Bangkok, Making Beauty
Sex tourism is impossible to escape in Bangkok. Even at our nice hotel (chosen for its distance from Nana Plaza and Patpong, the major red light disticts) it’s still in your face 100% of the time. Leaving the pool to grab more sunscreen from the room I passed a fat British man in his sixties sporting the terribly stereotypical sex tourist costume: khaki shorts, socks with sandals, tucked in t-shirt stretched smoothly over his protruding belly accented by a small fanny pack nudged to the side, and topped off with the clincher, a small red ad white checkered kerchief. The small Thai woman with him was gagging loudly, on the verge of throwing up as the pair stepped out the the hotel room. I gave the man a dirty look and he reacted with visible shame, all the while half-heartedly asking if the woman was okay. At that point I opted for the stairs rather than take the elevator with the happy couple. Friends who had already been to Bangkok warned me about the ubiquitous “Ping Pong Shows” (we literally couldn’t set foot in a cab or take a step down Khaosan Road without getting an offer) so I was ready. But what I didn’t expect was men parading around in public with their short term “girlfriends”.
On my last day in Bangkok, exhausted after a 12 hour overnight bus ride, I decided to kill some time before my flight back to Bombay. So, I’m getting a pedicure at a small salon in Sukhumvit (Soi 22, near red light district Soi Cowboy) and I’m starting to doze off when suddenly the Thai woman in the chair next to me grabs my attention by answering her phone in English.
“Oh hello! How are you? I miss you. Where are you? You are leaving? Okay, goodbye. Maybe I see you again someday… Oh, you are only going Laos for three days. Okay I see you when you get back. I want to see you again. I miss you! Now? No, now I cannot, I am at beauty salon. Making beauty. Making nails. You call me when you come back, I see you again. Okay goodbye!”
Immediately upon hanging up the attitude in her voice switches to sarcasm, and it’s not hard to decipher the topic of conversation. Thai chatter is peppered with direct quotes in English, “I hate my wife, she talk too much—” and more laughter. “Crazy, she is crazy,” another woman chimes in happily and they all roar. “‘Crazy, she talk too much,” the first woman continues her whining imitation, inspecting her long acrylic nails and fake diamond bauble ring. “‘I want to be finished, I hate her.’ You don’t hate her, you married her, you love her!” the woman exclaims in her own voice before reverting back to her mocking tone and shaking her head. “‘Before I love. Now is crazy… Fuck fuck, fucking, fucking.’”
It seems I can’t escape my project. But then again, it was the perfect cap to a stay in Bangkok. And I definitely relished hearing some sex workers’ scathing imitation of the men who come to this beautiful part of the world just to fuck, fuck, fuck them.
