Neater still - a misanthrope, since men can’t be tusted either.
You don’t think that they might sugarcoat reality for you, to keep business good?
I thought this thread was about a 48 year old Canadian who was shot in the head in his bed by a hitman hired by his 27 year old Thai wife and her boyfriend. She is alleged to have been trying to collect his $1 million dollar life insurance policy provided by his employer. They had been married six years.
A xenophobic misogynist: the most interesting kind.
The perception among Westerners however is that these women are not doing this out of choice, and would get out of it if they could. Therefore, they will be grateful for the opportunity and trustworthy. The truth, as with most things, is much more complicated than that. Its a game that’s been played by the courtesan for as long as the profession has been around.
Its a similar self deception to “and the Iraqi people will welcome us with open arms.”
ETA: There is a lot of difference as well between “choice to begin” and “choice to stay” Sometimes people don’t have a choice on starting something, but once they are in, it is the life they are comfortable with - and having somebody pay you on top of doing something you have been able to rationalize - hey - more money.
No, I don’t. Believe me, I’ve seen the good AND the bad over the years, and it’s nothing at all like what people with no experience here think it is.
Yes, you are correct, the reality is a lot more complicated than many think. And many of the girls skillfully play up the perception that you mention in your first two sentences to as much advantage as they can. Make no mistake, many – but by no means all, MAYBE not even most – of the girls enter the profession specifically to hook a Western husband and maybe emigrate to the West. This is a big reason the visa process at several Western embassies is so strict and why there are so many angry Letters to the Editor in the local Western-language press from angry grooms decrying how hdifficult it is to get their newfound sweetie into their country. (Here’s a tip: When they ask you how you met, never say “in a bar.” That’s an automatic reject.)
There is one scam that always leaves us alternately laughing and shaking our heads in pity and despair. Sometimes, the girl who has been proposed to will tell her boyfriend that she would love to leave the bar and marry him, but the bar DOES own her, and he must buy her from the place. The amount can be anywhere from the equivalent of a couple of hundred US dollars to a thousand or even more. This is ludicrous. The girl is simply making a little more profit for her bar before she takes off. She can leave anytime with no problem. They always ARE leaving. Sometimes they get fired, because they can never be on time or some other infraction. Sometimes they leave because their best friend just moved to another bar, and they want to stay close to them. Sometimes they leave because they had a customer who gave her enough money not to work for several weeks. Or because it’s sunny outside! All sorts of reasons. But I possess an extensive knowledge of the Thai bar industry, and there is no bar that “owns” anyone. Period.
Every time we expats hear of this buy-me-from-the-bar scam, we counsel the guy, who is always a newbie, “Look. Not only is she free to leave at any time, but the fact that she is trying to scam you like this does not bode well for your future marital bliss. So try this: Put your foot down and refuse to pay anything. At least see what happens.” Sometimes they go ahead and pay anyway, they’re so smitten. Sometimes they follow our advice and refuse to pay, and sure enough she leaves anyway. Or sometimes she doesn’t leave, because during the time it’s taken for all of this to go on, she’s found a NEW prospect and has forgotten the first guy. It’s all quite a game and quite something to observe.
I’ve watched many Western men marry prostitutes. In the vast majority of instances, it does not work out. Sometimes it does, there are exeptions, but really, marrying these girls should never be a viable option. They are for play. I have actually seen cases – so many that while I won’t say it’s common, I cannot call it uncommon – in which the bride has accompanied her new husband back to his home country. She tells him she misses her family or her mother is sick or whatever and that she needs to go home for a visit. He sends her home for a couple of weeks, and she spends the time back in the bar picking up tricks! I will always remember one girl in particular. I saw her back in the bar and said, “Hey! I thought you got married last year. What happened with that?” "She grinnned sheepishly, giggled, put her finger to her mouth and said, “Shhh! You no tell him, okay? I want have some fun.” I did not actually know her husband and so could not have told him, but never mind.
Many of the girls actually quit and return upcountry. I’ve known quite a few who were able to build their parents and themselves a house back in the village and maybe put a sibling or two through school and leave the game ahead. Unfortunately, this is not most of the girls, but it is many. Most become addicted not to drugs (the drug addicts never last long), but to the money and the fast lifestyle, the clothes, staying in nice hotels for free and maybe being taken on trips abroad once in a while. It’s boring back in the village! And working 12 hours a day for about US$100 a month in a sweatshop holds little appeal. So they get into the game, start making a LOT of money if they’re halfway good at it, and then blow it all like there’s no tomorrow. They buy expensive clothes and gamble in all-night card games and generally live the high life as long as they can. Unfortunately, sometimes tomorrow DOES come, and one day they wake up old and forgotten and with no prospects for the future. And that IS sad. But I’m not going to fault them for the life they chose to lead.
Instead, I sit in the bars, and I interact with them. I chat with them, I hear their stories. Some REALLY DO fall in love with a customer or two, and it’s THEY who get the broken heart. Others laugh at the foolish fat old man they were with last week; an idiot, but he took her to Singapore, so he has a “good hear,” she says. I hear the strories, too, of the sadists who have gotten hold of some, always a worry among the girls; thankfully, these incidents are few, and once one is known, there are all sorts of things that can happen to the guy that I’d rather not get into. But I love talking to these girls. They are nice people! They know I’m not looking to take one, so they don’t ply me with the usual bullshit.
And I’ve known so many bar owners. There are good ones, there are bad ones. Some really treat the girls mean, like docking their minuscule pay for the slightest infraction (their REAL money is earned from tricks and getting customers to buy them a “ladydrink,” which is usually a cola) and refusing days off. There are no beatings, the girls simply would not stand for that. Many are good, though, and treat the girls so nicely that they don’t want to leave. You can tell those bars, they’re the ones with the more relaxed atmosphere, tangibly so.
Whatever your perceptions of the naughty nightlife in Thailand, whether you approve or disapprove, I guarantee you the reality is almost certainly very far removed from what you think it ot be.
Somewhat related to all this, Sam, do you know how widespread or traditional is for families to arrange marriages here?
My GFs family wants her to marry some Rich, Thai Guy she met at college, one of the reasons I haven`t met said family so far. Its been pretty hard for her making the decision of staying with and eventually marrying me (AKA Poor, Farang Guy) instead of her parent´s choice.
Ale, clueless farang even after one year in Thailand…
It’s not completely uncommon, but certainly not as widespread as, say, in India. And the girl seems to have some say in the matter. In my wife’s case, she told me her parents had someone lined up at one time, but she flat out said, “No!” and that was that. My wife is rather strong-willed for a Thai, though. Many girls here would not feel comfortable turning going against their parents’ wishes. Parental pressure probably wins out in a good portion of cases. But I don’t think I know of any cases of arranged marriages myself personally. None that I can think of.
Come to think of it, is your girlfriend of Chinese descent? I don’t think I ever heard of this happening when I lived up in the North. My wife was probably the first case I heard of here, and she’s ethnic Chinese. This may be more of a Chinese practice than Thai.
Good luck to you! I hope you win. That must be an uncomfortable position to be in. 
Scratch that idea. The wife assures me it’s both the Thais and the Chinese who do it. But it does not seem to be all that common these days.
My wife is a Filipina, but we are here in the states. Through her community, I have had an opportunity to meet a few (very few) of ex-bargirls. Their stories concur with about 99% of what Siam Siam says. While I don’t have broad experience and have not yet had the opportunity to visit SE Asia myself, as best as has been relayed to me, the longer the girls are in it, the more jaded they become. Whodathunkit, being taken advantage of by Western men…having their job being begging Western (and now, lots of Korean) men to take advantage of them, they then turn around and try to take advantage back. Any idiot who visits a red light district in SE Asia looking for a wife is a few cards short of a full deck. These ladies know they are getting the dregs of our society, and that any man they can convince to take them away is just a gateway to hopefully find better opportunities.
Here’s another scam that is not uncommon. Some of these girls have a Thai husband squirreled away somewhere. She’ll get a farang (Westerner) also to marry her (not mentioning the husband she already has), or at least sponsor her. Either way, for some reason, she can’t or won’t leave Thailand. The farang husband buys or builds her a house. (At the end of the video in the OP, although it’s a little hard to understand, the girl mentions that James bought her a house.) Maybe he is unable to live full-time in Thailand, maybe he can only come here every few months. So while he’s back in farangland, the girl is living in the house with her Thai husband. When it comes time for the farang husband to arrive, the Thai husband packs up and leaves for the duration, with the farang none the wiser.
And sometimes the Thai husband actually stays and hangs around the house while the farang is there. The farang is told this is his wife’s brother. And wanting to be a good guy and do right by his sweetie’s family, he’ll even buy stuff for the “brother”!
Granted, I’ve only spoken to a few girls, and not from Thailand, but I was told that one of the main reasons for firing (after drug abuse) was for “failure to perform”. That meant that they didn’t get a barfine (excuse me, an EWR, or extended work release, because there is no prostitution in the Philippines) for an extended period of time. Often, the bar provides housing for the bargirls. One advantage to finding a customer for the night is a much cleaner room (despite what has gone on in the room every night since the hotel opened) and shower. Also, many girls can get a good meal out of an EWR from any halfway decent john. Those that don’t get barfined end up off the main drag, doing short-terms or at bj bars, if they choose to stay.
I am told that it was different when there was a U.S. military presence in the Philippines, and that there was trafficking to meet the demand. Often, like most trafficking, girls were enticed to leave their homes in the provinces with promises of jobs in restaurants or stores, only to find themselves away from home and “in debt” to the coyote. Organized crime (I’m told that the Koreans have set up shop in Angeles City) is believed to provide an underground source of under-aged prostitutes, but like Siam Siam noted, this is greatly frowned upon.
Again, all my information is not first-hand, and I find that my family members raised in the Philippines greatly dislike the Japanese and Koreans, and will blame them for anything, and they tend to like English-speaking Westerners, especially Americans (kanos) over Brits and Aussies. On the other hand, those born here tend to identify with all Asians - they don’t carry the legacy of World War II like their peers abroad still do.
Oh, prostitution does not exist in Thailand either, officially. 
The setup in the Philippines may be different from in Thailand. For the few bars here that do provide housing, it’s always a room upstairs that several girls share, and no customers allowed. The vast majority do not provide housing.
Also, people always think of the bar and brothel scene in Thailand, but there’s also a large number of freelancers. Walk along the north side of lower Sukhumvit Road and up Soi 4 as far as the Grace Hotel after dark, but especially between midnight and daybreak, and you’ll be propositioned by loads of freelancers. Many do this full-time and do not want to work in a bar for whatever reason. Some are bargirls stepping out after their bar closes. But there are a lot of part-timers – students and secretaries and such – supplementing their income, especially toward the end of the month when rent is coming due. (This is when one must pay extra attention to ensure that the lady being taken is indeed a female. Unfortunately, this is also the time of night when guys are at their drunkest and thus more susceptible to surprises.)
And then there are the freelancer places, bars like the Soi 7 Beer Garden and Thermae. These that do not hire any girls at all, but rather solicit the freelancer trade. Any freelancer can go in, buy a drink and hang out as long as she wants. There are perhaps at least 200 in each place on any given night, more on weekends.
I mentioned Thermae. This is an interesting place just to hang out in even if you are not interested in taking a lady. A major part of Bangkok bar history. It’s been open since the days of the Vietnam War, although it moved from it’s original location a couple of blocks away about 10 or 11 years ago. Step inside and you know where George Lucas must have gotten his inspiration for the bar scene in Star Wars. Owned by a group of top police officials, for decades it managed to flout the closing laws. A lot of places did, but Thermae stayed open longer than all the others. Many was the time in my wasted younger days when I would emerge from the place after dawn, blinking my eyes at the harsh daylight, climbing aboard a bus reeking of cigarettes and beer while sharing space with nattily dressed office staff on their way to work. Man, I doubt anything could make you feel sleazier than that! Ah, those were the days. I can’t do that anymore. My creaky old body gives out way before daylight now.
But despite the police ownership, a new government earlier this decade (the one that was kicked out in the military coup the year before last) cracked down on bars oprating after hours, and even Thermae was ordered to obey the law. The result was that after closing time, a long string of illegal after-hours bars set up all along the sidewalk on the north side of Sukhumvit Road, most operating until daybreak. Customers and girls simply switched to these places, crowding the sidewalks along a major road with drunken revelers and all sorts of shenanigans. Right out in the open, no ones knows why these bars are allowed to operate, and they do so even to this day. Taking a stroll along Sukhumvit Road at 3am is quite honestly one of Bangkok’s most entertaining walks. Today, the bar regulations have been loosened somewhat (at least unofficially), and there are a few after-hours places, but Alas! Thermae still closes early.
My cousin was in the navy from 1980 to about 84 or so, stationed in Yokosuka, Japan on the now-decommissioned Midway. On one of their jaunts to “PI,” back when Subic Bay was the largest overseas US Navy base, he met a cute [del]prostitute[/del] [del]bar[/del] hostess, still a child of 16 (but who would be only two or three years younger than him at the time).
He enjoyed her company sufficiently enough that he [del]paid the bar fine[/del] ask her to go with him so that [del] they could go back to her place and fuck like rabbits[/del] she could accompany him as he went to other establishments, stared at the beautiful tropical stars, and recite poetry as the sun wakes the wonderful world.
They must have gotten a little tired before accomplishing all they set out to complete and just coincidently wound up at her place. (No need to reset your irony meter, I’m just reciting this tale as his Mormon mother told the rest of the very Mormon family, with a few added details which must have slipped her mind, if she indeed knew of them.)
After the dirty deed, she falls asleep and suddenly God talks to my cousin. Yup, God himself, or more rather God’s diligent messenger, The Holy Ghost).
HG lets my cousin in on a big secret. This is “The One”. His Chosen Wife from the Pre-Existence. His fate and destiny and whatever.
As he told me later, there was no mistaking a message from God. I retorted that I doubted if I had ever heard a more egoistic comment. Hell, I sainted my manhood, but never thought it was a god.
Trouble started almost immediately. Extra costs for her family for the upcoming wedding., etc., etc.
Everyone and their dog tried to talk my cousin out of this foolishness, including his divorced and remarried father who had also served in the Navy. The sole exception to the complete negativity could have been the only voice our protagonist, still an emotionally immature boy, would have listed to – his mother.
As fate didn’t favor him, his mother also listens to God and God told her that this little angel was to be the next family member.
To cut the rest of the story short, his lovely wife stayed faithfully beside him until he had left the Navy, they moved back to States, she graduated from beauty school and was able to get a job cutting hair. It, too, must have been coincidence that she maxed out the credit cards on clothes and the TV, which she took, before getting the divorce.
Fate is an equal-opportunity oppressor for the foolish. He later met an All-American looking junky and got taken again, but that is another story.
Not all prostitutes are bad choices, but deciding to marry one after knowing her for three drinks and a fuck isn’t the best way to separate the ones with a heart of gold.
Every AC ‘brochure’ (the non-official ones) warns away from the freelancers.* They are, many times, a police set-up (with the caveat that people only talk about the set-ups, not the successful liaisons). The freelancer will finagle an underage girl into your room somehow, and five minutes later, in come the police responding to a complaint about prostituting underage women. The police, being the kind people they are, will help you to avoid an international incident and a lengthy stay in a Filipino jail cell for only several hundred to a few thousand dollars.
The girls (the current term is GRO, or Guest Relations Officer**, TokyoPlayer) do share very cramped rooms and bathing facilities. Hotel rooms are a luxury - in addition to getting paid, they get a (hopefully) decent bed in a cleaner room and freer access to the bathroom.
*Actually, thinking back on what I’ve seen and been told, it may be only avoid freelancers at one place, but given my personal experience (i.e. none), I am not sure.
** The ones I talked to used this term to describe their former jobs (remember, I’ve only met ones here in America). They were surprised I knew what it meant, because most Westerners don’t know the euphemism unless they’ve been. First they thought it meant that I had gone on a “sex vacation”. When I started dating my wife, I knew absolutely nothing about the Philippines and, wanting to impress her, I did a lot of research. Once I explained that, while dancing around the touchy subject of what a GRO actually does, they were very open to me, a westerner trying his best to learn about their home in a non-judgmental way.
This is very diferent from Thailand. Police stings involving underage prostitutes are very rare, and when you do hear about them, it’s generally a rogue cop. When it does happen, it’s usually a 15- or 16-year-old girl in league with a cop. She’ll swear she’s 18 or 19, and when you take her, she’ll call her police friend while you’re in the shower. Bingo! You must pay a hefty “fine” to get out of this. But as I said, this is rare. I’ve heard of this maybe a handful of times over the years. Freelancers are plentiful, and there are no general warnings. The police generally make a lot of money from the prostitution trade themselves and do not want to do anything to harm that.
Many guys prefer freelancers over the bargirls, because they’re not as pro (supposedly) and there’s no barfine involved. Others prefer the bargirls because of the safety factor. (There have been problems with freelancers drugging and/or robbing their tricks, but I know guys who have gone with freelancers for years and had nary a problem. Just the luck of the draw.)
Yes, this IS another reason never to fall in love with a Thai bargirl, actually. There have been quite a few murders of farang husbands and boyfriends by, or set up by, the bargirl they became involved with. It does not mention it in the story you linked to, but the latest development is that the hitman was the girl’s uncle! The police got her text messages that she had been sending him; among other things, she warned the uncle to be sure to act normal at the funeral after he whacked the husband!
Not just murders, but there are many farang suicides every year because of broken hearts over a bargirl, especially in Pattaya. In fact, in Pattaya, they say you should keep looking up, so as to avoid being landed on by someone taking the “farang dive,” as it’s come to be called. It seems like hardly a week goes by without some farang in Pattaya taking a dive from an upper balcony because his bargirl sweetie has broken his heart or his bank account or both (often both).
Pattaya, Thailand - Wisconsin Dells with more drugs and hookers.
(Yes, I’ve been to Pattaya).
Pattaya reminds me somewhat of Casablanca in Casablanca.