BANGKOK, Thailand “”mdash; The lights are bright in Patpong, a Bangkok district packed with dozens of upscale tourist hotels and home to Thailand’s thriving sex industry.
Along the main drag ““ clamoring with motorcycles and taxis ““ foreigners are bombarded with pitches for skewered meats, cheap crafts and solicitations for sex.
“Ping-pong, ping-pong show” shouts one man. “Come look.”
“What you looking for, mister?” calls another.
Inside one brothel, women ““ some Thai, others brought from nearby countries ““ line up, clad in bikinis with numbers pinned to their tops. A manager encourages patrons to pick from the group.
In another, women line the bar with legs crossed, beckoning passersby to stop and have a drink.
Across the street, men perform pole dances as patrons crowd the stage, shouting and jostling to get closer.
Though prostitution is illegal in Thailand, the practice is mostly ignored by law enforcement officials. Keeping it out in the open makes it easier to regulate, the rationale goes, and its widespread availability contributes significantly to the Southeast Asian nation’s tourism revenue.
Brothels catering to Thai citizens exist throughout much of Bangkok but Patpong has become the prime red light district for tourists.
The sex industry, so popular in Bangkok and other major Thai cities, accelerated the spread of HIV after the virus first appeared in the 1980s. Government reluctance to acknowledge the problem ““ out of fear that doing so would quash the nation’s booming tourism industry ““ allowed unsafe practices to continue unchecked for years.
Since then, the government has transformed much of the sex trade into a semi-regulated industry, a slow transformation that has had a profound impact on the spread of HIV in Thailand.
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The sex industry boomed in Thailand after the Vietnam War when significant numbers of American soldiers were still stationed nearby.
“It really started then and it never went away,” said Isadore Reaud, a planning officer at the Population and Community Development Association, an organization active in alleviating the HIV/AIDS crisis in Thailand.
The sex work apparatus grew gradually from there, drawing tourists from around the world, along with Thai citizens looking for work.
Many were lured to the country’s city centers, not just to participate directly in the sex industry, but often on its peripheries as well.
Scores of men wait outside brothels in Patpong, trying to draw tourists inside the establishments in hopes of claiming a small commission.
“The money is just a little,” said one solicitor, who declined to give his name. “But I have to work.”
Another solicitor sat on a curb, smoking a cigarette, taking a break from a work day he said started at noon and would surely last late into the night.
He said he moved to Bangkok a few years ago because there was no work for him in the small town in northern Thailand he grew up in.
“I don’t like it,” he said, also declining to give his name. “I come here to make money because I need to.”
The industry was largely ignored by government officials, until an increasing number of HIV diagnoses began to surface out of the areas where prostitution ran rampant.
“It certainly started with injecting drug users and commercial sex industry. When the epidemic first started in the 80s that’s the group that contributed to the start of the epidemic,” said Praween Payapvipapog, vice president of Population and Community Development Association.
A vigorous debate broke out in the Southeast Asian country. Some argued that prostitution should be legalized so that brothels would be open to social services and safety regulations.
The government ““ initially wary of acknowledging the problem ““ eventually made concessions to legalization proponents, and began regular screenings at brothels to insure safe practices.
In the early 1990s, the Thai Ministry of Public Health began a 100 percent condom policy at brothels, threatening businesses that were not in compliance with hefty fines.
“It’s a very successful structural intervention where the government told the owners of the brothels that we’re going to shut you down,” said Sung-Jae Lee, a researcher at the UCLA Semel Institute, an organization which helps run HIV/AIDS programs in Thailand. “It’s in your economic interest to make sure your workers are using condoms 100 percent of the time.”
The results had a huge impact, drawing the Thai government global praise as a model for HIV prevention in Asia.
According to a 1996 survey, between 1989 and 1993, condom use in brothels increased from 14 to 94 percent, causing a significant stabilization of the virus’ proliferation.
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Still, most surveys find that roughly 10 percent of prostitutes in Thailand are HIV positive.
Though the health risks posed by Thailand’s sex industry, particularly prior to the government’s regulatory efforts, have been well-publicized, red light districts are still crowded with foreigners.
In Patpong, rowdy groups of tourists barrel through sidewalks on their way home from nights out, arm-in-arm with sex workers. The sight is so common many hotels in the district have instituted policies against overnight visits from sex workers.
Many travelers are open about their experiences.
“It was my first time,” said Bill, a Northern California native, who asked that his last name not be published. “It was very weird. She was genuine, she cared as much as she could considering it was her job.”
He says he didn’t come to Thailand with the intention of patronizing brothels, but rather just to explore a country he’d never been to. But the lack of stigma attached to sex work, compared to the United States, drew him in.
“I was not interested at first, but she said, “˜you should enjoy yourself while you’re here,'” he said. “The way she said it was not judgmental.”
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Though Thailand’s mainstream sex trade has made significant strides in rooting out unsafe practices, weaknesses have become apparent in the country’s efforts to protect the greater population.
“Right now, the nature of the epidemic is that it’s spread to the general population,” Lee said.
Much of the risk in recent years, say experts, lies with the youth, who grew up after the panic about the epidemic had subsided.
“For them HIV is not that scary,” Lee said. “If you get infected, they know there’s medicine you can take. These young generations are becoming much more complacent about the risk of getting these diseases.”
A new dating phenomenon has gained popularity among Thai youth, dubbed “serial monogamy” by experts. Young people engage in short, monogamous relationships, dating exclusively for a matter of weeks, then quickly moving on to a new partner.
The danger, says Reaud, is that since these relationships are monogamous, young people feel as though their risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease ““ like HIV ““ is slim.
Many don’t use condoms.
“The teachers in school are reluctant to talk about the dangers of sex,” Payapvipapog said. “They don’t have enough knowledge.”
Another worry among the nation’s health experts is the direction they see the sex trade headed. Rather than going to brothels, many Thai citizens are now opting for a more casual form of prostitution, not based in the red light district where the government can regulate safety standards.
It has become more common, for example, for university students looking to make some quick cash to begin selling sex to friends and acquaintances, Reaud said.
Unlike brothels, where condoms have become the norm, the growing casual sex trade in Thailand often involves riskier behavior.
“Most people in the sex industry know they have to use condoms,” Reaud said. “But the informal sex trade ““ students, people who do it on their own ““ they are the danger.”
Though the spread of HIV has slowed since the virus first arrived in Thailand ““ and considerable gains have been made in quashing risky behavior in the sex industry ““ roughly 600,000 Thai people are still infected, according to official estimates.
Health experts view the battle against the virus as one with potential for gains, but little hope for a conclusion.
“It never ends,” Payapvipapog said. “Anything about sex never ends, same with drugs. This fight will never end.”