A Tour of South East Asia, Part 6
Thursday Evening, Pattaya
I have walked a long way up and down Beach Road interacting only with those who want to talk. Some sleep rough on the beach, the German guy, still bare-assed with his pants around his ankles is lying on a bench. He is even worse off than me; because he isn’t aware of his poverty and has lost the dignity to pull up his own undercrackers. Move over, mate, I’ll soon be joining you.
Some beach girls have brought their kids with them and they sleep on the beach. A beach mat is essential for a working girl here. She may not always find a punter to sleep with. There aren’t a lot of them on the road at the moment; market forces have worked efficiently enough to ensure the supply of girls has balanced Farang demand. A lot club together to share a room, so not all the missing girls are tucked up with a client.
People like to think that these girls are pulling in the money. Maybe on some days for some girls, but usually a Farang a day is the rule of thumb; it is enough for them to live on and send some money home. It is a better life than the one they left behind. They get with a punter, have a clean bed, a shower, maybe food and as much money as they can hustle. Some would have us believe that the girls are being exploited, or even that they are exploiting the men. The truth is that it is just business. Another myth is that the hardest part of their job is to satisfy their clients sexually; they rarely complain about that. The real work is finding a Farang of any sort.
Do they care if a punter is young, fit and good-looking? Young, fit and good looking Farangs like to think so. As I said earlier, the girls prefer that type as much as a porn star cares about the shape a pig is in a bestiality movie – and the pig sty it happens to be sleeping for that matter. She is there to get money to support her family. She comes down for a few weeks or months to hustle tourists and no one in her own province needs know the kind of work she does.
‘Hello’, ‘where you go?’ and, ‘I go with you?’, are the standard openings among the more outward girls of Beach Road – and the outward are those that get the work. Exploitation? Just like the Viet girls at the round table in Phnom Penh; there are no pimps or sex slaves on Beach Road. I go again into a 7-Eleven and find out water is only 3 baht a litre – if you buy it warm. It is good to know that I can stay alive until I get to the Lucky Star in Phnom Penh. I have to wait in line while people buy lottery tickets – a tax on stupid people. You're supposed to scratch the box and see if you've won anything. I've been scratching down there for years and won fuck all.
The police in Europe once thought the best strategy to deal with prostitution was to lock up the whores. The intervention of feminists and total lack of strategic success turned it on its head in favour of harassing the punters. As for working ladies on the UK streets (where I honed my trade), the poor exploited victims of the perverts are given tea, condoms and sympathy. I often go up to these benevolent feminists and say, ‘It's money they want and not fucking tea, fuck off and let us punters give it to them.’
Similarly, the so-called Tourist Police in Pattaya – Falangs in uniform with as much power to make a citizen’s arrest as Batman – are marching down Beach Road, full of self-importance, looking for girls to protect from the thousands of perverts the feminists and manginas imagine they have travelled to prey on. The poor sex slaves of South-East Asia are well defended by this fine group of bigots. The odd drunk Falang can be counselled and a bit of petty theft recorded by these fine officers – but they do nothing to prevent or solve crime.
The news in the West benevolently provides us with the story of yet another girl abducted by some evil bastard who is biologically wired by 200,000 years of human evolution to fuck, socially conditioned to be obsessed with sex and at the same time feel guilty about it. This culminates in a distorted view of sexuality, resulting in more perverted behaviour, which makes more good news topics.
In the West, and increasingly so in the East, fear is healthy and thinking too much about your own mortality is strictly taboo – it may lead to something dangerously insightful and people might lose their taste for Coca Cola and breast implants. The media also plays on fears of the unknown by exaggerating stereotypes of minorities and homosexuals, under the guise of celebrating diversity, but even these images of being ghetto-fabulous and a lisping interior design exist solely to promote racism and homophobia; efficient distractions from thinking too much about the absurdity of Coca Cola and breast implants.
That’s enough thinking. It is beer I want – when I have the money to buy it. The reason that I would take a beer over a pussy any day is that sex takes the least time, costs the most money and causes the most trouble. Here's to alcohol, the cause and solution to all life's problems.
When I reached the end of the road a teenage boy (not in drag) asked me if I would go with him. Am I back in the gay area? I’m getting too close to where I was robbed by the band of ladyboys, and though I have nothing left to steal, I moved up into Walking Street. As I found in Siem Riep – what is it with the heavy haunched Falang Ladies and their fish massages? Little piranha pilchards picking the dead skin from their fat red feet. And as for the two tall skinny blondes (Russians?) dancing on the street I think, ‘Who gives a fuck – go to Ibiza and parade your precious pussies there – no one is even looking at you. We are here because we actually like Thai women and want to get away from your kind’. Huge insects are roasting on the side walk. I don't like the thought of eating cockroaches. They don't even sound like a bug; they sound like an STD. It's like, 'Bill's got crabs' – 'that's nothing, Bob’s got cockroaches.'
At the entrance to a club, big guys wearing security uniforms are doing ID checks and selecting lucky entrants from a long line of customers. There are no hello girls, no promise of Thai girls and no apparent clue to what might be so special behind the doors, except a few skinny Falang women with bleached hair and tattoos dancing in an upstairs window. I saw one security guy excluding an Asian who seemed desperate to get in. Why the hell would you? Clearly the aim is to manufacture a hype of exclusivity and mystery that in itself seems to generate the interest (and the money) of the gullible. But what can they offer other than high prices and the very western bitches we have come here to avoid? I say to them, ‘Go and suck your own dicks.’
I’ve done enough walking and get back to my guesthouse. I don’t know why they call these places ‘Guest Houses’ – you can’t get a meal in them. You would think they would at least offer their guests something to eat. Long term stayers, old guys – not even mongers, occupy most of the rooms and feed on the trolley stalls that turn up during the day. An old Farang can eke out a meagre retirement pension here. Say $15 a day for food and accommodation, maybe a beer, but not a girl on that budget. Anyway, sex at their age would be like trying to shoot pool with a rope. The oldest guys spend all day flirting with the receptionists who giggle and shout – there is a constant noise of their banter at my door which opens directly on to reception. I can't complain – it is the cheapest place you could possibly stay in Pattaya without being on a beach mat.
Apart from the bench of that German guy, I would say I am the butt end of the market. It makes me wonder about my Teutonic unglücklich – has he still got his keks around his ankles? My dwindling resources are beginning to make that backside seem unaccountably appealing.
If I died and went to hell it would take me a week to realize I wasn't alive anymore.
