Combover provides a good summary of why girls work the farang bars. Each girl has her own individual motivation(s).

The exploitation that concerns me the most are the Khmer and Vietnamese children trafficked in to sell flowers, gum, and shoeshines in the bar areas into the early morning hours. Even though this is done very openly, you don’t see the media nor the Thai authorities addressing this exploitation.

Friday night I was mildly surprised to see one of the Khmer shoeshine girls playing a video game in the Absolute Bar about 02:30. You would think the bar owners would not permit such a risky situation.
View all comments by dj

There are bad places in Thailand. Don’t know if they are still there, but Mae Sai used to have its “chicken farms”, and in Bangkok there have been the chained in a whorehouse stories that come out now and again - relates to the 200 Baht a pop kind of places that construction/taxi workers use. These types of joints are far out of the realm of farangland.

What happens in the scene in Bangkok is culturally unknown to the great unwashed of the West and hence makes for good press - ie. it sells. Doesn’t matter that it’s bullshit.
View all comments by psi100th

I can add very little to what has been said.

I have never personally met a bargirl who has been exploited or coerced by anything other than circumstance or greed. Many who have been in the life for a while are addicted to it and don’t actually have any desire to leave it.

My guess is that the readers of this site travel in a sphere where we don’t come into contact with women or children who are being exploited in the very truest sense of the word.

It’s clear though, that criminal exploitation exists. It shouldn’t. Slavery and poedophelia are criminal. I doubt anyone here disagrees with that.

I think smitty is correct that journalists have the right theme — exposing and destroying criminal exploitation — but they end up pointing at a fairly innocuos part of the sex for cash scene in Asia and wrongly identifying it as the place where criminal exploitation is taking place.
View all comments by werewolf

When I first came to Thailand I “rescued” a girl out of a bar in Soi Zero. Her uncle owned the bar, her mother had sent her there when she was 16 to earn mommy some money. Lived with this girl for about a year and I refused to give her any money to send to her despicable evil cunt of a mother. Eventually I caught her doing short times behind my back. When I caught her she was unapologetic and explained she had no choice because I wasn’t sending money to her mother. She explained the money was very important to her mother because she had gambling debts and would get into a lot of trouble without the money.

No amount of reasoning or logic convinced her that there was anything wrong about a mother pimping out her 16 yr old daughter.

And back to the bar she went…
View all comments by Orion

We had a service girl working in our bar who had a sister already on the pole. Remember Chris Rock’s words of wisdom? Keep your daughters off the pole. Seems the Thais could take that to heart more than they do. Anyway. Our service girl would get hounded nonstop by mom. U don’t send enough money home - not like your sister does. Eventually she broke and went to the pole. We all tried to talk her out of it but her mom would not shut up. Ruined the girl really - she use to be nice and innocent. I know if mother had shut up she would not have done it. Given easy access to the scene and the constant bitching from mom she caved. Bummer.

anyway. great discussion.
View all comments by smitty

First off, From TimOakland: “The “exploitation” argument is based on the feminist/Judao/Christian premise that women are “sugar and spice and all things innocent.” That premise, based on my own experience, is a lie”
Bravo! So true.

I also had a question for the room about the so-called “Thai P4P Scene” I have not branched out too much myself so don’t know but I do know that it’s out there and way bigger than the farang scene. Anybody know, and I use the word “know” over the word “hear”, of any kind of exploitation in that world or do things run similar to farangworld?

Overall, I haven’t seen the exploitation personally. I’ve seen some shit mamasans abuse the heck out of the girls, and I’ve seen some owner’s take advantage of the girls (not me, I swear) but I don’t see the girls getting together and forming a Working Girls Unite group to stem the evil forces of prostitution and sex slavery. I think individually and with the friends and family they have locally these girls take care of themselves and avoid being exploited to serious degress.
View all comments by pmmp

OHA: In an attempt to expand and perhaps inject an element of universality to this discussion, I’d have to say that the entire Western consumer society does much the same thing to its young as Thai parents (in your admittedly vast and real experience) have done. Now, of course, the Thai kids get the big ole double whammy of both societies. (that’s an Al Capp term Wonder if things’ll change after the election (irony alert

co: As usual, right on the money. although perhaps, to accommodate OHA’s experience we might suggest that different tastes in women probably bring us into contact with different family members and backgrounds - too much of a stretch perhaps?
-It’s occurred to me often that “the look” you get from so-called straight Thais when “escorting” (aside from the obvious, poorly- -thought-out “pas de deux” with the clownishly dressed,) is in fact a look of contempt for your having so flagrantly pissed on their precious sakdina structure. Slave pool. Right on. I love doin’ this. Sometimes the looks on some faces at the airport is worth the cost of the ticket alone

kalon man: It’s the Thais, so careful to starve us for irony in every aspect of what I’ve come to see as a highly imitative and derivative culture have, in permitting and condoning women’s projection of uber-femininity through EVERY aspect of female (and sometimes male?) behavior have left us Mired in irony when it come to this subject.

Apologies to all for this second run to the bowls.
View all comments by thongsuk

This does not make it prostitution or exploitation.
It is just dating Thai Style.

As well BBK can you slip me the name of your new editor? My “deathless” could use a but of chopping and channeling as well.

Thanks to all for your forbearance.
View all comments by thongsuk

Whether they are unsophisticated rural folks who pimp out their kids at the earliest possible opportunity or sophisticated city folk who simply demand that their children give up their own lives to serve the parents every whim, most Thais view children very differently from the way westerners view children. As opposed to the common western view that having children creates a life-long responsibility for the parents, the Thai view is more often that it is the child who has the life-long responsibility to serve the parents. On the whole, the very purpose of having children in Thailand is for the parents to exploit them for personal gain and, being the passive little buggers most Thais are, the children generally accept their lot in life without complaint.

It breaks your heart badly enough to see a lovely, sweet-tempered young girl servicing a half dozen men a day and then sending most of her money back to support her drunken, primitive, worthless parents living in some shithole village. But it really breaks your heart when she shrugs at your western incredulousness and tells you that it is simply her duty. Fucking savages, Thai parents generally are.
View all comments by Old Asia Hand