BANGKOK, Thailand “”mdash; Even at 4 p.m. the touts are at it on
Thanon Patpong, a small Bangkok street of great infamy.
“DVD, video, sex?”
“Very beautiful women.”
“Pingpong show, you come mister.”
“May ow,” I say, avoiding eye contact as I walk
away. “I don’t want.”
The route down the street is overshadowed by a virtual canopy of
neon signs, a dazzling gaudy spectacle, past bars with names like
Superstar, Supergirls and the ever-so-blunt Superpussy.
The smell of the last night’s debauchery still hangs in
the air, a combination of wet pavement and putrid human stench.
Reaching my destination, the climb up six flights of stairs in
the decrepit building passes groups of young women who have
congregated in the stairwell, laughing, eating and preparing their
makeup for the night.
Passing the venereal disease clinic and beauty salon, I finally
reach the top floor.
A group of young men and women are waiting in the main room and
offer their greeting in English:
“Hello, teacher.”
The classroom is a simple multi-purpose office with a table and
a whiteboard. It is the largest room at Swing, a non-profit sex
worker resource center, and a quiet oasis situated high above the
mayhem of the bars below.
Today’s class is small; only five students.
Natcha, a former bar girl and sex worker, has perhaps the best
English skills of the group. She usually attends all five classes
each week and said her top reason for coming to learn English is to
better her future.
“I have no job. I want to sell clothing. I think if I will
find job, it will be on Silom because many foreigners there,”
she said.
Natcha stopped working as a dancer in Patpong when she met her
current boyfriend five months ago. He had been a customer.
“He don’t want me dancing at bar, so he sends me
money, but I need job. Now I want to know English more,
more,” she said.
She said her life now is more difficult because of the good
money she made when she was still dancing.
Bar girls and boys can make about 7,000 baht ($175) a month,
plus extra money when they go home with a customer for “short
time” or “long time,” the difference being
whether or not they stay the night.
A “short time” could bring in $50, while a
“long time” jumps to about $100, Natcha said.
Thailand is well known as the sex-tourism capital of the world,
with estimates of the number of sex workers ranging from 100,000 to
2 million.
Despite popular belief, and the sheer size of the industry,
prostitution is not legal in Thailand, though it is culturally more
acceptable than in the United States, and the laws are scarcely
enforced. (Even so, only the first names of sex workers are used in
this article to protect them from legal action.)
Every neighborhood in Bangkok sports at least a few brothels,
usually disguised as karaoke bars, massage parlors or even barber
shops.
While most sex workers at these neighborhood brothels serve Thai
men, the bars and clubs around Patpong cater to a more
international crowd.
In Patpong, these students are not students in the traditional
sense.
They come to Swing for two hours on the days they can to learn
English.
They have no textbooks and are not seeking any formal
recognition of their educational achievements.
Each student is at a different level; the ones who know more
English help those who know less, but the majority start out
knowing little more than basic greetings and flirtations.
Surang Janyam, the director of Swing, believes learning English
is the most important way for sex workers in Bangkok to empower
themselves.
“Sex workers, they have to work with foreigner. If they
cannot speak English, they cannot protect themselves and they will
be looked down on and look down on themselves. They feel like they
are not human,” she says.
With her youthful face and small stature, Surang might not
strike one as much of a fighter at first glance, but beneath her
exterior is a feisty spirit and a toughness necessary to get things
done in Patpong.
A graduate of Sirinakrin Wirot University in Bangkok with a
degree in drama, Surang began volunteering with Empower, another
sex worker resource program, 17 years ago.
While her work began simply as a volunteer with Empower’s
educational drama group, she has come to realize her dream,
establishing Swing, an offshoot program that reaches out to male
sex workers as well, last September.
One of the people she took with her was Thii.
Thii is a former sex worker, who, after learning English through
Empower’s classes, is now fully employed as a staff member at
Swing.
Although he has taken a steep pay cut ““ from about 10,000
Baht a month when he worked as a bar boy to 2,500 Baht at Swing
““ he said he has no regrets about the change.
Thii says work in Patpong can be very difficult at times.
Working as a bar boy, he was only allowed two days off each
month.
And there’s the risk of going home with a stranger.
“I think for me it is very dangerous to work in the bar
because I didn’t know you before, but I have to go home with
you tonight. I want to know a little about you first, to be
safe,” Thii said.
The scenario was further complicated by the fact that when he
began working in the bars, he spoke almost no English. Some of his
friends still have problems with this language barrier.
“Some of my friends, they cannot speak English, but when
he talk with customer, even the price he is confused about. One
thousand, 100. He does not know the difference,” he says.
For Thii, working the bars is a chapter that has closed in his
life, though he is thankful for the financial opportunities it
provided.
“Before I go to work in the bar I ask my mom. My mom say,
“˜Are you sure? It’s dangerous. How about your
future?’ I said, “˜Mom, maybe I can make more money. I
can make a better future.’ Now, I always send money back to
my family,” he said.
Like most sex workers in Bangkok, Thii is from Thailand’s
northeastern region, known as Isan.
The area is mostly rural and the poorest region in the country.
Few Thais from this area will ever get to graduate from high
school, let alone attend a university.
As a result, many young people from Isan migrate to Bangkok in
search of extra income for their families.
For many rural Thai families, sending their daughters to Bangkok
to find “work” is simply a fact of life, and most
don’t ask questions about where the extra income is coming
from. They already know.
A common saying in rural Thailand is that while the men will go
to work in the fields, “the field the women plough is the one
between their legs.”
Lek, another English student and a new arrival to Bangkok, is
also from Isan and is still in search of a job as a dancer or a
waitress in Patpong.
Having just started attending classes, her English skills are
still limited, and she shyly makes her way through her
sentences.
This shyness is deceiving, though, as she speaks Thai with a
boldness none of her customers will likely see.
“I want to speak English to work with foreigners. I want
to find money to give to my mother,” she said in Thai,
echoing the thoughts of almost every sex worker in Bangkok.
“I want a job, but it is difficult. If they speak English,
it’s not difficult to find a job.”
Lek, like so many Patpong girls, dreams of one day being able to
leave Thailand with a Farang ““ the Thai expression for
foreigner.
“I want to marry Farang. I like Farang. Now I don’t
have foreign boyfriend, but I hope I will in the future,” she
said.
Natcha agrees that most sex workers want to marry foreigners,
and many see the sex industry as the easiest way to do so.
As a result, there is a fairly high turnover rate among sex
workers in Patpong.
“I have friend. My friend, she marry with Italian. She
only work for one month before (she met him). I think she have good
luck,” Natcha said with a hint of envy.
She also said that learning English is the best way to find a
foreigner to marry and English skills are considered a valuable
investment.
“Everybody want to learn English, but everybody
lazy,” she said.
The fact that prostitution is technically illegal has caused
many problems for the sex workers with whom Swing works, Surang
said.
“We do not promote sex. We promote education for sex
workers. In the law, it does not say we cannot promote
education,” she said.
The police often do not understand the law and the circumstances
which make the arrest of someone suspected of prostitution legal,
she said.
“Sometimes they arrest sex workers in public place. A lot
of sex workers, they stand and hold a condom. Law does not say
anything about standing with a condom,” Surang said,
referring to the common practice of street prostitution by holding
a condom.
Surang says she has intervened many times to inform police of
what they can and cannot do, because most sex workers do not
understand their own rights.
“Most of the police, they know me. I am fighting
everywhere.”
Besides English classes and legal assistance, another one of
Swing’s primary objectives is to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS
among sex workers in Thailand.
Although Thailand has been relatively successful in its fight
against AIDS, currently over 2 percent of Thailand’s
population is HIV positive, and the Health Ministry has identified
the sex industry as one of the leading factors in the continuing
spread of the virus.
Surang has made outreach and education about HIV/AIDS a central
part of Swing’s fight for sex worker rights.
Programming has included everything from condom giveaways to
safe-sex talks in bars to condom fashion shows.
The fashion shows appeal to the Thai notion of sanuk ““
that things in life should be kept “fun” ““ while
also providing education about the proper way to practice safe
sex.
“If we do not do outreach, how can the sex workers know
about HIV?” Surang said.
Swing’s international motto for Patpong’s sex
workers is so simple, it doesn’t need to be taught in an
English class: No condom, no sex.