Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye by Stephen Leather

The book is about a Farang man working in Thailand as a private detective. According to the front cover, the stories are true, and on the back cover there is a Web address of apparently the same private detecive. Mr. Leather has apparently just written down what the detecive told him. So I can't tell you exactly which one of them deserves the credit for the very entertaining storytelling and extremely amusing puns.

Even though the author recognises that the readers might not necessarily be familiar with the sex market, and so offers explanations to various trade terms and such, the book might still give you a wrong impression about a number of things. Such as bargirls tending to hate their work and using drugs to be able to endure it. With our cultural background, it's easy to believe that it can't be any other way. Except that there are numerous sources (including one supposed to throw the horrors of prostitution into our face but actually letting quite a different truth slip through the lines) testifying the opposite - that Thais don't despise prostitutes the way we do, and thus the prostitutes don't hate themselves and their customers the way white prostitutes do, that having sex for money is considered pretty much work like any other.

Further, the book is likely to give you a very exaggerated idea about the Thai prostitutes' anatomy and bed qualities. I've yet to meet one Thai hooker with sexual skills above "poor". The overwhelming majority, while being very obedient and service-oriented all right, don't know the first thing about handling a man in the bed - which is astonishing, considering that it's how they're earning their daily bread.

As to a Thai woman with large natural breasts, a frequent occurrence in this book - I was about to write that I'll believe it when I see it. Curiously, I had one earlier today. But still let me assure you that very few Thai women have anything that deserves being called breasts.

Some of the stories in the book are clearly quite old. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just don't expect to get laid today as cheaply as people do in this book. And Thermae... OMG. Old farts raving about Thermae - that's about as pathetic as all those stock market books where legendary traders consider it to be of vital importance to tell us how the stock market today is so amazingly different from what is was in 1970. I think Thermae was still in business when I went to Thailand for the first time, but after having read its description, I couldn't think of a reason in the world why anyone should prefer it over a regular go-go or a beerbar - except when one is a cheapskate who just wants to get a pussy as cheaply as possible and doesn't care about the quality of service. By today, at any rate, Thermae is dead, buried and forgotten - and possibly exhumed, rebuilt, reopened, redied, reburied and reforgotten. I couldn't care less.

Now to the book's flaws. There are three smaller ones and a major one to which I will return later.

Firstly, I wish the author would have been more careful with his details - such as Soi Cowboi being in Patpong. I mean, he doesn't directly say that Soi Cowboi is in Patpong, but an uninformed reader is highly likely to get exactly that impression when reading the last paragraph of p 114 and the first paragraph of p115.

Secondly, the annoying repetitions. Bits of background information, puns and even rants re-occur from story to story, often word for word. That is inexcusable. Yes, I understand that the stories were originally published separately, but when you put them together into a book, you have to edit the repetitions out.

Thirdly, I very much disliked the spoilers in several of the story headlines. For instance "The Case of a Lesbian Lover" gives away what should be the big, unexpected surprise in the story. After you have seen that headline, the story isn't half as exciting as it could be. 

Eventually, I became a little suspicious about the protagonist's being so well connected that impossible-appearing tasks turned out to be pieces of cake by the end. Of course, it can have a perfectly plausible explanation - it would be only natural to choose the spectacular successes for the book, and leave out the failures he might have had. What is a tiny bit more suspicious is the way he gets into very dangerous situations a number of times but comes out clean every time. Well, considering how the protagonist describes himself in the book, I totally wouldn't put it beyond him to add some spice here and there when the reality doesn't happen to be exciting enough. 

Most importantly, I became increasingly disturbed by the author's extreme cynicism. Almost halfway through the book, I laid it aside for some time because that negativity had become just unbearable. After I had read about two thirds of the book, I actually threw it away. The action-to-rant ratio seemed to be steadily declining - or maybe the rants just seemed longer because they were almost exactly the same almost every time.

As I tend to say: when you are planning a sex trip to Thailand (or the Philippines, for that matter), one of the most important things to do is to avoid reading the sex tourist forums. Of course you should get yourself informed about the going rates, newest rip-offs, possible morality campaigns and such, but above that, keep your reading to the minimum. I mean, the way the morality fascists describe the sex market in Thailand, it makes you eager to go there (and likely to be somewhat disappointed because the reality in Thailand is quite different from the lies the Western media wants you to believe). But sex tourist forums can easily convince you that Thailand is an absolute shithole where everyone thinks only about deceiving you. Pretty much before every trip, I found myself greatly discouraged by the pathological negativity of the sex tourists' trip reports and their answers to the newbies' questions. It would appear that there is a certain critical period of time. If you have spent that long in Thailand, you become a know-it-all and everyone else become imbeciles who shouldn't even be allowed out unless accompanied by a nanny.

That is clearly what's happened to this book's author(s) too. He insists frantically that Thai bargirls are the lowest scum on Earth, uncapable of any human feelings. "How can you tell a bargirl is lying?" he asks, and answers: "Her lips are moving." And he repeats it a dozen pages later, in case we didn't get it the first time. He is clearly one of those men who are convinced that the female gender can be divided into decent women and whores. (The psychological background to that delusion is discussed in the mildly feminist book "The Moral Animal" but I won't get into further detail here.) I say it's ridiculous to believe that Thai bargirls are somehow a special, particularly deceitful subspecies of women. As I always say, if you were as rich relative to an average West European woman as an average White tourist is relative to an Isaan country girl, those supposedly decent and honest Western women would be all over you pretty much like those bargirls from Isaan are all over any white man they see. (For that matter, I've seen a number of books and articles whose authors insist, pretty much along the lines of this book, that all women, not just Thai prostitutes, are evil creatures who live only to hurt you.)

The author's insistence that a woman falling in love with a man 20 years older is a biological impossibility, is so silly that it's almost cute. But let us, just for the argument's sake, suppose for a moment that the Thai bargirls are pathological liars, meaning that whenever they appear to like you, it's invariably pretense. Fine. How do they then compare to the women we socialise with back home? 

1. Thai bargirls are nice to me and give me sex, not because they like me but because they want my money.

2. The European women insult me and withhold sex, not because they hate me but because abusing of men is a fun game for them, as well as the social norm in the white culture. 

If I have to choose between those two kinds of pretense, there is no question that I will prefer the former. Maybe one day I will be so rich that I can get women back home offering themselves to me eagerly, instead of playing their disgusting games. But until then I'm perfectly fine with being the object of Thai hookers' admiration and subservience, no matter how fake it may be. I much rather give away my money and save my dignity and peace of mind (as is the case in Thailand) rather than the other way around (as is the case in Europe).

I mean, the European non-prostitute gives men smiles and lures them into spending tens to hundreds of Euros on her by making them hope that she will have sex with them. The Thai prostitute gives men sex and lures them into spending hundreds to thousands of Euros on her by making them hope that she will get married to them. They both lie and pretend. They both deceive men in the same way, only on a different scale.

Last but not least, should we compare the hookers in Thailand with the hookers in Europe, the former would come out as very embodiments of fairness, commitment, devotion and human warmth.

(And before I forget - even when you don't fall in love with Thai bargirls, you are still a hopeless moron, according to this book, when you drink Chang beer. Well, as far as I am concerned, Mr. Leather can have all the Heineken europiss in the world for himself.)

Don't get me wrong. There are many examples of sex tourists' appalling gullibility, and I have clearly expressed my attitude towards it in one of my previous articles. All I'm trying to say here is that it's a mistake to conclude from the bargirls' frequent deceitful behaviour that it's utterly stupid to ever believe anything a bargirls says. As I said, white women lie and deceive too, only in a different way. Lying is as natural as breathing for a woman, Thai or Farang, hooker or "decent". I don't see much sense in arguing which ones are more sincere overall. Just keep your head cool as much as you can and consider rationally what you can get and what you would have to do to get it.

I, too, had a time when I hated Thailand, after being ripped off by a Thai hooker in a most humiliating way. It wasn't so much the money I lost, it was her unbelievable nerve deceiving me in a way so outrageous that I wasn't even mentally prepared to look out for it. I thought that, once back home, I would throw away every book on Thailand I have. I wished the riots the Thais like to throw every few years would finally grow into a bloody civil war and the country would totally go under. A couple of days later, though, I realised that the Thai women still have bodies to kill for - even considering the lack of tits. And I'm still willing to spend a considerable part of my life's resources on getting to enjoy them as much as reasonably possible, in spite of an occasional setback. As to that particular girl - I still feel that if I could have my way with her, I would cut off her nipples and have "do not trust this whore" tattooed on her forehead (although it's more likely that if she walked into this room right now, I wouldn't be able to recognise her). As to Thai hookers and Thailand in general, tough, I realised that this one disappointment of mine doesn't mean that they're all bad.

Which made me think: maybe that's what it's all about with the detective whose true stories this book contains? Maybe he had an extremely painful experience with a bargirl, but he's incapable of admitting that he did anything wrong or simply had bad luck, so in order to protect his fragile ego, he will now for the rest of his life be telling everyone how he knows that each and every Thai hooker is a pathological liar and how a relationship with one can't possibly ever work out. Maybe he is so venomous and paranoid about Thai hookers because he is doing all he can to suffocate that little voice inside himself that keeps whispering "What if they are human beings after all?"

Of course, should he read what I just wrote, he would burst into hysterical laughter and say what an idiot I am to suggest he might ever in his life have done anything as stupid as believing a Thai bargirl. Of course he has always known better.

Well, I've never had an actual relationship with a bargirl, but should I ever plan on starting one, one thing that most certainly won't stop me is embittered drunkards insisting that it's bound to end badly.