that places that actually support or help these girls - the word prostitute is never used. Service or sex worker is but many people have a hard time with that. The notion a girl might be servicing you for money or dinner or a room for that matter but that same girl is human and can see both worlds for what they are.
For some reason this theology is the one a lot of people can’t wrap their heads around. I think bbk was trying to touch on this. I know many guys who have married bargirls and have had kids and are happy. Why? Because many of them are not hardcore prostitutes in the way the word is normally used.
THis is another reason I have always love the name of ww’s blog.
http://bargirlsrpeople2.wordpress.com/
seems to fit the bill nicely.
View all comments by smitty
Smitty, in rural Isaan (and once in BKK but in this case the offer entailed an actual marriage to this 17yo upper middle class girl) I have been offered the same several times (and took up the offer in more than a couple of cases…). That’s part of what I like so much about Thailand as a playground but I can’t see it as any other thing than pimping one’s daughter, shades of gray my ass!
I have been the first to write that what goes on in Thailand is, ultimately, the same which goes on in the West, only to different degrees (”shades of gray”, if you like).
It seems that the crux of the matter is that most of you are bothered by the words chosen and the moral meaning which “other people” usually give them and which you mean to refuse YET AT THE SAME TIME implicitly endorse and “embrace” when you are offended by their use!
Since for me bargirls REALLY are people too (as that website recites) I have no problem at all calling the girls who sleep/stay with men for material interests with any name you may prefer.
Moreover, I am not a native English speaker so I can’t fully appreciate the different degrees to which the different slang words are meant to be derogatory/offensive. For example, I like whore better than hooker but I know that the former is “worse” than the latter
I do not attach any derogatory or insulting meaning to those words. I reserve derogation and offenses to the bearers of those moral values, which I utterly despise!
In any case, and to get back to our case, whenever money/material gains are a “conditio sine qua non” for a relationship of any kind to happen we are looking at a P4P situation by its very definition! I can’t see how you can’t see that
View all comments by BAF
Oops, that should read: I do not attach any derogatory or insulting meaning to those words. I reserve derogation and offenses to the bearers of those moral values (by which whores -and their customers- are filthy, immoral sinners), which I utterly despise!
View all comments by BAF
A language is a living growing organism.
It is also a tool used by people to communicate feelings and ideas.
It adapts, just like animals, to the changing environment in which it lives to maintain it’s functionality as a tool. When it no longer serves that purpose or a better tool comes along the language slowly dies off and becomes extinct, e.g. the way in which English replaced French and Latin as the language of discourse among academics and is the universal language for pilots.
You can see how Thai is adapting to the modern word when you see Thai and English words that are essentially the same—Computer/Computier, Coffee/Café, Motorcycle/Motesai, etc.
You can gain some insight by closely examining or spending an hour or so flipping through a Thai/English dictionary.
You will notice two things. First, the Thai to English section is very thin compared to the English to Thai section. Second, when you look up an English word looking for the Thai equivalent, you will keep finding the different English words translating into the same Thai word.
What you can deduce from these things is that Thai is not that rich a language. Maybe that is because Thailand is a small country and maybe it is because not much has happened in the history of Thailand to generate alternative ways to expressing the same thought with subtle nuances but the fact remains that Thai is not as rich in vocabulary as English.
This explains why Thai people don’t read much. There isn’t that much to read in Thai. It isn’t like English, French, or Russian where there is large body of rich literature you can spend your life reading and it isn’t like English where you can pretty much learn anything because there is a book in English on every subject (see Fresh Ideas About How to Really Really Have Fun for an example of this). There is not much Thai literature and there are not many technical manuals and how-to books in Thai.
English can express ideas and convey subtle shades of meaning with great precision. I am not sure whether it is the richest language but it has to be in the top 3.
When it comes to describing The Thailand Girl Scene there is a continuum of English words we can use.
Cunt, Whore, Hooker, Prostitute, Gold digger, Girlfriend, Wife, Courtesan, Mistress, etc.
Although they are all describing the same basic relationship/transaction they convey widely different meanings, capture subtle nuances and difference, and express vastly different sentiments.
IMHO, applying the label PROSTITUTE to all Thai girls in The Thailand Girl Scene lacks precision and there are better words or phrases which more accurately describe reality.
In US politics, there is what is called Attack Speech. That is where a politician chooses words, innocuous in their literal definition, but which convey certain ideas or have connotations that the politician doesn’t want to express directly.
In the current US democratic presidential primary, Obama is getting the Black vote and Hilary is getting the White vote. It is impolitic for Hilary to argue that democrats should vote for her because there are not that many blacks in the general voting population and Obama cannot get elected because he cannot get enough white votes. Instead she keeps referring to “hard working middle class voters”, i.e. white voters and the importance of “swing states” i.e. large states where blacks comprise only a small fraction of the population. She has been charged by blacks of “playing the race card.”
The use of the words HOOKER and PROSTITUTE to describe Thai girls in The Thailand Girl Scene contains a lot of negative aspects not present and leaves out, ignores, or minimizes a lot of positive and humane dimensions to The Thailand Girl Scene.
One would expect greater precision and choice of words from someone who teaches English/writing for a living and is an expert and has long experience with his subject matter.
BigBabyKenny
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
Hopefully we have moved off of trying to define anything in terms of labels here.
But continuing on the line of what normally motivates these women; obligations to support a family of brothers and sisters and being the only female in the tribe that has a chance of earning any money for the family of more than 150 Baht a day under the hot sun.
Now if you want to move this onto a more philosophical level and away from all the various pragmatic reasons like above as to why women do it, prostitution is actually needed in this country from a purely social standpoint. And this has nothing to do with the fact that men like to frequent hookers. The truth is brothels and the various related type venues accounts for at least 30% of the income to the police department. And that income is used by police officers to support families and eventually stimulate the economy. In addition, since 80% of all Thai men with disposable income frequent some form of P4P, it is a way to reduce the tremendous disparity between the haves and have nots in this country.
As for the other question if prostitution illegal? Well, from the standpoint of the law, it is and it has to be to keep making money for government officials. And is it a moral issue? Maybe, but really only for social graces and keeping up appearances of the country. So the answer really is it is legally illegal and if it wasn’t it would disturb the balance of everything and bring many things in this country to a grinding halt and the distribution of wealth even more unbalanced.
View all comments by CheapCreep
@BAF - So now we have two twenty five year olds, one in America marries a stumbling rich hedge funder, the other Thai marries a farang to raise a family in the relatively high living standard he can provide. Yes, they are married partly for the same reason, but to me this proves my point. Neither of those situations are like a stolen half hour at Lolita’s. They’re just not. If you want to say all relationships with a significant monetary component are whore/trick, well I’m going to be at work until midnight tonight writing database code which, believe me, I wouldn’t do for free. So I guess I’m a whore for doing this job for money, but I’m selling my time and soul instead of body part(s). I don’t think we’re really going to agree, because I don’t think I can be convinced that short timing a hottie out of Spicy is the same thing as the beauty queen and the hedge funder.
About the poker examples. Not that I’m here to defend everything BBK writes, but card games, especially poker, is one of the few places where non-finance nerds deal with risk and money. I’m shocked how little I know about risk, expected return, present value, real earnings, and so on. A few hundred books have been written about just those few topics, but almost nobody reads them. A poker metaphor is a quick way to illustrate a lot of those things without getting into the academic arguments about risk and reward.
Which brings me to my final comment on this, and then I’ll let it all seep away and get back to the database code. One of my favorite poker writers once wrote that people think poker is a card game played with money, whereas it’s actually a money game played with cards. Maybe the difference here is that some people are saying prostitution is a sexual activity that involves money, whereas I’m saying it’s a money activity that involves sex. Since the society most of us grew up in has much stronger taboos surrounding sex than money (to say the least), if you take the former view maybe it’s more important to keep the black and white apart, but if you take the latter view it’s easier to let the two seep into each other.
Tosh out, back to doing joins and such . . .
P.S. Smitty and others, I wrote up a review of my last trip to BKK that I sent out to close friends. It’s _really_ long, is it OK if I post it in the forums?
View all comments by Tosh
cc - that would be an awesome topic. I have always said, but people get on me here, that the trickle down from the biz is quite a huge part of keeping THailand going. It gets complex on so many levels. One is simply based on accounting and taxes. None of the venues where p4p happens do real books. mostly cause landlords can charge more than the going rate and don’t offer much in the way of receipts. Given that there is a whole system for how to pay your bills, sandbag your rent and so on. If landlords had to convert to non p4p tenants all that would go away. With a lot of their non taxable income. The trickle down from all this is huge.
cc - get writing!
tosh - emailed u. Let me know how u want to work it!
View all comments by smitty
@BBK, CC and Tosh: someone is wanting more precise labels (yet isn’t offering any…), some other doesn’t want anything precisely defined yet is offering exact percentage figures on something no one really knows for sure…
Guys, exact definitions are required in scientifical studies but since our discussion is all but scientific (we all here haven’t a minimal common shared basis of knowledge, specific professional conventions and cultural “tools” for that) the most important thing here, and the point I am trying to put across, is that whenever at least one of the two parties in a relationship OF ANY KIND is motivated to enter such relationship mainly by a material gain and not by a disinterested attraction (sexual and/or affective) to the other party we are in front of one of the many forms the Pay For Play can take!
This is true and happening in the West as well as in Thailand.
In Thailand, for cultural reasons, it simply happens (much) MORE and, again for cultural and economic reasons, it happens to foreigners coming from socio-economical circles where it usually isn’t happening back in the West so they get to experience what only rich VIPs (celebrities, hedge funders …) do back at home.
They are mostly used to associate the world of “prostitution” with the (short term) transaction of the selling of sex and fail to recognize all the other forms it takes… In Asia they come in contact with those other forms, fail to recognize them and deal with them accordingly and that’s why we hear all of the horror stories about guys letting these “clever” (my ass!) Asian foxes wrecking their lives…
And… Tosh, I guess you are saying that you don’t care whether your GF/wife is with you because you are paying her or because she likes/loves you and would be with you regardless of your money. That’s all fine, Tosh.
Just, don’t come here and say that those 2 situations are the same thing…
You and your hedge funder friend would happily have kids with someone who stays with you because of your money all the while deluding yourselves into believeing it’s the