Trading Hippies for Expats

I've found it fascinating to visit the expat haunts in the major economic hubs through Asia so far - LAN in Beijing, House of Blues & Jazz in Shanghai, Take Out Comedy in Hong Kong. It is a whole other culture from both the host country and the homeland.

Tonight I returned from a lovely 2-day Thai cooking course 40 minutes north of Bangkok in an area of quaint river canals (www.thaihouse.co.th - highly recommended for those visiting Bangkok). While the friends made were terrific and the food outstanding, to describe it at length would be a bit boring so I'll spare you and move straight to Sukhumvit, Bangkok's expat district.

Instead of returning to Banglamphu, Bangkok's drifter hippie party district, I decided I would be better off in a new location. I settled on the Hostel International Sukhumvit. After a nice cool shower (I'm sweating buckets here) I scanned the guidebook and set off for Soi 33, a street with many English-style pubs, to try and find the local expat rag (see what was going on) and watch the natives (or non-natives as they were). Upon finding the "Big Chili," Bangkok's rather conservative monthly English-language magazine targeted at foreigners, I ordered a beer and started reading...

One thing that really struck me was the "socialite" pages. Every local magazine has them, they are pictures from fundraising galas, snotty celebrations and the like. Bangkok's pictures, however, have a running theme: relatively unattractive white men and Thai women. I scanned through five pages of snapshots only to find 6 white women out of dozens of pictures. When I looked around I realized that a snapshot at that moment would reveal the same shocking scenario. I was the only white woman in the bar apart from a rather loose looking middle aged woman wearing leopard print and deep red lipstick to the pub.

After finishing the magazine I quickly left and ventured a stone's throw down the road only to find another bar filled with relatively unattractive white men and Thai women. I wouldn't have gone in, but it seemed that I had fortuitously stumbled across trivia night and was curious how well I might do in a foreign land (with questions geared toward expats, of course). The answer...not that well. My attention quickly turned back to this obvious and fairly creepy observation.

Thailand, and particularly Bangkok, is known for its sex trade (prostitutes). All of the hostels have big signs saying "No guests in rooms. Especially prostitutes." But what qualifies? There are women who you can pick-up a brothel for a few bucks who obviously fit the definition, but what about the Thai women who become the short term "girlfriends" of visiting tourists (or even longer term expats). They are EVERYWHERE (tourist sights, Banglamphu, Sukhumvit, the Southern beaches...everywhere). They may not explicitly be paid for their services, but are well fed, get new clothes (like the "He's my favorite" T-shirt I saw on the street) and maybe even a chance at striking gold and getting an invitation back to his home country. The whole thing makes me a bit queasy. I'm sure there is love in some of these matches, but I'm not entirely convinced that it is what the women trolling the bar are really looking for or that is what them men think they are getting when they strike up a conversation with the dolled up Thai bird with the fake boobs.