We just got back from a family vacation in the sex tourism capital of Thailand, Pattaya. Okay, not a complete family vacation since Elysia was in the area for CARAT 2010 and was working with the Royal Thai Navy.
Pattaya has a long history as a rest and relaxation port for U.S. Navy ships but tourism has long taken over. Everyone I know who has been there says it is some sort of depraved combination of Tijuana, Bourbon Street and 1970s Times Square. I had to see it.
The main drag of go-go bars, known as Walking Street, is patrolled by many volunteer police officers. Sure, about eighty percent of the women (and transsexuals) walking the crowded street are prostitutes. But everyone else looks like they stepped out of a convention and walk around, gawking, as though they are at Main Street, Disneyland.
Middle-America women, grandparents sitting together at the bars watching the spectacle. I even saw a few children hanging out near the “Sexy Airline” hostesses. Not the best environment for sure, but the nudity and sex is indoors.
Citrus and the winner of the Healthy Muscle contest, Pattaya. Hm, she's almost as tall!
In any case, maybe I am jaded. It felt like a big party. A party where almost all roads lead to sex. Maybe Ft. Lauderdale happy but I did not see the desperation and grime of Tijuana or the hallowed-eye look of street kids in Seattle. Maybe I was not looking hard enough.
Yes, there is certainly a dark side to the city behind the closed doors of the countless seedy hotels. Most of the young women working at the bars come from rural, poor areas of Thailand and many of the tourists seem to be German men in their 60′s. When you see an octogenarian with a bad dye job hobbling around with three women in their ’20s the implications may gross you out but, on the bright side, it is not an unsafe place to walk around.
That is a small consolation when you are traveling with a four year old, so beyond wading through prostitutes on the small beach — my daughter chatting with everyone, as usual — we spent most of our time at the hotel pool and in the adjoining mall.
It turns out we arrived just in time for a muscle contest and wouldn’t you know that she loved it. In fact, Citrus spent most of the weekend telling me that I should try to get the same kind of muscles. She has such faith in her father it is hard to believe.
She also lamented that the musclemen were wearing spandex shorts. She thought they should be naked because she wanted to see “all of their muscles”.
I guess she caught on to the true spirit of the city.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I love it that C was so into the body builders. That’s too cute. Her expression in the second to last photo is priceless.
pictures of the child next to all the men half naked and the fact you ad her comment about them, while she don´t understand this stuff yet. That is bad taste,sick. its like telling to some perverts on the web that come one, she likes old naked, muscled men.
Actually, this photo in a shopping mall could have been taken anywhere in the world where they have muscle contests. I hardly think that the pictures implies she likes muscle men in a sexual way. She was impressed by the women in the contest. It’s not like I took her to a strip club.
You, on the other hand, found my blog by typing “pattaya sex tourism” in Google. I guess it’s cold in Helsinki, Finland this time of year.