A Response To “Sex Tourists, Enough Already”

I would like to sympathize with your predicament but for a number of reasons I’m afraid I cannot. Firstly your direct attacks upon the submissions of Dana and the Londoner show that you have spent quite a bit of time reading the Stickman site. The majority of readers of the site have at one time or another paid for sex with Thai girls. If you do not like immersing yourself with those kinds of undesirable people then I would suggest you don’t go out of your way to visit these kinds of websites.

Secondly the same would apply to the unpleasant situation with your daughter being mistaken for a working bar girl when she walks down Sukumvit Road. Bangkok is an enormous city, the western red light areas account for less than 1% of the city’s area and it is very easy to avoid these areas if you really want to. If my girlfriend walks thru the Kings Kross red light area of Sydney to go to a nearby nightclub, she will no doubt be subjected to the same kind of treatment as your daughter. If my girlfriend takes the subway, she will be subjected to derelicts bailing her up demanding money for a cigarette. This is all part of life in a big city. If you don’t like it then consider going off to live somewhere in the safe countryside.

As far as your holidays to Phuket being spoilt by sex tourists are concerned, I would suggest you need only keep away from Patong beach and you should find you are able to enjoy your holiday there quite well, but if you find that too difficult then I am sure you can find many other suitable islands to go for a holiday from the over 1000 islands Thailand has. Sex tourism for Westerners is not embedded everywhere throughout the kingdom. It is located in small specific areas. These areas are not growing nor are they diminishing. They facilitate a rather constant demand and supply of participating people. I do not accept your notion that they are too big and are too difficult for you to avoid.

I do agree with you that in all likelihood Dana and the Londoner would have difficulty finding similar women back home but so what? What does this prove? The almighty US$ and UK pound ensure that they are kings when they travel to poor countries. That is the way the world works and thanx to globalization one day China will be the most powerful country in the world and they will be coming to Australia to pay for sex with our women.

You scoff at Dana and the Londoner’s ideas for recreation in Thailand. Who are you to judge? When you tell me your idea of fun is to read and riveting book I don’t laugh at you and tell you what a boring old fart you are. Each to their own. Personally I don’t do what they do but they should be free to do whatever they like for recreation provided it does not impose on the freedom of others to enjoy themselves.

You have talked about the “real Thailand” and you have scoffed at the limited experiences of people such as Dana and the Londoner. But what is experience? These men are not claiming to know how it is to grown up learning in the Thai education system. They are not claiming to know how the 1% elite rich Thai people live when they are born into upper class. They don’t know how a celibate monk in a monastery lives. Do you yourself know any of these Thai experiences? Personally I let Dana & the Londoner eat a few bugs from a street stall and sweat it out in a shanty town in Isaan and let them enjoy the very small slice of life’s experiences for what it’s worth. I don’t believe they are claiming to have some almighty understanding about the workings and experiences of Thai society. At least these two guys actually step out of their own culture and expose themselves in another. You might wish they had stayed at home but the truth is the world is a more humane and peaceful place with greater understanding between cultures when people step out of they own culture and travel to another.

Dana and the Londoner have made numerous submissions to the Stickman website thus exposing themselves and in reading their words we have gained an insight into the kinds of men they are. You have used this information and dissected it to analyse these men and reap scorn on them. This has not taken any great skill on your part and I am sure if you had posted your life stories and observations up on the internet we would all be able to make fun of you too.

Finally in applauding PM Thaksin’s New Social Order Policy you are aligning yourself with the conservative old values. I can understand that now you are married and settled down you would like to see a crack down on drugs and entertainment venues closing at the new time of 1:00am. Particularly as your children are about to arrive at an age where they will be exposed to the dangers of the modern corrupt world. I on the other had see it as another step towards a police state. When people are regularly stopped on the street and subjected to body searches, people in entertainment venues are regularly forced to submit urine samples, police are paid bonuses for a high body count in summary executions during a questionable war on drugs. Thailand will be the only modern city in the world preventing its people from having any form of licensed entertainment after 1:00am. Do you truly support these Thaksin initiatives? The elements of the New Social Order Policy that effect and impose upon Westerners rights can be seen as nothing more that pampering to the Thai Nationalistic pride. If the Thai government wanted to stop prostitution overnight then instead of harassing legitimate entertainment businesses, they should implement a single mothers welfare program. This would stop the supply of Isaan girls dead in its tracks. We all know it is far more politically palatable to harass Westerners and Entertainment business than really deal with the crux of the problem.

You said that you support the Thaksin government’s efforts to crack down on long-stay visas to Thailand in order to make things harder for sex tourists. (I am guessing that because you are older and have lived in Thailand a long time married to a Thai woman you have sorted out your visa affairs to a point where you cannot be easily kicked out of the kingdom – good for you)

It seems to me that it would be rather difficult to have a superior government or non government body decide who is a long-stay sex tourist and who is a long-stay regular expat. Even the fact that a Westerner is married does not preclude them from dabbling in the sex trade and therefore could be a long-stay sex tourist. Again this government policy is aimed at nothing more than appealing to conservative middle and upper class voter’s nationalistic pride. It seems you have somehow found yourself aligned with this demographic of people.

Have you every in your life paid for sex with a Thai woman? If so, why do you consider yourself so enlightened now that you have moved on and are above all that type of behaviour. Or maybe you are so high and mighty that you have never paid for sex in your life. You said you are sick and tired of listening to sex tourists brag of their exploits but I am sick and tired of hearing high and mighty conservative people claim some kind of moral superiority because they do not engage in the sex industry. I am sure I can find all manner of immoral deceitful things you do in your life and if you are as pure as the Virgin Mary then you are one very boring human being indeed.

Thailand has many, many, many more pressing problems than harassing sex tourists. This is a political scapegoat that is intended to divert public attention away from the real issues facing the development of the country. When the country develops sophistication and a level of economic wealth the Isaan girls will not have the desire to leave their homes and travel to Bangkok and Pattaya in search of an escape from poverty. The sex industry aimed at Westerners will just slip away to nothing and be a distant memory for a few old die hards. For the Thaksin government to legislate against the sex industry is to deny the development of the society. Police are poorly paid and need kick backs to do their job effectively. Without an effective welfare system in place, it is common knowledge that many single mothers are forced into the sex industry. When a society’s wealth increases, these problems naturally disappear.

Good luck trying to keep your children away from the dangers of drugs. I don’t think Thaksin’s policies will do much to protect your family.

Stickman says:

It is incredibly hurtful when someone believes in something so strongly only to have it pointed out to them that perhaps what they believe in (or follow or do) is not only not all they thought it to be, but highly questionable, and not just to them, but to a good number of people. That is what Mark's original article did. For people who live a mundane existence in the West and fantasise about Thailand all the time, and perhaps come here for their little slice of "heaven" a couple of weeks a year, to have it pointed out to them that maybe things / what they are doing are not as great as they think they are can be awfully damaging.

I do like your second to last paragraph.