The Thai sex trade is driven by overweight, unattractive, middle-aged divorcees, right? Wrong. A Fabulous investigation reveals it?s now 20-something Brits paying for sex
Nick and Gary are on a boys-only holiday with a difference. Their girlfriends think they're on a golfing trip, when in fact they have come to Thailand solely to have sex with prostitutes.
The young men, both 21 and chefs, are in the beach resort of Pattaya for the first time on a two-week break. Good-looking, with decent jobs and gorgeous girlfriends at home, they are not the sort of guys you expect to see paying for sex on the seedy streets of Thailand. But in the 24 hours since they landed, they've already handed over cash to two prostitutes.
Unashamedly, they compare it to trying to secure a one-night stand. While they might buy girls drinks all night only to get blown out in Tenerife, here they know if they fork out money, they're guaranteed sex at the end of the night.
"I wouldn't go to a prostitute in the UK - they spend their cash on drugs and I wouldn't want to fund their habit," Gary says. "It's different here."
A bar scene in Pattaya
Both men seem oblivious to the idea that these women are being forced by poverty and pimps to sell their bodies.
"Here the girls send money back to their families in their villages. They're doing a good thing," Gary says. "They're so nice and sweet, it's easy to forget what they are."
As they head into a bar, wallets bulging with Thai bhat, girls swarm around them. It's clear the new sleazy sex tourists are more likely to be your boyfriend, your husband, your brother or even your son.
Despite prostitution being illegal, the country's sex industry's annual turnover is estimated at $4.3billion - making a significant contribution to the country's economy. Which perhaps explains why the law is so easily flouted. Sex here is incredibly cheap, too. A guy will pay just ?5 for a sexual act, or anything up to ?50 to spend the whole evening with a girl.
Whether they're graduates on their gap year or groups of lads on their annual holiday, young British sex hunters are joining the 500,000 men flocking to the country every year in search of cheap thrills with poor girls.
But while the go-go bars are glitzy and the women beautiful, the industry has a dark underbelly. Many of the women working in the bars have been trafficked across the country and forced into selling sex. Of the estimated 50,000 prostitutes working in Pattaya, a notorious hot spot just two hours from Bangkok, a staggering 40 per cent are believed to be HIV-positive.
Capitalising on the burgeoning sex trade, the prostitutes - many of whom appear to be very young, despite the legal age for sex workers being 18 - are forced by pimps, poverty and desperation to go to extremes to extricate money from their punters. It's not just sex they're offering to sell, but love and the promise of a happy-ever-after, too. Perhaps driven by the fact that bagging a Brit is often their only escape plan.
To help them make more money, the girls have recently started using a phrasebook entitled Get Rich Quick For Thai Bar Girls. The book teaches them how to say: "You're the man of my dreams," followed by: "My brother needs books for school," or: "I've got toothache and can't afford to get treatment."
In fact, the prostitute experience in Thailand is becoming blurred, with many men buying a 'girlfriend', taking them to their hotel for the entire holiday and paying for their services. Some arrange to meet the same prostitutes on a return trip. They email and maintain a cyber relationship once they return home.
Western male tourists have exploited these women for years, and now the need for more prostitutes to meet demand means ever-younger girls are being brought into the industry. They're encouraged to have unprotected sex in return for more money from punters with no regard for their health, or that of the men's unsuspecting British girlfriends back home.
Rachel Davies, prostitution and trafficking officer at CARE, a charity working to end prostitution, says there are several reasons why young British men have started travelling to Thailand for sex.
"Thai women won't seem anything like their girlfriends, so it's easier for them to be treated in a way that these lads would never dream of doing in the UK. When young men are away from their jobs and their families, they feel comfortable doing things that they'd never consider doing at home," she says. "In Thailand, there's an element of disassociation."
That's certainly the case for Nick and Gary - they're already planning their next sex holiday to Pattaya. No doubt Nick will tell his girlfriend it's another golfing trip. She's at home in Huddersfield, blissfully unaware of his holiday antics. "She doesn't need to know," he admits. "What happens in Thailand, stays in Thailand."
Where sex sells
Two bar girls lure the lads inside
It's 2am on Walking Street in Pattaya, Thailand. The neon-drenched 1,000-metre strip of go-go bars, massage parlours and discos is heaving.
Young Thai girls in lacy bikinis and miniscule miniskirts or PVC hot pants strut up and down, touting for business from the throngs of Western tourists.
"I'll be your girlfriend," they shout, as men paw and grope their exposed flesh.
Flashing signs scream sex and strip shows, all on tap for less than a round of drinks. For 400 baht (?9) men can take a girl out of the bar she works in, then negotiate the fee for 'extras'.
The girls charge between just ?5 and ?50 for a night, bizarrely throwing in a manicure for free. And no, that's not code for anything else
At a bar on Beach Road, 24-year-old Em (pictured below), from Udon Thani near the Laos-Thailand border, dances and smiles from 2pm to 4am every day, waiting for a customer to pay to have sex with her.
Her Thai husband left her after she gave birth to twin boys, who are now four years old, so she works as a prostitute to support them while her parents care for the children at home in their village.
They know how she earns the money she sends to them every month. She's not the only girl from her village to have turned to prostitution - it's simply not spoken about.
Em says she'd like a farang (a foreign husband) of any age, as long as he is jai dee (has a good heart) to care for her and her sons.
Left: Pattaya's notorious Walking Street, Right: Em earns money to care for her two sons
She laughs and jokes, but when asked about the young men who've started to come to the bar, she begins to cry.
"They just want sex," she weeps. "They want it quickly, and they don't take me to nice places. They just want as many girls as they can. We don't mean anything to them."
Back on Walking Street, 19-year-old Ling from Sisaket, north-east Thailand, has been working at a bar for three months. She sends home around ?100 a month to pay for her eight-year-old sister to go to school.
"The men here have changed," she says. "It used to only be middle-aged or old men coming for sex, but now more and more younger men are, too."
Ling explains that while they're easier on the eye, many girls actually prefer the older clients.
"With young men, it's non-stop boom boom," she frowns. "Old men are better. They're not as demanding."
The streets of Thailand are paved with young women
'Thai girls left me broke'
Justin Dunn, 40, a PR from Liverpool, says:
Justin had a close shave in Koh Samui
"There's no denying Thailand's a beautiful and exciting place, but behind the flashing neon, there lies a dark side - rampant STDs, crime and ruthless bar girls only interested in your wallet.
I should know. I went on a lads' holiday to the Thai island of Koh Samui in 2005, and I ended up staying on for 10 months. After losing my job in PR and breaking up with my girlfriend, I wanted some fun, and at first I got it - in spades.
Girls threw themselves at me and I fell for the compliments and the flattery, thinking they genuinely wanted to go out with me. But they were as scheming as hell, fleecing me out of a fortune by claiming they needed money to send back to their sick grandmother, or to fix their bike. One girl even stole ?150 from my wallet while I slept, another threatened to cut my penis off if I cheated on her, and pretty much all of them had some gangster connections.
Before long, I was broke and forced to get a bar job to survive. Luckily, I always practised safe sex - but there was one thing a condom couldn't protect me from. The first and only time I ever paid for sex, I ended up back at my bungalow with a gorgeous girl who called herself Nadia.
Just as things were getting hot and heavy, I discovered she was actually a he! Horrified and degraded, I gave him the money and told him to leave.
After 10 months of life in Thailand, I'd had enough. I didn't want to end up like those men you see there - tramps with tans, who've lost all their money to girls. Blokes going over to Thailand need to realise that the girls aren't interested in them. They just want their money - and they'll say or do anything to get it."
'I can have any girl that I want'
Daniel - a happy punter
Daniel Pirie, 23, is single and an office furniture fitter from Stalybridge, Cheshire. He visits Thailand every year. He says:
"When I go out in Manchester and meet a girl, I have to buy her drinks all night, chat to her and put a lot of effort in. In Thailand, I just click my fingers and any girl I want is mine, for a small price. It's too easy.
I first visited Pattaya in 2006, on a golfing holiday with friends. I knew Thailand had a sex industry, but I had no idea how public and accepted it was. It's so open it feels normal. Everywhere I looked, there were beautiful women. And when I learned you could pick one, pay less than ?50 and she was yours for the night, it was too tempting not to. It's cheaper than wining and dining a girl, and she'll definitely sleep with you.
In three weeks, I slept with 15 girls. I was nervous at first, but then I really enjoyed myself. My friends didn't get involved with any of the bar girls, but they all knew what I was up to and didn't mind.
Since then, I've gone back to Thailand every year and have slept with prostitutes every time. My mum thinks I'm there to play golf and have a nice holiday.
On that first trip I met a bar girl called Summer and that year, and for the next two years, I paid her to stay with me for one week at my hotel and be mine exclusively. I knew when I left Thailand she'd sleep with other guys, and that did bother me a bit, but I looked at it like a holiday romance - with a difference.
Last year, she called me and asked for money and I sent her ?100. But a month later she called asking for more money and I refused. She was angry and I knew I had to end any contact I had with her. I didn't want to be one of those guys who gets duped into sending all his money to a Thai prostitute.
I think my holidays to Thailand are almost exactly the same as other lads' holidays to places like Magaluf and Ibiza, where they meet girls and sleep with them. The only difference is that I pay the girls I sleep with.
I'm single, and although I've had a few casual relationships in the past, I've never been in one while I've been out in Thailand. And I've never told a girl what I get up to on my blokes-only breaks there - I really don't know how they would react, so I think it's best not to say anything.
I have safe sex so I'm not worried about STDs. If I meet a girl I want to settle down with, I'll stop my holidays to Thailand. But for now, I'm young and enjoying myself."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Young, British and buying sex abroad | The Thai sex trade is driven by overweight, unattractive, middle-aged divorcees, right? Wrong. A Fabulous investigation reveals it’s now 20-something Brits paying for sex | News Of The World
Nick and Gary are on a boys-only holiday with a difference. Their girlfriends think they're on a golfing trip, when in fact they have come to Thailand solely to have sex with prostitutes.
The young men, both 21 and chefs, are in the beach resort of Pattaya for the first time on a two-week break. Good-looking, with decent jobs and gorgeous girlfriends at home, they are not the sort of guys you expect to see paying for sex on the seedy streets of Thailand. But in the 24 hours since they landed, they've already handed over cash to two prostitutes.
Unashamedly, they compare it to trying to secure a one-night stand. While they might buy girls drinks all night only to get blown out in Tenerife, here they know if they fork out money, they're guaranteed sex at the end of the night.
"I wouldn't go to a prostitute in the UK - they spend their cash on drugs and I wouldn't want to fund their habit," Gary says. "It's different here."
A bar scene in PattayaBoth men seem oblivious to the idea that these women are being forced by poverty and pimps to sell their bodies.
"Here the girls send money back to their families in their villages. They're doing a good thing," Gary says. "They're so nice and sweet, it's easy to forget what they are."
As they head into a bar, wallets bulging with Thai bhat, girls swarm around them. It's clear the new sleazy sex tourists are more likely to be your boyfriend, your husband, your brother or even your son.
Despite prostitution being illegal, the country's sex industry's annual turnover is estimated at $4.3billion - making a significant contribution to the country's economy. Which perhaps explains why the law is so easily flouted. Sex here is incredibly cheap, too. A guy will pay just ?5 for a sexual act, or anything up to ?50 to spend the whole evening with a girl.
Whether they're graduates on their gap year or groups of lads on their annual holiday, young British sex hunters are joining the 500,000 men flocking to the country every year in search of cheap thrills with poor girls.
But while the go-go bars are glitzy and the women beautiful, the industry has a dark underbelly. Many of the women working in the bars have been trafficked across the country and forced into selling sex. Of the estimated 50,000 prostitutes working in Pattaya, a notorious hot spot just two hours from Bangkok, a staggering 40 per cent are believed to be HIV-positive.
Capitalising on the burgeoning sex trade, the prostitutes - many of whom appear to be very young, despite the legal age for sex workers being 18 - are forced by pimps, poverty and desperation to go to extremes to extricate money from their punters. It's not just sex they're offering to sell, but love and the promise of a happy-ever-after, too. Perhaps driven by the fact that bagging a Brit is often their only escape plan.
To help them make more money, the girls have recently started using a phrasebook entitled Get Rich Quick For Thai Bar Girls. The book teaches them how to say: "You're the man of my dreams," followed by: "My brother needs books for school," or: "I've got toothache and can't afford to get treatment."
In fact, the prostitute experience in Thailand is becoming blurred, with many men buying a 'girlfriend', taking them to their hotel for the entire holiday and paying for their services. Some arrange to meet the same prostitutes on a return trip. They email and maintain a cyber relationship once they return home.
Western male tourists have exploited these women for years, and now the need for more prostitutes to meet demand means ever-younger girls are being brought into the industry. They're encouraged to have unprotected sex in return for more money from punters with no regard for their health, or that of the men's unsuspecting British girlfriends back home.
Rachel Davies, prostitution and trafficking officer at CARE, a charity working to end prostitution, says there are several reasons why young British men have started travelling to Thailand for sex.
"Thai women won't seem anything like their girlfriends, so it's easier for them to be treated in a way that these lads would never dream of doing in the UK. When young men are away from their jobs and their families, they feel comfortable doing things that they'd never consider doing at home," she says. "In Thailand, there's an element of disassociation."
That's certainly the case for Nick and Gary - they're already planning their next sex holiday to Pattaya. No doubt Nick will tell his girlfriend it's another golfing trip. She's at home in Huddersfield, blissfully unaware of his holiday antics. "She doesn't need to know," he admits. "What happens in Thailand, stays in Thailand."
Where sex sells
Two bar girls lure the lads insideIt's 2am on Walking Street in Pattaya, Thailand. The neon-drenched 1,000-metre strip of go-go bars, massage parlours and discos is heaving.
Young Thai girls in lacy bikinis and miniscule miniskirts or PVC hot pants strut up and down, touting for business from the throngs of Western tourists.
"I'll be your girlfriend," they shout, as men paw and grope their exposed flesh.
Flashing signs scream sex and strip shows, all on tap for less than a round of drinks. For 400 baht (?9) men can take a girl out of the bar she works in, then negotiate the fee for 'extras'.
The girls charge between just ?5 and ?50 for a night, bizarrely throwing in a manicure for free. And no, that's not code for anything else
At a bar on Beach Road, 24-year-old Em (pictured below), from Udon Thani near the Laos-Thailand border, dances and smiles from 2pm to 4am every day, waiting for a customer to pay to have sex with her.
Her Thai husband left her after she gave birth to twin boys, who are now four years old, so she works as a prostitute to support them while her parents care for the children at home in their village.
They know how she earns the money she sends to them every month. She's not the only girl from her village to have turned to prostitution - it's simply not spoken about.
Em says she'd like a farang (a foreign husband) of any age, as long as he is jai dee (has a good heart) to care for her and her sons.
Left: Pattaya's notorious Walking Street, Right: Em earns money to care for her two sons She laughs and jokes, but when asked about the young men who've started to come to the bar, she begins to cry.
"They just want sex," she weeps. "They want it quickly, and they don't take me to nice places. They just want as many girls as they can. We don't mean anything to them."
Back on Walking Street, 19-year-old Ling from Sisaket, north-east Thailand, has been working at a bar for three months. She sends home around ?100 a month to pay for her eight-year-old sister to go to school.
"The men here have changed," she says. "It used to only be middle-aged or old men coming for sex, but now more and more younger men are, too."
Ling explains that while they're easier on the eye, many girls actually prefer the older clients.
"With young men, it's non-stop boom boom," she frowns. "Old men are better. They're not as demanding."
The streets of Thailand are paved with young women'Thai girls left me broke'
Justin Dunn, 40, a PR from Liverpool, says:
Justin had a close shave in Koh Samui"There's no denying Thailand's a beautiful and exciting place, but behind the flashing neon, there lies a dark side - rampant STDs, crime and ruthless bar girls only interested in your wallet.
I should know. I went on a lads' holiday to the Thai island of Koh Samui in 2005, and I ended up staying on for 10 months. After losing my job in PR and breaking up with my girlfriend, I wanted some fun, and at first I got it - in spades.
Girls threw themselves at me and I fell for the compliments and the flattery, thinking they genuinely wanted to go out with me. But they were as scheming as hell, fleecing me out of a fortune by claiming they needed money to send back to their sick grandmother, or to fix their bike. One girl even stole ?150 from my wallet while I slept, another threatened to cut my penis off if I cheated on her, and pretty much all of them had some gangster connections.
Before long, I was broke and forced to get a bar job to survive. Luckily, I always practised safe sex - but there was one thing a condom couldn't protect me from. The first and only time I ever paid for sex, I ended up back at my bungalow with a gorgeous girl who called herself Nadia.
Just as things were getting hot and heavy, I discovered she was actually a he! Horrified and degraded, I gave him the money and told him to leave.
After 10 months of life in Thailand, I'd had enough. I didn't want to end up like those men you see there - tramps with tans, who've lost all their money to girls. Blokes going over to Thailand need to realise that the girls aren't interested in them. They just want their money - and they'll say or do anything to get it."
'I can have any girl that I want'
Daniel - a happy punterDaniel Pirie, 23, is single and an office furniture fitter from Stalybridge, Cheshire. He visits Thailand every year. He says:
"When I go out in Manchester and meet a girl, I have to buy her drinks all night, chat to her and put a lot of effort in. In Thailand, I just click my fingers and any girl I want is mine, for a small price. It's too easy.
I first visited Pattaya in 2006, on a golfing holiday with friends. I knew Thailand had a sex industry, but I had no idea how public and accepted it was. It's so open it feels normal. Everywhere I looked, there were beautiful women. And when I learned you could pick one, pay less than ?50 and she was yours for the night, it was too tempting not to. It's cheaper than wining and dining a girl, and she'll definitely sleep with you.
In three weeks, I slept with 15 girls. I was nervous at first, but then I really enjoyed myself. My friends didn't get involved with any of the bar girls, but they all knew what I was up to and didn't mind.
Since then, I've gone back to Thailand every year and have slept with prostitutes every time. My mum thinks I'm there to play golf and have a nice holiday.
On that first trip I met a bar girl called Summer and that year, and for the next two years, I paid her to stay with me for one week at my hotel and be mine exclusively. I knew when I left Thailand she'd sleep with other guys, and that did bother me a bit, but I looked at it like a holiday romance - with a difference.
Last year, she called me and asked for money and I sent her ?100. But a month later she called asking for more money and I refused. She was angry and I knew I had to end any contact I had with her. I didn't want to be one of those guys who gets duped into sending all his money to a Thai prostitute.
I think my holidays to Thailand are almost exactly the same as other lads' holidays to places like Magaluf and Ibiza, where they meet girls and sleep with them. The only difference is that I pay the girls I sleep with.
I'm single, and although I've had a few casual relationships in the past, I've never been in one while I've been out in Thailand. And I've never told a girl what I get up to on my blokes-only breaks there - I really don't know how they would react, so I think it's best not to say anything.
I have safe sex so I'm not worried about STDs. If I meet a girl I want to settle down with, I'll stop my holidays to Thailand. But for now, I'm young and enjoying myself."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Young, British and buying sex abroad | The Thai sex trade is driven by overweight, unattractive, middle-aged divorcees, right? Wrong. A Fabulous investigation reveals it’s now 20-something Brits paying for sex | News Of The World
.
Comment