Why do Farang men fall for ladyboys?

When you begin to gather information about the sex market in Thailand, you can't avoid running across numerous warnings about ladyboys: how there are so many of them and how they are so difficult to detect.

"Ladyboy" is a common term for transvestites and transsexuals. Transvestites are men who wear women's clothes, and apparently many of them pose as women in Thailand and woo tourists, so they would take them back into their hotel room – only to discover that what they thought was a girl has a penis. Transsexuals are persons who were born male but later chose to undergo sex-change surgery. From what I've read, they have surgically-constructed vaginas that can actually be fucked, although they don't get wet, and there is supposedly a slight risk of rupturing the thing when the penis is too big or the fuck too intensive.

On almost all photos, ladyboys look very obviously non-women. However, I remember a photo of a naked girl whom I would have never suspected, yet the person who had posted the photo claimed that the person on it was a ladyboy.

When I went to Thailand for the first time, I was very cautious about it. Before I took a girl back to my hotel, I stuck a hand into her panties regardless of her protests to make sure she had a vagina and not a penis. As to transsexuals, I found myself agreeing with one writer who said that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then he'll just treat it as a duck. I decided that when a person looks like an attractive woman, talks like an attractive woman and acts like an attractive woman, I don't care if he or she is a sex changer or not. I will fuck him or her and not worry about it. After all, it's the nice body that matters, not its ability to produce children.

As to the supposed difficulty of detection, one mustn't forget that transsexuals have only their genitals and breasts altered, not their throats or arms. Regardless of the silicone breasts and such, there is a good chance that the voice should give them away, and regardless of them having learned to walk like women, their manly muscles still have a good chance to make them look unattractive to us.

However, there is this weird thing – I have seen white women back home and in other white countries whose faces look very much like Thai ladyboys to me. Their percentage is especially large among beauty pageant contestants. In the distant past when I still watched those, I often found myself wondering how could any man find such women beautiful. Women I saw looking out of my window were on average clearly prettier than those tall and big girls especially chosen as suitable candidates for the titles of beauty queens. To make it absolutely clear – I am not talking about fat ugly dykes here. I am talking about women who are generally very stylish and attractive to many men, but tall and with crude mask-like faces. (To give you an idea what I mean – look at the porn models Sandee Westgate and Priya Rai. They have obviously female genitals, and I have no reason to suspect that they weren't born female, yet their faces look repulsively unfeminine to me, as does the large size of their bodies.)

Anyway, on my second trip to Thailand, I had this curious experience. I was walking along Sukhumvit Road, and there was another one of those places where girls stand on the sidewalk and do all they can to awake your interest. One of the girls gently grabbed my arm and addressed me, as girls do. When I looked at her, I not only found I didn't particularly fancy her – I also had a strange feeling that something was wrong. Anyway, I happened to be on my way to somewhere else, so I walked on. A little later it occurred to me that those girls were unusually tall for Thai women. Also they had faces like those big blatantly unfeminine chicks back home. So they might well have been ladyboys, I realised. The point I am trying to make is this – while I don't know what they had in their panties, I do know they didn't look like anything I'd ever want to fuck.

I also had my suspicions about a quite normal-looking, petite girl I took from a go-go bar in Angeles. When I was inserting my penis into her vagina, she began to wail and protest like she was in pain or something, and she adjusted her position and I tried it again, and again she wouldn't let me, and so we continued until I lost my erection and she gave me a blowhandjob. (I rewarded her with a correspondingly small tip.) Also she acted in a strangely dominant and aggressive way with the other girl. So she might have been a transsexual. Again, I have no way of knowing for sure.

Those two are the closest encounters I have personally had with ladyboys. Need I tell you that I stopped worrying about the ladyboy danger eventually? So I was mildly amused when a friend of mine told me this story. I knew his grown-up son who had moved to Australia after school. He was still living there, and the two of them decided to have a holiday together in Thailand. My friend told me how he took a woman into his hotel room and he or she turned out to have a penis. And he said there were several occasions when a woman caught his fancy and his son was like: "Get real, dad, that's a man!"

The point is, some men (such as my friend's son and myself) seem to be able to easily tell ladyboys from actual women, and some men just can't.

That story, along with that beauty pageant weirdness I mentioned, brought me to the realisation that many white men are apparently attracted to tall big women with rough unfeminine faces. That is why such women keep scoring high in beauty contests and that is why some men keep ending up with penissed girls in their hotel rooms.

Another thing about that buddy of mine: I have noticed how he keeps getting mildly gay when drunk – not outright touching, but brushing against me all the time, and generally getting uncomfortably into what I perceive as my private space. Whenever I try to move away by 20-30 cm, he just moves closer, apparently not aware of it himself. Apart from that private space thing, he has never shown the slightest sign of homosexuality. The way he talks, sober or drunk, he is a staunch hetero. Married and a repeat adulterer, for that matter.

Could it be that the men who fall for ladyboys fail to recognise them as such because, subconsciously, they don't want to?

Could it be that they sense the male pheromones naturally secreted by the ladyboys' bodies, and that turns them on (as well as turns men like me off)?

The suppressed homosexuality hypothesis does not explain the popularity of tall stone-faced white women. It is therefore likely that the primary reason for the ladyboy-gullibility syndrome remains the affected men's yearning for a big strong woman taking care of them (in other words, a substitute mother), while subconscious homosexual tendencies enhance the effect in some cases.

Phuket sucks – except in the way it's supposed to

It had been 12 years since I had last visited Thailand. Last year's winter, I was hesitating between Thailand and the Philippines. Briefly, the advantages of Thailand are sanuk and safety, the advantages of the Philippines are the girls' beauty and skills. It was a very tough choice, and I would have preferred the Philippines, but unfortunately I learned that there was a particularly nasty anti-prostitution campaign going on in Angeles, and then I got offered an unusually cheap airplane ticket to Phuket, and even though my heart was yearning for Soi Cowboy, I thought I'll check out Phuket. I mean, I had to go there once, just to have the complete picture of everything Thailand has to offer.

First of all, let's clear away some likely misconceptions. You might have the idea that Patong Beach is a street or an area in the city of Phuket. That is not the case. Patong and Phuket City are two separate towns on the island of Phuket, both serviced by the Phuket Airport. There is supposed to be something on offer in Phuket City as well, but the actual location of the sex market is in the town of Patong, more precisely a relatively short street called Bangla Road and its sois. The only go-go bars (less than ten, I think) are in one soi which goes north from Bangla Rd's western end:

(The soi is displayed as a straight dead-end on the maps, but actually it turns left and continues until you end up on Beach Rd = Thawiwong Rd.)

Also, there are a couple of outdoors gogos in the eastern end of Bangla Road. The open-air pole dancers are a spectacular sight – I mean the ones who are actually dancing, which, as we all know, is a rare occurrence in Thailand.

Apart from that, Bangla Road and its surrounding area consists of beer bars.

In the wider neighbourhood, there are dozens of massage parlours which purport to offer non-sexual massage but actually push sexual services quite persistently once you're inside.

Another thing I want to make clear right in the beginning is that whenever I point out things in Phuket that I found surprising, I am not necessarily suggesting that it is because Phuket is different from Bangkok and Pattaya. It can just as well be because Thailand in general has changed, or it can be because I have grown older. I will just describe what I observed.

The people of Patong looked racially quite different from those in Bangkok/Pattaya – I'd say more similar to the people in Northern China. That said, the actual Chinese tourists were still quite recognisably different – but that might have been less due to their racial features than to their lighter skin (meaning, more carefully protected from tanning) and different clothing preferences.

The percentage of attractive women in Patong was far above Bangkok/Pattaya (even though not reaching the level of Angeles, Philippines). Walk around for half an hour and you'll likely to find a massage girl who is really cute. And on Bangla Road itself I saw a few bargirls who were stunningly beautiful. I can't remember seeing anything like that in Bangkok/Pattaya.

Of course, it's clear to me that Thailand is populated by several ethnic groups, so those visible differences shouldn't come as a big surprise. Except that I didn't expect them to get more attractive further south.

One curious thing is that the left hand doesn't seem such a huge no-no in Phuket. I saw repeatedly how Thais gave something with their left hand to other Thais with whom they were visibly on good terms. Nevertheless, I played it safe and always used my right hand.

What was totally new to me was the ethnic composition of the tourists. Patong had an amazing percentage of Chinese and an amazing percentage of Russians. One could see lots of Russian language on shop signs, and Russians tended to address a white face in Russian without even bothering to ask if you speak it. Still, it was not as surprising as the overwhelming presence of the Chinese. I wasn't sure the white tourists even outnumbered yellow ones. And whenever I recognised the latters' language, it was, with very few exceptions, Mandarin Chinese. I have never seen such a concentration of Chinese outside of China itself. And, to think of it, I have rarely seen so few Japanese tourists anywhere.

By the way, in the sex tourist forums there is much talk about the Orientals having fucked up the market for us. A decade ago, there were reportedly separate go-go bars for the Japanese where the white customers weren't even admitted. They had girls with whiter skin, and the sex bars for the white people had girls with darker skin – that is, to each race according to their preference. Now, however, it would seem that "our" go-go bars are being invaded by the Japanese and Koreans who are showering the girls with money, and so the girls are all over them and neglect white customers. That is what they write. From my personal experience, I cannot confirm that. In my few visits to the sleepy go-go bars of Patong, I did not perceive Oriental customers as any nuisance. Neither did I feel in any way neglected.

Reading those numerous complaints in forums, tough, I began to think. I don't know much about that thing with separate bars for separate races, but the undeniable fact is that the Japanese have been filthy rich for decades. So why is it only now that Thai girls have (reportedly) begun to pay them so much attention? Could it be that the white race is losing its prestige, now that the white countries are in severe economic trouble with no improvement in sight? Just a stray thought.

What surprised me about the Patong hookers was how half-assed they were about their work. The girls sitting in front of the massage parlours were just sitting there and pronouncing a modest "massage kha" when a man walked past. "What's happened to Thailand?", I thought at first, being used to girls standing in the middle of the sidewalk, grabbing my arms, trying to drag me into their bars.

Well, a likely explanation is not difficult to figure out. Phuket seems to be making most of its money out of beach tourism. Sex is only a side-business. The large majority of the male tourists walking on the streets of Patong are regular tourists. So it's only logical that the massage girls have to keep a low profile, in order not to irritate tourists who are either not interested in sexual services or too afraid of their female co-tourists. In Pattaya, the girls can safely assume that you are after sex, in Patong the sheer numbers are to their disadvantage. I mean, even in Bangla Road, there are many more curious (albeit not-too-happy-looking) Farang women than Thai hookers on the street at any point of time.

For that matter, after the massage girls have identified you as a sex tourist (like, they see you checking out the girls one after another and then going inside with one from the parlour next door), some of the sanuk begins to appear. But still, I didn't see the Bangkok-style enthusiasm, not even inside of go-go bars. Maybe it has something to do with the influence of Islam in this region which makes even non-Moslem people less tolerant of the sex trade? Then again, even street vendors in Phuket were much less aggressive than in Bangkok. Go figure.

Anyway, the economic reality is that Phuket is hugely popular with beach tourists. That seems to be making Pattaya-style sex trade unfeasible here. Remember Patpong in Bangkok? A huge marketplace for regular tourists, and a number of rip-off joints for the sex tourists. Patong in Phuket is like that, except that it's not rip-off, it's just infested with dirt-brown-tanned white people of both sexes and in various states of undress. And that is essentially what ruins the place. When I'm choosing a sex partner, I don't fancy having half of my field of vision filled with geriatric German women checking out the "naughty nightlife".

That said, at least good massages with extra services are extremely easy to get in Patong. It is a little more difficult to get just a massage. For some time, I've been on the quest trying to find a massage parlour in Thailand where the masseuse will not be insisting on a handjob afterwards. I'm yet to see one. In Patong, I saw a novelty: some massage parlours (maybe 1 out of 20) have "no sex" written on their door. I thought I would check out one of those places, just out of my sick curiosity. Unfortunately, I never got around to it. (Let's just say I was kept too busy with other things.)

MY VERDICT:

Phuket Island is definitely not a place for a sex tourist to go. Not because it's particularly expensive (as many people are whining) but because the sex market is shamefully small, which means your choices are very limited, and the place is drowning in non-sex tourists, which means there is nothing like the fun and easy-going atmosphere you'll find in Bangkok and Pattaya. Feel free to check Phuket out if the curiosity is killing you, but seriously, if you'll never go there, you haven't missed anything.

P.S. Almost forgot about that sucking thing. In the olden days I always wished that they would be offering a blowjob instead of that stupid handjob after a massage. Well, they do now. Except that it's very expensive and very miserable. Emphatically not recommended.

Another little tip, one that is more cheerful – when a girl asks after a massage (with or without extras) if you would like some water, say yes. It's free, and it's really fun to walk slowly past other massage parlours sipping that water. The girls will know precisely where you got it from, and act accordingly. Priceless.

Want to protect children? Do something about this!

I was in an outdoors eatery in Patong, Phuket, waiting for my food to arrive. Occasionally, a vendor selling this or that approached me and left again. Suddenly, a little girl came up to me from somewhere. Before I had a chance to realise what was going on, she put a Hawaii-style necklace around my neck, hugged me, kissed me on the cheek and said "hundred baht".

Now, that was disgusting. During the rest of my holiday, I saw a few more of her kind. I find it repulsive to think that they are making children do something like that.

Stupid Farangs who can't let servants be servants

The general idea in business is that waiters, shop assistants and such ought to be polite to the customers. It was different in the old Soviet Union: the service personnel demanded politeness from the customers. It was understandable. Firstly, all business was government-owned, so there was no competition. Secondly, there was workforce shortage, so you could hardly afford to fire bad emplyees. Thirdly, the centrally planned economy fixed the prices below market value, which meant that the demand for wares and services significantly exceeded supply.

In spite of the capitalist economy, today's Western Europe seems to be on its way to forgetting what service is and where servants belong. The apparent reason is the equality obsession prevalent in the ruling leftist ideology. I remember a waitress in Germany who intruded into me and my companion's conversation as if we were guests at her home or something. And I remember when we were having dinner on a Greek island, and there was a middle-aged Swedish couple at the next table, and the man kept calling the waiter "sir" - like, he would loudly and jovially say "thank you, sir" when the waiter brought him the menu.

It's many years since I read in an advice book that you shouldn't wai Thais back when they wai you. The reason is very simple - there are complicated rules as to how high you should raise your hands and whom you should wai in the first place. I mean, I watched a Thai news broadcast recently, and there was a male newsreader and a female newsreader, and at the end of the broadcast they both waied, and the woman raised her fingers slightly higher than the man. So when you are not thoroughly familiar with their culture, you are bound to do it incorrectly, making yourself ridiculous and people around you embarassed. Unfortunately, many Farangs just think that they have to return the politeness, or they simply feel that waiing is so cute, so they imitate some kind of a greeting gesture they have seen in a Chinese movie.

But that is nowhere near as ridiculous as the scene I witnessed at an eatery a few days ago. A tourist couple next table had paid their bill and was leaving, and the waitress said "khoop khun kha", and the man answered "khoop khun kha". After that, I began paying closer attention to it, and amazingly I kept noticing several male tourists saying "khoop khun kha" or "sawatdii kha".

For those who are not getting the joke - Thai for "thank you" is "khoop khun". The sound written with "o" is actually something between a and o, such as in the English word "gone". "Kha" is the politeness particle which you add to the end of a sentence to indicate that you are being polite. (Actually the "o" in "khoop" is often pronounced short, and the "a" in "kha" is pronounced long, so "khoop khun kha" would sound like "khop khun khaa".)

The catch is that only females say "kha". If you are male, you are supposed to say "khrap" instead. So, a man can never say "khoop khun kha". He can only say "khoop khun khrap".

Similarly, the common greeting in Thai is "sawatdii". So when a Thai woman says "sawatdii kha" to you and you wish to reply in Thai, you must say "sawatdii khrap" when you are male, and "sawatdii kha" when you are female.

Thais often use the politeness particles in English, too. You will be hearing things like "seventy-eight baht kha", simply because no one has told them that "seventy-eight baht please" would sound just perfectly polite to us.

It's hilarious how some Farang tourists are too egalitarianist to accept subservience, but yet too close-minded to bother to find out what is appropriate in one or another culture and what isn't.

Once at a bookshop in Bangkok, a shop employee had to pass between me and another customer, a Thai. He did that crouching, apparently feeling that his head should be lower than that of that Thai. (I was taller than him anyway.) Will I ever see that kind of politeness returned by a Farang tourist?

Various ways of whoring

I was at a bookshop in Thailand, checking out books on Thailand. I noticed a memoir book written by a hooker, co-authored by a woman with an English name. The book was in a plastic cover, so I could only read the introduction on the back cover. Two details in particular caught my eye. One was something to the effect "sex tourists prefer to call women like me "bargirls" but actually we are prostitutes". The other one was "For money I do anything the customer wants, except kissing. I feel that there are certain things which must remain reserved for the wives and girlfriends".

I hardly need to point out the mind-blowing stupidity of the suggestion that Thai hookers are somehow reluctant to kiss customers. They might have a problem with oral and anal sex (of course they don't do "anything the customer wants"), but refusing to kiss - that's hilarious. In general, as I'm sure any sex tourist has noticed, Thai prostitutes are far from reserving certain things to their husbands or boyfriends. On the contary - they not only refer to their customers as "boyfriends", but offer better GFE than, in fact, most non-prostitutes back home.

As to the suggestion that "bargirl" is some kind of an euphemism because we are embarassed to say "prostitute", that is also complete nonsense. Of course bargirls are prostitutes, but not all prostitutes are bargirls. For instance, massage girls are prostitutes but they are not bargirls. Neither are freelancers in the discos and on the streets. In other words, there are several types of prostitutes, and bargirls are one of them. It's simply convenient to use the term "bargirl" when discussing things that apply to bargirls but not to the other kinds of prostitute.

At first I felt appalled that, of all people, a bargirl (who obviously is very well familiar with the truth) would spread such appalling nonsense in her book. Then I realised what it was all about. I remembered who she was: a whore. She has simply expanded her business, found another way of making money. In the bars of Bangkok, she does and says things the Farang tourists want, so that they would give her money. In her book, she says things the Western readers want to hear, so that they would give her money. If she would tell the truth about the Thai sex market, she would hardly even get her book published. And, of course, her female co-author wouldn't be able to recognise that the hooker is bullshitting her, or more likely, she couldn't care less about the truth either. They both have only one goal - to make money. Last but not least, the general public in the English-speaking world doesn't want to hear the truth either. So it's no wonder that that prostitute co-authored a book filled with emotion-loaded untruths. She's only in it for money. Publishing a book is merely a different form of whoring for her.

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.

Don't invest in women

Recently I came, yet again, across a bunch of articles offering generic advice for Western men hooking up with Thai girls. It's not like I'm looking for that kind of information. I have quite adequate first-hand knowledge and I know better information sources for learning more. No, it's just that sometimes when you're looking for something, you find something else.

Anyway, that brought my thoughts back to the subject of Western men being overwhelmed by the "Adult Disneyland". Many of them are doing incredibly stupid things like a child let loose in a candy factory might. Then there's a number of men giving other men tips on avoiding some unbelievabaly stupid mistakes in Thailand. And finally, there's another category of men who seem to greatly enjoy true stories about horrible things that have happened to Farangs in Thailand.

Some of the advice given is very impractical, like "don't fall in love", as if we ever chose to fall in love. Some overflow the readers with unnecessary cultural advice, like behaviour rules which are supposed to be absolutely necessary when dealing with Thais – except that when you have learned it all, you will see that the Thais themselves don't follow those rules. There is actually very little to learn. Don't give things with your left hand, never show the middle finger, never say "fuck you" – that is pretty much the only etiquette you'll need in Thailand, apart from keeping your eyes open and following the elementary rules of respectfulness, like a sensible person would do in pretty much every country.

As to dealing with Thai women, I came to think of one rule which I believe is the most important. I mean, there is absolutely nothing wrong with your reading several books on Thai culture. But if you don't want to bother with that just yet, there is one rule of thumb which is easy to remember and ought to keep you from losing your heart and your shirt.

The rule is: "Don't invest in a woman."

It means that the normal way of things is: she gives something to you, you give something to her. Avoid giving something to women for the mere hope of getting something in return in the future. No honey, no money. Panties down before money down.

In fact, that is a good policy even with the women back home, except that it's extremely hard to follow. In the West, it's commonly accepted that a man is supposed to invest a lot in the woman and she might return the favours or not, and there is nothing the man can do about it. That's a biological thing which has perfectly plausible reasons, but I am not going into details here. What is important for you to realise is that in Thailand we are not required to do that. We don't have to pay for hopes. We even pay for sex after we've fucked the chick. That's unheard of in Europe.

Sure enough, I've taken a Thai bargirl out on a dinner, and she chose the restaurant, and it was rather expensive for Thai standards, and of course I paid. But that was only after I had fucked her. I didn't take her to a nice expensive restaurant in order to make her like me more so that maybe she would reward me with sex someday. No, I took her out to dinner because while in bed with her I took a liking in her as a person, and I figured she was good enough for more than sex. I agreed to her choice of restaurant because I liked it. The money I spent was absolutely worth the food I ate and the good time I had in pleasant surroundings with a pretty girl who was kind to me.

That's the way to go. Whenever giving something, ask yourself occasionally: am I getting what I'm paying for?

Some argue that it's not quite "panties down before money down" in Thailand either. They would (correctly) point out that when you go into a bar in Thailand, you are required to buy a drink, and (more or less gently) pushed to buy one or two for the girls as well. I say: but you are getting something in return immediately – you are approached by scantily clad friendly pretty women, you get to touch them, and you are not the one who has to struggle to make conversation – they are. Isn't that worth the price of a couple of drinks? I say it is, totally.

Then, you pay the bar fine before you get to screw the chick, but isn't that worth being provided the environment where you can comfortably and unhurriedly check out a score of women, almost each one of whom is eager to be taken away by you? I think it is. Totally.

So those examples don't violate the principle "don't invest in a woman". What does is flying back home and sending money to "your" chick in Thailand so that she would go to school and give up prostitution, and to hire a detective to spy on her. (I saw a guy in Bangkok who provides exactly that service.) When you fuck her, give her money. When you don't fuck her, what the fuck are you giving her money for? If you want her for your wife, accept her for what she is. What is the point trying to change a prostitute into an innocent woman? If you want an innocent woman for a wife, go to an agency and buy a virgin, instead of sending the same amount of money to a bargirl and worrying yourself sick that she might still be sleeping with someone else.

What exactly is investing and what isn't? There is this test. If she would die or disappear or get married this moment, would you feel that the money, time and emotions you spent on her were more or less adequately compensated by whatever you got back from her? Or would you think: dammit, now it's all wasted?

Needless to say, that's a good question to occasionally ask yourself with the girls back home, too.

Screw-a-Diner

Imagine that you live in a city where there is a restaurant with rather weird rules. Upon entering, you are supposed to say which meal you want and pay some money. You can pay as much or as little as you like, even though 1 cent would likely be frowned upon and 1000 Euros would likely be an exaggeration. You are also expected to do some work like clean a few tables or wash some dishes or change a light bulb or sing a song to entertain the people. The choice is usually up to you. After that you sit down and wait. The thing is, they may bring your food or they may not. Sometimes you have to wait 5 minutes, sometimes 5 hours, sometimes you get tired of waiting and leave without food.

The problem is that there is no way of knowing in advance how much you would have to pay or what work you would have to do or how long you would have to wait. Sometimes you will get a meal for 1 Euro, and sometimes you won't get one for 100 Euros. No matter how much money you give, no matter how much work you do, there is never any guarantee that you will get any food whatsoever. All your questions are answered with "you'll just have to wait and see". You ask how much money you should pay to make sure you'll get food, and there's no answer. Nobody knows. When you ask which meal would be available quickly, they don't know – you'll just have to pick one and find out if and when you'll get it.

If you complain, people are confused – that's the way how it's supposed to be at a restaurant, that's the way all restaurants in this city work, what else do you want? If you try to suggest that there should be a list of all available meals with prices and waiting times clearly indicated, the people think you're crazy. If you say you're starving, they laugh at you and tell you to grow up and not be such a sissy. You can see that many other people are really hungry, but for some weird reason they put up with it and act like they're perfectly fine and even like it there. Some people actually starve to death but nobody seems to care. When you try to go tho the chef and beg him to give you some food, you'll notice that dozens of people are doing exactly that, and the chef just tells you all to fuck off. More amazingly, some of the customers, apparently just as hungry as everyone else, are chasing other customers away from the chef. And people who are caught stealing any food are thrown to prison for years.

You notice, however, that the chef is letting some people in through the back door and they always get to eat what they want, without waiting and without even having to pay. Unfortunately, the chef would never let you in through the back door. You wonder how those other people do it, but all they tell you is useless platitudes like you just have to be friends with the chef. Unfortunately, you can't figure out how to get friends with the chef, so you're stuck going through the usual frustrating paying-working-waiting routine, just as 95 percent of the people have to.

Such restaurants are the only place in the city where people eat. Food shops are technically illegal. Many of them are tolerated by the police for some time and then raided. Even those that are in business are difficult to find, you are often treated with disrespect and the food is often of poor quality. More importantly, most people consider buying food from a shop to be awfully shameful or even criminal. For the life of you, you can't figure out why people despise food shops. What is supposed to be wrong with handing over a fixed amount of money and getting the food, instead of the horrible stress one has to go through at the restaurants? Unfortunately, nobody would explain it to you. People get angry at you for even asking, or ridicule you for being "the kind of person who would shop for food".

You could also find your own food, like fruits and vegetables and berries which grow here and there. Unfortunately, they are nowhere near as nutritious as real food, and besides, that is also considered horribly shameful. "Food-gatherer" is a wide-spread insult even more shameful than "food-shopper". Nobody would ever admit in public that he is gathering his own food, although you suspect that nearly everyone is doing it from time to time.

One hell of a fucked-up place to live in, isn't it?

Actually, I think the above ought to seem not so unfamiliar to you, if you're male. After all, that is the kind of life men usually have to lead – not in order to get food, of course, but to get sex. In order to satisfy our natural physiological need for sex, the overwhelming majority of us are expected to put up with outrageous date abuse. Our society has given women the complete control of sex. No matter how many times you have taken a woman out on a date, she will never have the slightest obligation to have sex with you. You can go on dates with dozens of women, but no matter how much money, time and nerves you have spent, there will never be any guarantee that any of the women will give you what you want. It's always a matter of chance, a game of numbers. You can't make an arrangement, like, you take her three times dancing, two times to movies and three times to dinner, and then she'll let you fuck her. No, you are just expected to keep investing, with no right to demand any return, ever.

Fortunately, there are places in the world where you can go into a bar, and almost as soon as you have sat down, a scantily dressed young woman will approach you to beg you to take her to your hotel room (or your home if you live there). She is the one who struggles to make conversation, while you can just sit back, touch her up and eye the other girls. If you don't fancy her, you can ignore her, and after a while she will leave and another girl will approach you, or you can invite one to sit with you. When you decide to take one of the girls away, it goes without saying that first you get to fuck her, and after that you can take her out on a date and get to know her better and have a relationship with her, if you so desire. You won't be stuck to approaching any girl who looks even halfway acceptable, in desperate hope that occasionally you will somehow succeed to get some of them into bed. On the contrary, you get to choose which woman you want, and if you choose a woman, it is clearly understood that it's "panties down before money down" (except for a small up-front payment). All that for a fraction of the financial and emotional cost of seducing a woman back home.

So far, I have found such places in two countries: Thailand and the Philippines. That is where I'm going to live soon. I have decided that I will never again submit to date abuse. Never again will I beg a woman to be allowed to spend my time and money on her without the slightest obligation on her part.