Porn videos openly for sale on Pattaya streets

November 25, 2011

Pornographic videos continue to be openly for sale on the main tourist streets of Pattaya despite City Hall pronouncements claiming the city is now a family oriented resort. The videos cater to both the heterosexual and homosexual markets, and although the child porn videos appear to no longer be openly displayed, they are still on sale in the backrooms.

While this news is hardly earth-shattering or even remotely surprising, it does tend to make a mockery of the Pattaya city administration and its Cloud Nine pronouncements.

If there wasn’t a market for this kind of material then you can bet your last baht (if gambling was legal in Thailand of course) there wouldn’t be a vendor flogging it.

Porn-videos-openly-for-sale-on-Second-Rd

Some explicitly 'naturist' titles

Given the alleged ‘family resort’ nature of Pattaya the following might not be so impossible. Imagine the scene: eighyear-old Marlon Furtive, on holiday from Asphyxiation, Arkansas, happens to be walking down Beach Road with his mother Arlene. Marlon, a cherubic-faced and inquisitive young lad, happens to notice a stall selling VCDs and DVDs and drags his mother across for a closer inspection. On top of the pile is a VCD with the title Debbie Does Donkey’s, featuring a pre-pubescent naked girl and an equally naked but bemused quadraped. Marlon, a puzzled look on his face, asks his mother about the video. She tries to fob him off with words involving nature and the TV program Animal Planet. Not a pretty sight and you can bet Arlene and her family won’t be coming back to Pattaya any time in the next century, although Marlon might sneak back under cover of ‘travelling the world’.

People are making a living selling this material so while money can be made across the spectrum the trade will continue. We don’t have a problem with genuine adult material but we do think it shouldn’t be as ‘in your face’ as is currently the case.

Bar owners are actively discouraged from showing any kind of advertising for alcoholic beverages, and if they do, then there will be a price to pay. Movies and television programs have entire chunks of scenes ‘vaselined’ if there is even a hint of alcohol or cigarette smoking, but don’t worry about showing violence and shootings. Gambling among day labourers and street vendors is the subject of daily news reports as the miscreants are hauled in and charged and the 50 or 60 baht they have been playing with is confiscated. Yet illegal casinos flourish under protection and fortunes are lost. Perhaps the city motto should be ‘hypocrisy rules’.

We have a great idea for Christmas gifts for the uniformed officials of City Hall who are tasked with keeping the streets of Fun Town clear of blatantly displayed material such as porno videos: white canes and a golden retriever or six.