Article about Pattaya in News of the Wold (UK Sunday newspaper)

[Band1t]

Not too far wrong apart from the HIV is hopefully exaggerated and I don't buy all the human trafficking/pimp/forced stuff - not in Pattaya anyway.

 

I imagine more and more young guys will want to come if they can get away with it, but the golf tour excuse might not swing it much longer.

 

I thought the "young women" caption under the Lick Bar pic was pushing it a bit.

 

Surely when you pay a barfine you're paying a pimp? I mean the definition fits perfectly:

A pimp is an agent for prostitutes who lives off their earnings. Pimping is illegal in most countries. The majority of pimps are men, with the female equivalent being known as a madam. ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimp

 

Bar owner living off their earnings, mamasan greasing the wheels.

[Darkside Bob]

Surely when you pay a barfine you're paying a pimp? I mean the definition fits perfectly:

 

 

Bar owner living off their earnings, mamasan greasing the wheels.

 

The argument about bar owners being pimps has been a source of chat/amusement/annoyance (depending on what side of the fence you sit) in Pattaya since day one. Personally i see bar owners as a pimp but not in the vien of the scumbag type that Harvey Kartel plays in taxi driver. There is no doubt that bar owners come to Thailand, open a bar to take massive financial advantage of poor uneducated girls from up north.

[Edge]

Surely when you pay a barfine you're paying a pimp? I mean the definition fits perfectly:

 

Bar owner living off their earnings, mamasan greasing the wheels.

 

Yes the debate/argument goes around and around.

 

The bar owner will generally say that he runs a bar and to be successful here you have to employ girls/hostesses.

The girls are employed to sell drinks which is where the bar makes its profit.

 

I do believe some bars can be successful without girls going with customers as long as enough drinks can be sold. If there are no girls they probably will not sell drinks. There are bars such as Bamboo and PBG which do not employ girls to be BFd, but there are still FL girls there so what are those owners living off?

 

The bar pays the girl a salary so if you come to some arrangement for her to take time off work to go out with you then you must compensate the bar.

Typically in a BB with a 300 baht BF the girl gets 100 and the bar keeps 200 so about a dozen BFs a month will cover her salary.

 

Whatever happens between the girl and you outside the bar is the potentially immoral part and whatever the girls' immoral earnings might be she keeps for herself.

Therefore I believe one cannot say that a bar owner is living off her immoral earnings.

 

I know the argument of old, but I don't accept that the definition fits perfectly, especially in the sense of brothels and street prostitutes. If a girl has a pimp here it is more likely to be her husband/BF than the bar, which she is generally free to leave at any time.

 

That's how I see it - generalising - you will no doubt persevere with the old pimp argument - I've gone.

Edge out.

[ROIDFREAK]

40% HIV rate? absolute bullshit IMHO. I dont reckon its even high as 10%

[yogi100]

I dont think you can use statistics like this in the case of pattaya. Sex workers are many many many more times likely to have hiv than the average thai girl.

 

Think about the difference in hiv infection rates between sex workers and non sex workers in the europe and USA - its gonna be massive right? If anything, I think sex workers in thailand will have a far higher rate of hiv instance than sex workers in europe, simply because they all are willing to bareback! I know for a fact that around 90% of the thai girls I have been with were willing to bareback, therefore if they were willing to go bareback with me, they probably would with 100's others.

 

Going further, think about how many hiv cases in pattaya actually get reported to some sort of statistical body? I bet it is very few. Most bargirls probably get tested anonymously in some cheap backstreet clinic - I hardly think this kind of place is likey to report anything.

 

I don't think the rate would be as high as 40%, but I just meant that I would not be at all surprised if it was. I still think it would be at least 10%, probably a lot more. But like you say, even at 10%, its bloody scary! Shag 10 women, and the chances are 1 of them had hiv. And I think we have all shagged ALOT more than 10 women..!

 

I still shudder to think at how many bargirls I barebacked in the ealy days of coming to Thailand. Luckily I learn my lesson with a nasty bout of warts and chlamidya, and am 100% rubber man now.

 

Its almost enough to put you off coming to pattaya... ALMOST enough, but not quite enough

 

I first came to Pattaya in 1984 and have been a regular visitor since 1999. I have heard of just one fellow dying of AIDS but he puntered all around Asia and the European fleshpots such as Riga, Amsterdam and Prague. He was not a homosexual.

 

I have contracted gonorrhoea and thrush in the past in Bangkok and Pattaya. Do any readers know of anybody who has caught Aids in the LOS?

[redfred]

40% HIV rate? absolute bullshit IMHO. I dont reckon its even high as 10%

Agreed

IMHO around 2% and that is still a lot.

Also have you noticed it was a female journalist, now i haven't got a thing about women journalists but when they get a subject like pattaya they just love it.

Right or wrong the only ones to suffer will be the guy who's trying to steal away for a golfing holiday lol.

as to being forced into the game it does happen but mostly into the thai market

[td5855]

I accept it happens and I've seen girls/women being delivered/introduced to bars, but I've never seen them forced in any way and if they don't like it they tend to clear off. Maybe it depends where you go and perhaps it's more common in Thai karaoke bars. I don't know so I'll accept your point. This article seemed to be mainly about the touristy areas like Walking Street and Soi 6 and I doubt there's much of it there.

 

I have seen it in Cambodia and it's not nice and I've never seen anything like it here, though that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

 

What's your interpretation of Human Trafficking?

 

 

Maybe I am guilty of trafficking? (In the strictest terms of the word)??

Over the years many girls who work in beer bars have lamented the low number of customers, how that has affected their income and families. Because they were very pleasant and attractive, arranged for them to work in a couple of GoGo bars. Many customers, more money. One girl paid of her fathers debt, now works in Pattaya Memorial hospital. Formerly a nurse up in Korat.

 

So were I engaged in trafficking/immoral practises/vice trade??? Or helping some fellow human beings??

 

Pom song satang

[Edge]

Maybe I am guilty of trafficking? (In the strictest terms of the word)??

Over the years many girls who work in beer bars have lamented the low number of customers, how that has affected their income and families. Because they were very pleasant and attractive, arranged for them to work in a couple of GoGo bars. Many customers, more money. One girl paid of her fathers debt, now works in Pattaya Memorial hospital. Formerly a nurse up in Korat.

 

So were I engaged in trafficking/immoral practises/vice trade??? Or helping some fellow human beings??

 

Pom song satang

 

I very often justify my carnal acts as "helping some fellow human beings" (must change my Profile Interests back) but for some reason the idea doesn't seem to wash with western journalists trying to sell copy.

They simply condemn the whole scene without any suggestions as to what the alternatives are for the families back in Isaan. OK, I'm generalising too, but they do piss me off.

 

One of the reasons IMO why Pattaya/Thailand is so popular for P4P is the easy going GFE type of way it is (generally) conducted. That is totally irrelevant and unconvincing to those who haven't experienced it or don't want to listen.

 

Human Trafficking is very difficult to define and I've seen those who campaign against it struggle to answer the Q. Some incidences clearly are and I have no problem with those being stopped. I would hope that the practice of effectively selling daughters into forced bonded prostitution through the money lending system would be abhorrent to BMs on a night out in WS, but I accept that it still happens. Unfortunately the financial institutions in Thailand do not provide loans easily and definitely not to those who have uncertain employment and income. It isn't difficult to see how poor families can fall into the hands of unscrupulous money lenders who ultimately take their daughters to traffic as repayment of the money borrowed and the crippling interest.

It is of course illegal, but where is the solution?

 

The easy going environment most of us frequent here seems a far cry from all that and the girls don't appear to have to answer to anyone but themselves. Perhaps having that option is the best Isaan can hope for as an alternative to the money lenders' trap and that's why so many come here (or are sent) so readily.

 

Perhaps the most we can do for Isaan is to do our best to support that sector here in Pattaya by using it to the maximum we can afford.

If that makes us accessories to Human Trafficking then we'll have to live with that until someone finds the alternative.

[bellhanger]

As much as i hate TNOTW that is one of the most accurate descriptions i have read about Pattaya in a long time. Obviously they are out in some of their like assumptions like 50,000 girls, it's closer to 100,000, the HIV figure is NOT known by a single person despite what people will post after i have written this.

 

It's a very general article, but lets be honest, it's not far out from the average account of both a 2 week millionaire, an ex-pat and a lad that came on holiday, stayed, sold up everything and is now a tramp with a tan.

 

I thought the style of the writing was what you'd expect from TNOTW, with the exception that Andrew Drummond used to be a journalist for the Times and now does more freelance work.

He's lived here for (I think) more than 15 years and has a lot of knowledge about the bar industry.

Eimear O'Hagan I know nothing about, maybe this person is a TNOTW hack and added the usual style to Andrew's piece, who knows?

 

I agree entirely about the HIV figures, no one knows what they are.

The only fact I can give is that previously as gogo bar owner for 7 years, we had two doctors come from the government STD clinic in Naklua every week to check for STDs.

Every 90 days the girls had a blood test for HIV. As we paid the doctors' fees we knew all results of the tests. I think that over that period of time we must have had (approximately) 150 different dancers.

When we started organising the weekly checks ourselves (to avoid forged certificates), at the first check-up there were two staff found to be HIV positive. These were both service girls who did not go with customers.

The only other person HIV positive in this time frame was a girl who applied for a job as a dancer and was tested first. We didn't employ her.

I'm not defending the HIV figures (either way), just giving a statement of my experience.

[oneday]

One of the reasons IMO why Pattaya/Thailand is so popular for P4P is the easy going GFE type of way it is (generally) conducted. That is totally irrelevant and unconvincing to those who haven't experienced it or don't want to listen.

 

Never truer words have been spoken. Very well put Edge. I would not consider paying for it in any other country in the world, except Thailand and PI. I suppose some Latin American countries come close, but I don't know and the women don't appeal to me. I paid for it once in Germany as a young man in the Air Force and that put me off of it until I was 55 years old on my first trip to Thailand. The experience in Germany was thoroughly disgusting and clinical.

 

I agree entirely about the HIV figures, no one knows what they are.

 

The only fact I can give is that previously as gogo bar owner for 7 years, we had two doctors come from the government STD clinic in Naklua every week to check for STDs. Every 90 days the girls had a blood test for HIV. As we paid the doctors' fees we knew all results of the tests. I think that over that period of time we must have had (approximately) 150 different dancers. When we started organising the weekly checks ourselves (to avoid forged certificates), at the first check-up there were two staff found to be HIV positive. These were both service girls who did not go with customers.

 

The only other person HIV positive in this time frame was a girl who applied for a job as a dancer and was tested first. We didn't employ her.

I'm not defending the HIV figures (either way), just giving a statement of my experience.

 

Humm...that calculates out to 2% of the sample you had to work with and those were sex workers. I think that speaks volumes.

 

TRAFFICKING

There are no absolutes in life so I would never say trafficking DOES NOT happen. However, can any member at all give any personal, factual experience of any girl they have met they believe was forced into the business other than for the normal reasons of helping the family and/or her children. That would be an account worth listening to.

 

I personally have never met one girl I felt was not here through any other reason other than her own decision to affect a quantum leap change in her income for her family or find a good man to "take care". If I knew otherwise I would avoid that bar like the plague and broadcast it on the forums. In the story above you will see a couple examples of girls stories, but they were the normal story; had to support children or a sister. If trafficking is so prevalent then it shouldn't be too hard to find a girl who was trafficked and retell her story (even if it's an unverified interview), yet there were no examples in the story, just unverified "drivel" as someone put it. Like someone else said, maybe in the Thai/Thai sex industry and maybe karaoke bars. I don't know much about that side of Thailand's sex industry.

Edited July 27, 2010 by oneday

[JohnTBoland]

Agreed

IMHO around 2% and that is still a lot.

Also have you noticed it was a female journalist, now i haven't got a thing about women journalists but when they get a subject like pattaya they just love it.

Right or wrong the only ones to suffer will be the guy who's trying to steal away for a golfing holiday lol.

as to being forced into the game it does happen but mostly into the thai market

I can't say I know anyone catching HIV - but it is scary!

I have another STD related question. My friend took a girl in Udon, and I was with her four days later. He has cancres in his mouth and I find myself checking everyday now...

 

Does anyone know a good STD clinic in Pattaya or BKK we could run to for a blood test? (Syphilis???)[/font]

Edited July 27, 2010 by JohnTBoland

[bellhanger]

I can't say I know anyone catching HIV - but it is scary!

I have another STD related question. My friend took a girl in Udon, and I was with her four days later. He has cancres in his mouth and I find myself checking everyday now...

 

Does anyone know a good STD clinic in Pattaya or BKK we could run to for a blood test? (Syphilis???)[/font]

 

You can try Pattaya International Hospital on soi 4 (opposite Big C Second Road) I have been there in the past with similar ailments, and although not _too_ expensive they are very good and professional.

Or Pattaya Memorial hospital (just behind the junction of Second Road and Central Pattaya Road) are a cheaper alternative. I have been there before for a blood test.

I would guess that the cancres in the mouth are a version of gonorrhea, as it is basically the same bacteria. Usually cured easily - by the right drugs.

[Darkside Bob]

I thought the style of the writing was what you'd expect from TNOTW, with the exception that Andrew Drummond used to be a journalist for the Times and now does more freelance work.

He's lived here for (I think) more than 15 years and has a lot of knowledge about the bar industry.

Eimear O'Hagan I know nothing about, maybe this person is a TNOTW hack and added the usual style to Andrew's piece, who knows?

 

I agree entirely about the HIV figures, no one knows what they are.

The only fact I can give is that previously as gogo bar owner for 7 years, we had two doctors come from the government STD clinic in Naklua every week to check for STDs.

Every 90 days the girls had a blood test for HIV. As we paid the doctors' fees we knew all results of the tests. I think that over that period of time we must have had (approximately) 150 different dancers.

When we started organising the weekly checks ourselves (to avoid forged certificates), at the first check-up there were two staff found to be HIV positive. These were both service girls who did not go with customers.

The only other person HIV positive in this time frame was a girl who applied for a job as a dancer and was tested first. We didn't employ her.

I'm not defending the HIV figures (either way), just giving a statement of my experience.

 

Cheers mate. I can't remember which thread i posted this next statement in, and i am sure most of the ex-pats know anyway. There is a well known Walking Street go-go that did his annual test (Farng owned) for HIV a few months ago. Out of the 40 (?) girls 15(ish) came back HIV positive. He shit himself obviously, and did get rid of the girls, but it was the first time i had heard such a large number in a situation like that.

[F.E.Tanaka]

If you think there is no human trafficking in Pattaya then you are mental. it does happen. There are girls farmed into Pattaya under durress and there are girls kidnapped and shipped abroad. It's not spoken about for obvious reasons. Do you think the utter gutter tripe news outlets in Pattaya have the spine to actually do any investigative reporting?

 

And you base this upon your own research? If not, please name your source.

[ifriendyou]

Looks like free marketing for Pattaya. We will soon have plenty more of these European 20+ kids in Patts...

[Darkside Bob]

And you base this upon your own research? If not, please name your source.

 

No

[noel2711]

I suppose we shall now see an influx of young NOTW readers. That will be nice.

Things could be worse I guess. The article could have been published by The Mail.

[irshjon]

im going back to pattaya in two weeks for my annual va ca. i would say to people who criticise the way of life over dont knock it until you try it.i have walked back to my hotel many times 2or3 in the morning after drinking too much never any problem no muggings no stabbings no robberys now all you so called do gooders who love to criticise other countrys and people maybe you should try to smile more, enjoy life as its supposed to be enjoyed and if you are so interested in the plight of hunger and socalled exploition maybe you should send some money,or maybe adopt a child or maybe clean up the western world before we throw stones at other people.

[furryman]

Actually a step up from most of the stuff written about Pattaya.

 

I find it amusing how the author tosses in the required talking points about pimps and human trafficking but when she goes out and actually talks to some bar girls she finds single mothers trying to support their kids.

[THguypattaya]

"pretty much all of them had some gangster connections."

 

I guess you don't want to piss off the girls huh? don't want to give false promises, not paying up what you promised, brag about how much money you got etc. no matter how sweet the girl is you need to watch out for youself!

[sunderland stephen]

While there must be a certain amount of trafficking throught the industry the vast majority is to cater for the Thai market.

Patpong Sisters by Cleo Odzer

Blue Moon Books

offers an intelligent objective view of the industry.

Though 15 years old , it still holds true,IMO

[Hole]

There is so much pussy here! i just fucken love it!!

[patty55]

My mum showed me the article in the magazine. "oh look they've written about where you go on holiday"

 

I read the article, and thought well, most of its actually true.

 

I do disagree with some things:

 

1. Most girls are forced in no way into p4p in thailand.

2. I pay about £30, and not £50 all night for a girl.

3. The girls like older men, because the younger guys don't take them nice places. Totally untrue.

 

Other than that, the writer has done a good job at making me want to head back to Pattaya ASAP.

 

Its Andrew Drummond, a guy who writes, and reguarly complains about the sex scene in thailand. Andrew if your reading this, we all know you fuck the girls as well...otherwise your a hypocritical twat.

[lpcustom69]

I have my doubts about the hiv figures, but don't take chances, and use protection. Different with a longtime girlfriend after getting tests done at the hospital.

[jackcorbett]

This article by "News of the World" is a total crock. I'm sure that what I'm about to say that applies to the U.S. is equally true about the U.K. I'm 63. I've now lived in Thailand for five years and I only return to the U.S. once a year and only for business for a total period of 1 week to 12 days. I just got back from my latest U.S. outing 4 days ago. Our business meetings were in the Saint Louis area where my nephew and I rented a car. At the end of our meetings we drove the rental car practically 1800 miles to Prescott, AZ which I flew out of to L.A., to San Francisco and ultimately to Bangkok. My nephew is a good looking slender 36 year old. On our 1800 mile road trip we encountered only one American woman we considered to be bangable. We saw her in a McDonalds we had stopped in for a late breakfast. A bit hard looking in the face she had a slender curvaceous body. We finally arrived in my nephew's new home in Prescott, AZ. The next day we went to one Barnes and Noble book store where both of us commented, "There are no women around that are even shaped like a woman." From there we went to a super market where we had a bite to eat. I then said to Nathan...."Let's wander around this place to take a sample and that is to scout out just how many slender women are in this place." We never came in to do any shopping, we had come in specifically to get hot dogs and then to move on. Our mission then became very specific. There must have been over fifty women in there and out of this sample group we encountered only one woman who one could categorize as slender. Her face was unattractive, however.

 

That brought on further conversation at my nephew's new house over some excellent whiskey. We agreed that we had not missed a single candidate during our entire road trip. We had found only one woman we deemed to be doable. The next day my nephew took me to the airport in Prescott. When I got to San Francisco I found that unlike everywhere else I actually found a number of American women of Caucasian and black descent who were slender and attractive and all I could come up with is this area of California is much more progressive than most other areas in the U.S., that people are much more into green and anti pollution and that people respect their bodies a great deal more choosing to eat more healthy foods and to exercise a lot more than most other Americans. It also helps that there are a lot more Asians living in SF than in most places in the U.S. so there were a lot of good looking Asian women in the SF airport as well as slender good looking Caucasian and Black women.

 

The truth is the U.S. is no longer the country I grew up in. When I went to college there were a lot of slender attractive women around. Now, and you can check this out for yourselves, the average American weighs around 12 kilos more than he/she did in the 1960's. We can blame this on crappy unhealthy food and not nearly enough exercise. So I'm glad I no longer live in the U.S. anymore because they'd haul me into the monkey house for bestiality if I ever did get it on with any of the women there.

 

If anyone has any connection to this U.K. magazine please tell whoever wrote this little piece to please take his/her head out of the sand and to admit the truth.