There are two sides to Thailand's commercial sex: the censored and the one behind closed doors. Pornography is illegal in Thailand, but I'm not sure what exactly this means. As best I could find out it means that it is illegal to produce and distribute magazines or videos showing the nipples or pubic hair of Thai women. This rule does not seem to extend to foreigners and the most risqué ads showing profiles of naked women were always, in my brief experience, foreigners.
A young Thai man approaches a single foreign male as he walks along Thanon Silom between Soi Patpong 1 and Soi Patpong 2, Bangkok's red light district as well as a tourist shopping area. The Thai man opens up a laminated card that has about four folds in it so he can easily fit it into his pocket when not displaying his visual aid to prospective customers. The advertisement consists of a group of photos of the interior of a "massage parlor" adorned with several naked women.
Salesman: You want a massage?
Foreign Tourist: No.
Salesman: Look, very pretty.
Foreign Tourist: Yes, they are, but I'm not interested.
Salesman: A full body massage, their body against yours.
Foreign Tourist: No.
Salesman: Come have a look first. We can walk.
Foreign Tourist: No, I'm not interested.
A second salesman a block away gently squeezes the tourist's arm asking him with a word: "massage?" while he holds a similar fold-out in his other hand. The tourist tells him "no" without breaking his stride and the salesman backs off into the shadows.
I was in search of a show, nothing more. Lipstick was described in my guidebook as one of the few Patpong sexotic clubs which consistently "eschews" giving customers hidden charges at the end of their shows. At the entrance to the club, a barker (door salesman who "barks" at the customers to come inside) walks back and forth carrying a sign that lists the menu of vaginal dexterity to be presented during the show with words like bottle, cigarettes, balloon, and razor. Well, it's something to see, once. I go upstairs where I noticed only one other customer (a handful of customers came in after a short while). The stage is raised in the center of the room with a bar encircling it. There are places for customers to sit around the bar and at booths that line the walls. There are three young Thai women reluctantly moving their heals alternately about two inches toward the other and then back again. Sometimes they yawn or hold one of the brass pulls on the stage. This is the extent of their movement because, after all, they are only wearing a strip of cloth around the middle of their torso so their breasts and nicely trimmed pubic hair are visible. [Apparently these women are allowed to be completely naked because they were upstairs behind closed doors, whereas bars on the ground level with doors that open up to the soi only have women stripping down to bathing suits or something a little bit less.] I sit down and order a 75baht beer. Immediately the dancer closest to me on stage motions to me to giver her my 25baht change to show my appreciation for her performance. Another stripper, this one with a strip of clothing covering her stripper's assets comes up to me with a smile and sits next to me, pressing her thigh against mine. She smells of too much cheap perfume and her heavy makeup exaggerates the small wrinkles on her face. She makes small talk before asking me if I need another beer, which I do, and then asks if I would buy her a drink also. Not feeling in particular need of her company, I say, "No, just one beer." I also ask her it there is more to the show. Meanwhile the original "dancers" have been replaced by three new ones, two of which are quite Rubenesque especially when compared with normally lean, younger Thai people. The woman next to me tells me that the show should start in about "five minutes" with balloon blowing or something, and then leaves me with a gentle brush of her hand along my abdomen in as encouragement should I decide to buy her a drink later on. My second beer arrives and after I take a sip, I notice it tastes too salty. I touch the rim with my finger and rub the salt that was put there either to enhance the taste, as a favor to me, or to enhance my thirst and thus the establishments favor. Ten minutes pass and the two fat women swaying back and forth on the stage are still the only show except for a third one they conceal by their girth. There is a side show at the side of the bar where a fat white man sits groping a thin, Thai woman who teases him along. I guess I missed this sexotic show, but at the rate of $6 for two beers and not much of a show in a town where you can ride in a taxi for 40 minutes at the rate of $3, I realized my money was being wasted at least this particular night.
I made a second trip to Lipstick to see if I had been too early for the "show" the first time. When I entered, a woman was on the stage by herself holding onto a long piece of cloth that had apparently been the prop for her show. She was replaced on stage by a group of about seven women who were undressed and moved about much the same as the women I had seen before. A couple of women came up to me on separate occasions and touched my arm before preparing to sit next to me when I said, "I just came to see the show." The third time a woman came up to me, she used a more subtle approach. I felt a naked breast against my arm, and turned to see a face a few inches from mine. Unfortunately she had the same smell of cheap perfume I had noticed before. There was another similarity between this woman and the woman that sat next to me the previous visit. Though they both smiled, they both seemed to have a sad, tired look upon their faces as if to say, "I hate doing this. Just buy me a drink and play along so I can earn my money and get this over with." That was my interpretation. Conversely, some of the other women/girls seemed much more comfortable doing the sort of work they did. Incidentally, they were the youngest of the group who either hadn't burned out yet, were to naive to be sad yet, or were making enough money that it all seemed like a wonderful game.
After the woman had sat down next to me, a couple of mats were laid down on the stage and a show started. A young Thai man lay down on his back as a young Thai woman bent over him and took his penis in her mouth. When he was erect, she laid back and her entered her with a condom on and then they went through several positions in a few minutes time. It was obviously carefully choreographed, yet their concentration and ability to ignore the crowd added to the performance.
With a naked breast pushed against my arm, I wasn't so anxious to tell the woman sitting next to me to leave. When she started to brush her hand against my crotch, I began to feel a little uncomfortable. She grabbed one of the coins from the change that was on the bar in front of me and pointed to it saying, "This side, you buy me a drink, and this side you get massage." I interjected, a bit nervously, "I'll buy you a drink." Maybe in a fantasy a massage would have been great, but it wasn't a fantasy. Right after she returned with a 75baht Coke she began touching the coins before me and asking me for them. I reminded her that I had just bought her a drink (which probably saved her from dancing in between acts) and that she would have to wait. She did and even gave me a shoulder massage before she finished her drink and had to go on stage to dance with the others. Before she left, I asked her when the next show was to begin and learned that there was a half hour break in between each show which meant you would have to have some stamina to see all the "sexotic" performances listed on the menu outside of some ten different shows. Thus another night of brief commercial entertainment ended.
We saw a young Thai girl, I guessed she wasn't older than fifteen, Karen guessed sixteen, at a train station. She had makeup, rings, and a special pointed, gold pinkie cap, something like the aristocrats of Qing Dynasty China might have worn, trying to look as if she were ten years older. She was accompanying a white man who was more than twice her age. She possessed the confidence of someone who has triumphed over more than someone her age should have ever confronted. Still, beneath this facade, you could see a hint of childish naiveté in the way she was more concerned with her surroundings than someone as secure as she pretended to be would have been.
The Chao Phraya River is said to get fat after the rainy season.
This season it got fatter than it had in 200 years according to a Bangkok newspaper.
We saw the Red Cross delivering bags of rice and other food by boat to people who lived along the flooded banks of Klong Bangkok Noi, one of the canals which branch off from the Chao Phraya.
Some of the streets in Bangkok were also flooded (Thonburi was said to be worse), still street vendors continued to ply their trade as they cooked food and sold it to the people who waded through the water.
Children played in the middle of the street where the water was deepest and shop owners stepped out in the flooded streets to have their pictures taken in the brown water. Some homes and shops were flooded.
Peering into one flooded home, we saw a television set turned on for viewing even though it rested on a desk or cabinet that was nearly covered with water.
Down one alley, we saw a snake peeking its head above the water as if trying to figure out how it could climb a wall to some place dry.
A commotion broke out as more and more people learned of the snake's presence and it lowered its head beneath the surface of the water as it fled its pursuers.
The next day we learned from a taxi driver that it was probably a non-poisonous snake because the only poisonous snakes in Bangkok are cobras and they are very rare. He suggested that the pursuers of the snake were mostly likely looking for a good meal once they captured it!
One interesting illustration of Thailand's development is the demise of one of its most important tourist symbols, the floating market. The historically important Ayuthaya, Thonburi, and Bangkok owe much of their importance to the Chao Phraya River. The Chao Phraya River was historically important to Thailand because it served as an efficient highway, and because it was the source of water for much of Thailand's agricultural based economy. The water-markets of yesteryear have in many cases been paved over and the wooden boats replaced with faster machines of steel. We visited one of the last remaining floating markets near Bangkok at Klong Damnoen Saduak which operates much as a traditional floating market in the early morning hours before the sun's rays touch your feet and then as a tourist sight for busloads of foreigners in the early afternoon. We were part of the latter contingent because we opted for the logistical ease of the tour van. It was almost as interesting to watch tourists who, not unlike ourselves, line up to take photos and video of the more authentic looking vendors. The tourists, for the most part, lined the klong (canal) and vendors raised fruits to them with sticks from their boats. Some vendors even had stilt-ladders attached to the side of the canal either to maintain some illusion that they were part of the water market culture because they still weren't on land or because they weren't allowed to sell their wares from the market buildings. We felt somewhat foolish having paid money to go so far to see a modified reenactment for the benefit of tourists who weren't very discriminating (Disneyland could have done better!).
Shortly after Ne Win ostensibly gave up power in Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military coup leadership), Aung San Suu Kyi won the first democratic election the country had. Then the military calling themselves something with the acronym SLORC took power away from the people again and put the elected leader under house arrest. This year Aung San Suu Kyi was released, probably as a preemptive move for the benefit of the U.S. Congress who was set to strengthen restrictions against Burma. The military had until recently only allowed foreigners to visit Myanmar as part of a tour that could be closely monitored. They later realized the importance of the foreign currency derived from foreign tourist visits and loosened restrictions, sort of. At the time we wanted to visit the country, individuals could fly to Myanmar either in a package or by themselves, pay for a seventy-minute airplane ride from Bangkok to Rangoon (now Yangon) that costs more than a flight form Bangkok to India; and, if you chose not to visit Myanmar as part of a tour package, exchange $300.00 at the fantasy official rate of 6 kyats to the U.S. dollar when the unofficial rate was 110 kyats to the U.S. dollar. In summary, this means that you can pay about $1100.00 for a 10-day tour of Myanmar, $1200.00 for an 8-day tour (!?), or pay about $550 for a round-trip ticket from Bangkok to Yangon and 30 kyats of spending money once you get to a hotel in a country stuck in the nineteenth century (less the colonial administration of England and after nearly a half century of dilapidation) at the cost that no normal Burmese (Myanmarese) could ever hope to afford. Trip aborted.
PRINTER-FRIENDLY FORMAT
