Chapter 27

The Tourist Trade:

I was alone in The Coffee Bar the other afternoon recovering from a strenuous half hour’s swimming and relaxing with a cold Tiger when a falang walked past looking a bit lost. I hailed him and he came and joined me for a few drinks.

This is his story.

Kelvin is from Australia where he runs a hardware store somewhere near Adelaide. He is in his late fifties and is a widower. His wife died of cancer about three years ago. He had been married for about thirty years.

About two years ago he first visited Thailand and discovered a way of life which was totally new to him.

Since then he has become a frequent visitor here and very rarely spends a night on his own. He has had several relationships which have lasted, at least in one case, for several months, but is much happier to enjoy one or two night relationships with no strings attached.

Unlike some younger men I have met who proudly boast that they never pay for sex in Thailand, he tells me that he always makes sure he is generous with his money since he is aware that the girls are only doing this job because they are financially desperate. He also tells me that he regularly takes Viagra since he would not want to disappoint a lady even when, as he put it, “I’m running on empty.”

He has run away from Patong since he had an affair there which turned nasty and he has no wish to be attacked by a vengeful lady.

He is, I think, not deeply contented by his holiday lifestyle but reckons that it’s a lot better than being celibate in Australia.

I asked him how it compared with having been married. His reply was instant and passionate. During his marriage he was never unfaithful, never feeling any need for anything other than his wife’s love. He said that after so many years of marriage, of course, their sex life had diminished but he was perfectly happy with that. He deeply missed his wife and nothing could compare with the relationship he had with her.

I asked him how he felt about the girls he slept with. He said that he felt sorry for them and after sleeping with them often told them that they should really not be doing that job.

I suggested that he was being hypocritical. Using their services and then lecturing them on the folly of their ways. I asked him what he would feel like if his daughter made a living in this way.

He got the point and we spent some time discussing hypocrisy and deciding, as the beer flowed, that life without it was more or less impossible.

So this is Kelvin, the typical aging sex tourist. Is what he does good, bad or of no consequence?

My brother once pointed out to me that he had spent forty years selling his brain to the highest bidder. If one’s most commercially valuable asset is one’s body then why not sell it?

I have then no moral stance to make on prostitution. However I think that there are aspects of this trade which move me and sometimes deeply disturb me.
Men want sex and while that remains the case then prostitution will flourish. Kelvin makes it obvious that there is nothing that beats a good loving relationship but this is not always available. Some men are unlucky, like Kelvin, and some are just too damned selfish to get involved in a seriously meaningful relationship which might require them to actually adapt their lives to help the needs of another human being.

The Isaan area of Thailand is poor and I mean poor by Thai standards. I have spoken to many girls who have come to Phuket from Isaan and their stories almost all the same. They get pregnant by a local Thai man, who usually then runs away leaving them with a child to care for. This is a disgrace to their family and they head off to somewhere where they can make money to send back to their parents, who bring up the child.

Now the Thai economy is a bit of a disaster and it is very difficult for a girl to make more than a very few hundred baht a day at a normal job even if a normal job is available. So it can come as no surprise that bright girls who in a European environment would be heading off to university, here become the bar girls and streetwalkers of Patong.

From my previous stories you will note that I too am a hypocrite but nevertheless what can be done about all this?

I think there are several points.

The Thai economy is a mess. Mr Thaksin the leader of the previous government which was overthrown by a military coup has suggested, I believe, that all foreigners should be thrown out of Thailand. On the face of it this would seem to be crazy since a large proportion of the economy depends on the money spent by those people. However a lot of that money is spent on supporting life styles which are far from ideal. When Kelvin suggests to a girl that she should stop playing this game and go home to her family he makes a fair point.

According to the girls I have spoken to the young Thai male is brought up to be more important than his sister and expected to sit around doing nothing while his sister rushes around doing all the chores which accompany family life, and to arrogantly expect to do pretty well what ever he likes.

I am told that the typical Thai man believes he is within his rights to beat his wife if she displeases him.

This is not good. There are many aspects of Thai culture which I find to be far better than that of my European upbringing. This is not one of them. I am not an ardent supporter of women’s lib but please, please let us start with the philosophy that we are all equal in worth. Not the same, but of equal worth.

The Thai attitude to sex seems to be very different from that which we expect in our farang world.
In England, my home country , we are sexually rather inhibited. We are brought up to believe that sexual behaviour is something which is only to be indulged in as part of a loving relationship. In fact my parents would have carried this further and said that only within marriage is sex appropriate. When my brother’s marriage failed and he set up with another lady my father muttered “it must be interesting to be able to make comparisons.”
Here in Thailand sex is more mundane, it is an itch which needs to be scratched. A masseuse will often provide that little extra to provide complete relaxation for her client. It’s no big deal - or so they say. But in fact if you sleep with a Thai girl for more than a couple of nights she will probably be thinking in terms of a more permanent relationship. So perhaps things aren’t so different.

So where does this leave us. I believe that sex and love are best when inextricably entwined but that if one wants to really feel one is part of the human race then sex - even with a stranger - is for many men an imperative.

I am clearly not ready, yet, to become a Buddhist monk.