Prostitution: Thailand’s worst kept secret
Sex workers wait for customers in a red light district in Bangkok. Pic: AP.
Footage of a bargirl giving performing fellatio on a customer in Pattaya has upset a lot of people this week. Image via MCOT.
By James Austin
You could be forgiven for thinking if you were new to Thailand that prostitution was a market aimed solely at foreign tourists and fund-dumping expatriates. The garish lights, garish hook-ups, and garish whispers in the night have become iconic, a thing of holiday myths, books, films, and for many who don’t live here deceitfully representative of an entire culture. But Thailand’s lusty epithet of a land of salacious, often mendacious smiles, is a foreign concoction, and within these borders most citizens I think don’t taint themselves with that brush.
