Pattaya: Distortions of a Hooker Kind
By KorskiI was sitting in the back of a bus with a large man from Scotland who has an administrative position at one of the better schools in Pattaya. To his right was his Thai wife, who had taken a pill for motion sickness and was trying to sleep. My conversation with him wandered, but at one point, knowing that I was an American, he said that he had no desire to visit Washington D.C. or Los Angeles, because of “all the violence.” I tried to point out to him that these kinds of generalizations about American cities are dicey at best, that violence everywhere in America is quite localized. (I could have also added, but didn’t, that the overwhelming majority of such violence is black on black.) I, for example, live a mere three miles from a city in Southern California that is estimated to have some 200 Mexican-American gangs and plenty of drugs and a good bit of violence among the gangs. But my life, by day and night, is so safe that I rarely remove the keys from the ignition when I go to the grocery store and do other shopping, and perhaps three to four nights a week I don’t even bother to lock the doors to my house. These are small examples of just how facile, and wrong, one can be when making generalizations about violence and crime in large cities, or anywhere for that matter in America.
Somewhat later in our conversation, the man from Scotland made evident his indignation over the way so many people characterize Pattaya. He, after all, is happily married to a Thai woman and never goes near the bar scene, and, surely, he pointed out, one should understand that Pattaya is so much more than Walking Street and all the beer bars—what more than once I have referred to as the largest whorehouse in the history of the world. The man from Scotland, of course, is right about Pattaya being more than its thousands and thousands of bargirls and farang who are there largely to pay for their sexual services. And yet Pattaya, I dare say, and certainly to farang around the world, and to a great many Thais, is a place not known for its beaches or golf courses or schools or quiet living, but rather for all the single-minded farang who go there to pay for their one-on-one bedroom parties with the thousands of young women who have come primarily from Isaan to make money for themselves and their families back home.
Yes, distortions, the thought that got me digressing a bit with my opening. What are some of the things that strike a visitor, or a monger, as odd or puzzling about this largest and perhaps greatest of whorehouses found anywhere at any time? This is the thought that brings me to this brief essay.
I am struck by how in the very early hours of the morning there are so many girls and relatively young women who would like to get into bed for money before morning light and will not do so. At this time, and for hours before—beginning around seven p.m.--there are thousands and thousands of women in the beer bars, and the go-go joints, and in the discos (on toward and after midnight), and on Walking Street, and along Beach Road--the freelancers—who will go to bed by themselves and wake up without any of the real money they’re after. Even though I have usually been in Pattaya at the end of the high season or during the low season, it is hard to believe that at any time of the year the supply of available hookers in Pattaya does not greatly exceed demand. Enormous numbers of these women cannot be making a score with a farang more than a couple of times a month. And some, I’d bet, are not this fortunate. How do they manage to persist and carry on in this kind of environment? How can so many spend hour after hour and night after night sitting within or on the edge of a beer bar, or standing around and smiling solicitously on its edges and waiting for the farang who will take them for even a couple of hours?
My sense is that those who are doing so poorly in scoring a farang short-time or long-time have two principal things working against them: age—late twenties and above, and it tends to show; and a face that compared to the faces of so many Pattaya hookers is just not very attractive. In fact, many of them are downright ugly, especially compared to all the hookers who are younger. Perhaps those who score so infrequently with farang are satisfied with the little they are getting from drink commissions, and the money they receive from the bar; and then the occasional 1,500 baht and a piece of the barfine for going with a farang.
But there is, I suppose, something else that may keep all these older and less desirable hookers around: they are either near or at the end of the road—they’ve been around Pattaya and doing this kind of work for some time and they’re now in their declining years and have few or no alternatives, real or imagined. Too, like all humans they’re creatures of habit. They’re hooked on the lifestyle: all the drinking, being around the loud farang and women just like them, and the general buzz of the whole area that is music to an addict of a night life where just about anything goes. The same might be said for a great many of those even fairly new to the game and who are strapped from the outset with age and little in the way of looks or personality. Among this group are those who did not learn at a young age of the rich possibilities of Pattaya, where you can if prudent in short order accumulate enough money to open a small business in the village where you grew up. But when they finally come after their best years of youth are behind them, and with all the competition and over supply around them in Pattaya, their chances of doing well are not very good.
Which brings me to a distortion of another sort. There are, surely, enormous differences between a small percentage of the Pattaya hookers who make very good money—five or more bar fines a week and lots of drink commissions and even shopping trip dividends for guys who keep them for a couple of days or longer—and those who, as I’ve noted, get so little of the considerable farang whoring money circulating at any one time. A sociologist or economist might well look at the Pattaya hooker population and divide it up into the familiar categories of upper, middle and lower class, and even go further with distinctions among these categories. Such a classification scheme might not be too much different than what one sees in many developing countries. There would be a very small percentage of rich and super-rich hookers at the top, perhaps five to ten percent, a bit more. The bottom, where most make little, would be huge, perhaps upwards of seventy percent of the total. And then there would be a relatively unchanging middle-class—girls who score with a farang perhaps once or twice a week, but seldom five or six times a week, and they rarely get the bonus monies known to the rich and the super rich hooker—the trip for several days or a week to an island with all expenses paid and some new clothes on afternoon shopping ventures and then a pile of baht when the girlfriend honeymoon of a sort is over and they are ready to return to the go-go joint and score again before a day or two has gone by.
I’m struck by how many middle-aged men I see walking around with Thai women in Pattaya who are, to my eye, quite unattractive. What somewhat puzzles me is why this is so given that there are so many women available who are both younger and, again to my eye, more attractive than those the foreign men are with. The explanation could be as simple as the fact that these men have gone with younger and more attractive hookers in Pattaya, and on too many occasions have been rejected when they have attempted to establish something more permanent than a one or two-day relationship. The young and attractive hooker was more than happy to take the man’s money for a night or two of shagging and such but beyond that...well, no thank you, I can do better. The fact is that a disproportionate number of farang in Pattaya strikes me as “physical rejects,” and they would be no matter where you would find them. They are significantly overweight and with all kinds of signs that they have not taken care of themselves through the years. So, one might reason, who but the Thai women they are with—whether or not hookers—would really want them? <This is oh so true. The state of the humanity in Pattaya at times is bad and when you allude to the fact that some have not taken care of themselves, that is very true. Rotten teeth and an enormous beer belly are obvious signs - Stick>
Another quite real possibility is that a good bit of what I am seeing is simply due to the great range in taste that all men have. It’s easy enough to argue that there are cross-cultural commonalities in concepts of beauty—and there certainly are; and yet there are numerous cases both between and among cultures where men differ greatly in what they consider to be an attractive or good-looking woman. One need look nor further for evidence than to observe how many Western men seem to seek out and be quite satisfied with fat women, exactly what so many men expressly dislike and which draws them to a place like Pattaya. Too, there is always the matter of “chemistry” between two people, a factor that can easily override anything having to do with what others consider so important, i.e., physical attractiveness and age.
I don’t honesty know what to make of the “tourist couples” that one sees on Walking Street and in the beer bars and elsewhere, couples who are very often well into middle age. Have they come to Pattaya because of its infamy and nude girly shows and they’re just curious to put their eyes on what is so hard if not impossible to see back home? Or have they come to Pattaya because the idea was planted by the husband who heard about it through his drinking mates in a pub in London or Sydney? The husband couldn’t come on his own because his wife wouldn’t allow him to, and yet he just has to see for himself what all the fuss is about. Then, after a week or so in Pattaya with his wife, and perhaps regretting every minute of having come with her, he will find himself spending a good deal of time trying to get back to Pattaya alone or with his mates.
I’m struck by all the young Brits and Aussies (more of the former than the latter from what I can tell), those in their twenties and thirties, and even some well into their forties, who are just plain scummy to the naked eye. It isn’t because so many of them have shaved their heads, or because so many are overweight even at their young age, or even because they have tattoos, which if small and number only one or two and are placed with some sense of discretion are quite okay as far as I’m concerned. It’s rather that these Brits and Aussies who have come to Pattaya look trashy because they are so heavily and gaudily tattooed. All over their arms, and on their chests, and on their calves, and maybe even on their dicks too for all I know. When you combine the size of the tattoos, and their numbers, and the tasteless aesthetic of the designs, and because some of the tattoos are fading, it makes these Brits and Aussies look, well, low-class, uneducated, trashy, just plain scummy. And in all fairness, there are Europeans and some Americans who fall into the same category. All of them lack any sense of taste (I’d bet most wouldn’t distinguish between a Picasso and a piece of bathroom graffito) and probably anything legitimately called an education (most believing, I’d bet, that being educated is having the ability to talk with authority about why Manchester United is currently the team to beat).
Not knowing what men in their twenties and thirties generally look like in England or Ireland or Australia, I have no idea whether what I see in Pattaya is representative of the socio-economic class these men represent at home. It may be that the quantity and nature of the tattoos and other features—their shaved heads and weight--are pretty good indicators of the kind of men who feel sexually liberated enough to come to Pattaya to whore for two or three weeks once or twice a year. Although there are all kinds of men in the West who have tattoos and would never dream of coming to Pattaya to pay for sex, it may nevertheless be the case that men with these traits, and particularly as I’ve characterized them, are much more likely to do so. The fact that they went down the tattoo road and to such an extreme extent, and in all likelihood at such a young age, probably means that by the time they were teenagers they felt alienated and had few qualms about sticking up their middle finger at convention and all the conventional sorts around them.
(In Thailand, you can get a good-sized thirty-year-old forearm tattoo removed for about one thousand pounds, or a hundred pounds for each of the ten sessions required to do the laser work. The comparable price in England for the same removal would be about four thousand pounds. Assuming that a tiny proportion of the Brits I have described came to their senses about what they’d done to their bodies, the bill in Thailand to get cleaned up could well run upwards of 6,000 or 8,000 pounds, and well more than a total of ten sessions since not all of the tattoos could be worked on in the same session. But the subculture of those who are so heavily tattooed is, I would guess, one that rarely brings this possibility to mind. They’re quite content if not downright happy with what they have done to their bodies. They don’t have the kind of money needed to do the laser work, and if they did they’d probably prefer to spend it on drinking, whoring, cigarettes, or yet more tattoos which are, compared to prices in England or elsewhere, a good bit cheaper in Thailand.)
I’ve long been struck, especially given the country’s population, how relatively few Americans I seem to see or hear about, not just in Pattaya but all through Southeast Asia. What’s up with Americans? Are they getting better and more frequent sex at home with their girlfriends and wives and those they pick up in bars than men from other countries who come to Thailand? I doubt it. Are they more uptight about paying a woman for sex with up front cold hard cash rather than on the dinner and movie and bullshit installment plan? Perhaps. Americans, on the whole, are a prissy and uptight lot when the conversation turns to good down and dirty fucking in its many and varied and lovely permutations. Is it because there simply aren’t as many Americans who have come to Pattaya or Thailand for sex, and the networks and gossip channels among men in America are not as developed and extensive as in Great Britain and Australia? Perhaps. In some ways, I’m inclined to think this is the best explanation of the three, although it doesn’t rule out the role of puritanical thinking that pervades that all-too-religious and quilt-riddled American mind. <It takes Americans a lot longer to reach Thailand on a plane than Europeans or those from Down Under - Stick>
There are numerous other distortions—if that’s the right word--that one might note about Pattaya. How, for example, in the main whoring areas outside Walking Street, the streets at eight and nine and ten in the morning must rank among the quietest stretches of commercial pavement in the world. How, for example, between the hours of say ten at night and two in the morning, no place in the world has so many young women in such a small area taking showers and knowing that within the next ten minutes or so they will be fucking or sucking with a man they have known for all of two or three hours. How, for example, no place in the world has so many men in such a small area talking with young women who, when he says, Would you like to go with me? never doubt that they are going to be doing a lot more than holding hands and cuddling. It is an assumption about what will follow that virtually goes unquestioned; all that does get questioned beforehand, and not always, is whether or not the hooker “smokes” or gives a blowjob, and perhaps how late she will stay after the first or second round of sex has been consummated.
Then there is the shock of seeing Walking Street at mid morning and trying to believe that it is the same street you saw all through the night, beginning at about seven p.m. when it is blocked off and there are no cars or motorbikes or trucks and there are enough overhead neon signs to light up a small town. Walk down Walking Street at ten in the morning and about the only thing that assures you that you are in the same place you were in the previous night or morning before sunlight is the familiar names of bars and go-go joints and places to eat squid and lobster and buy the condoms you forgot to get. At this mid morning hour, the street is a congested clot of cars and motorbikes and delivery and garbage trucks, and, overhead, enormous tangles of electrical wires and huge lifeless signs that give little indication that at nightfall they will transform this inviting one-of-a-kind street and those that intersect it into a buzzing light show that promises, and delivers on, what few places in the world have even imagined.
Finally, this little thought, what might be loosely called yet another distortion that characterizes the world’s No. One Whorehouse. It’s that so many farang seem to grouse about the price of what they are paying for, a price for raw and often fantastic sex that now, and even if the same prices existed twenty years ago, is simply astonishingly cheap. For those who don’t think so, or want to take exception to this statement because they are Cheap Charlie’s to the core, I’d say: Gentlemen, you have genuinely twisted and out-of-touch minds. You have forgotten not just how much a rank and zonked out hooker costs in the West, and for a mere half hour or hour. You have also forgotten just how much you pay in meals and for a movie and for flowers and all kinds of other things for a young woman in Australia or England or Germany or America who at the end of the night might well tell you that you’ll have to settle for a couple of passionate kisses and a long hug. And if you do get her into bed there is no more than a 50-50 chance that she’ll be as good as a Pattaya hooker chosen more or less at random.
Stickman's thoughts:
Heaps and heaps of interesting thoughts and observations.
As far as many girls seldom getting customers, I think you'd be surprised. It is my observation that even some of the least attractive girls get customers. Even the really hard looking drugged up girls, some of whom look quite pathetic, on Beach Road do get customers. In fact some of the girls on Beach Road, yes, even some of the rougher looking girls can get a few customers in a single day. I'm not saying it is the norm, but most do a reasonable trade.
There is no shortage of idiosyncrasies in Pattaya and that makes it so damned fascinating a place, even if it is just to sit at one of the outside bars on Walking street and observe. Is there a better spot for people watching ANYWHERE?
The author can be contacted at korski1@cox.net.
The author of this website, NOT this article, can be contacted at: stickmanbangkok@gmail.com.
