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A Singaporean's guide to living in Thailand
- Thread starter Leongsam
- Start date
no dressing for the salad ?
Have
what dressing ?
i try.
usually i used lime juice, peanuts, basil,
fish oil, slices of red chilli
mix stirred thoroughly
No idea not ask the chef
Thailand serves up cannabis cuisine to happy customers
By Juarawee Kittisilpa
2 MIN READ
PRACHIN BURI, Thailand (Reuters) - “Giggling bread” and “joyfully dancing salad” aren’t the usual dishes on a menu in Thailand, but one eatery is hoping its cannabis-infused cuisine can lure foreign tourists and take the taboo out of the recently legalised leaf.
The restaurant at the Chao Phya Abhaibhubejhr Hospital in Prachin Buri started serving its own happy meals this month, after Thailand de-listed cannabis as a narcotic, allowing state-authorised firms to cultivate the plant.
“Cannabis leaves, when put in the food or even a small amount ... it will help the patient to recover faster from the illness,” said Pakakrong Kwankao, the project leader at the hospital.
“The cannabis leaf can improve appetite and make people sleep well, and also be in a mood, in a good mood.”
The hospital is known as a pioneer in Thailand for studying marijuana and its ability to relieve pain and fatigue.
Thailand in 2017 became the first Southeast Asian country to legalise cannabis for medical use and has since opened numerous medical marijuana clinics.
The restaurant’s offerings include a happy pork soup, deep-fried bread topped with pork and a marijuana leaf, and a salad of crispy cannabis leaves served with ground pork and chopped vegetables.
“I’ve never taken cannabis before, it feels weird but it’s delicious,” said diner Ketsirin Boonsiri, adding it was “quite strange”.
Nattanon Naranan said the taste of the cannabis leaves was similar to everyday vegetables, but the after-effects were quite different.
“It makes my throat dry and I crave sweets,” she said.
Thai deputy education minister Kanokwan Vilawan said the next step was to offer famous Thai dishes to reach an international audience.
“We plan to add more (cannabis) to Thai dishes that are already well known, such as green curry soup, to boost the popularity of these dishes even more,” Kanokwan said.
Editing by Martin Petty and Giles Elgood
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
By Juarawee Kittisilpa
2 MIN READ
PRACHIN BURI, Thailand (Reuters) - “Giggling bread” and “joyfully dancing salad” aren’t the usual dishes on a menu in Thailand, but one eatery is hoping its cannabis-infused cuisine can lure foreign tourists and take the taboo out of the recently legalised leaf.
The restaurant at the Chao Phya Abhaibhubejhr Hospital in Prachin Buri started serving its own happy meals this month, after Thailand de-listed cannabis as a narcotic, allowing state-authorised firms to cultivate the plant.
“Cannabis leaves, when put in the food or even a small amount ... it will help the patient to recover faster from the illness,” said Pakakrong Kwankao, the project leader at the hospital.
“The cannabis leaf can improve appetite and make people sleep well, and also be in a mood, in a good mood.”
The hospital is known as a pioneer in Thailand for studying marijuana and its ability to relieve pain and fatigue.
Thailand in 2017 became the first Southeast Asian country to legalise cannabis for medical use and has since opened numerous medical marijuana clinics.
The restaurant’s offerings include a happy pork soup, deep-fried bread topped with pork and a marijuana leaf, and a salad of crispy cannabis leaves served with ground pork and chopped vegetables.
“I’ve never taken cannabis before, it feels weird but it’s delicious,” said diner Ketsirin Boonsiri, adding it was “quite strange”.
Nattanon Naranan said the taste of the cannabis leaves was similar to everyday vegetables, but the after-effects were quite different.
“It makes my throat dry and I crave sweets,” she said.
Thai deputy education minister Kanokwan Vilawan said the next step was to offer famous Thai dishes to reach an international audience.
“We plan to add more (cannabis) to Thai dishes that are already well known, such as green curry soup, to boost the popularity of these dishes even more,” Kanokwan said.
Editing by Martin Petty and Giles Elgood
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Sinkieland they will sent him to the gallows at Changi.
Neighbour rescues 97-year-old woman from burning house
Bangkok Post PUBLISHED : 3 FEB 2021 AT 17:10
WRITER: SURACHAI PIRAGSA
Fire guts the house of 97-year-old Lub Lapromma in Ban Kruat district of Buri Ram on Wednesday. (Photo by Surachai Piragsa)
BURI RAM: A 97-year-old bed-ridden woman suffered serious burns, but a neighbour carried her to safety through the flames as her home burned down in Ban Kruat district on Wednesday afternoon.
Grandma Lub Lapromma was alone in the house at Moo 10 village in tambon Nong Mai Ngam when the fire began. She lived there with her son, but he was away at the time.
Thot Tasimma, 50, the neighbour who saved her life, said he was at his house nearby and heard people crying out that Grandma Lub's home was on fire.
Many villagers pitched in with buckets of water, trying to douse the fire, but to no avail. They could only yell at one another that Mrs Lub, who was bed-ridden, was still in the house.
Mr Thot said he decided to walk through the flames into the house. He then carried her back out, through the flames.
The old woman was brought out safely, but she had burns to about 70% of her body. Mr Thot also suffered some burns, but they were not severe.
The house burned to the ground.
Mrs Lub was rushed to Buri Ram Hospital in Muang district for emergency treatment.
The cause of the fire was not known.
Bangkok Post PUBLISHED : 3 FEB 2021 AT 17:10
WRITER: SURACHAI PIRAGSA
Fire guts the house of 97-year-old Lub Lapromma in Ban Kruat district of Buri Ram on Wednesday. (Photo by Surachai Piragsa)
BURI RAM: A 97-year-old bed-ridden woman suffered serious burns, but a neighbour carried her to safety through the flames as her home burned down in Ban Kruat district on Wednesday afternoon.
Grandma Lub Lapromma was alone in the house at Moo 10 village in tambon Nong Mai Ngam when the fire began. She lived there with her son, but he was away at the time.
Thot Tasimma, 50, the neighbour who saved her life, said he was at his house nearby and heard people crying out that Grandma Lub's home was on fire.
Many villagers pitched in with buckets of water, trying to douse the fire, but to no avail. They could only yell at one another that Mrs Lub, who was bed-ridden, was still in the house.
Mr Thot said he decided to walk through the flames into the house. He then carried her back out, through the flames.
The old woman was brought out safely, but she had burns to about 70% of her body. Mr Thot also suffered some burns, but they were not severe.
The house burned to the ground.
Mrs Lub was rushed to Buri Ram Hospital in Muang district for emergency treatment.
The cause of the fire was not known.
Foreign buyers take B2bn housing project fraud case to DSI
Bangkok Post PUBLISHED : 3 FEB 2021 AT 16:00
WRITER: KING-OUA LAOHONG
Department of Special Investigation director-general Pol Lt Col Korawat Panprapakorn.
The Department of Special Investigation has been asked to investigate alleged fraud in a housing project in Phetchaburi province, with about 100 foreigners claiming damages totalling 2 billion baht.
The petition was filed with the DSI on Wednesday by Srisuwan Janya, president of the Stop Global Warming Association.
Mr Srisuwan was accompanied to the DSI office by a Russian man, Rusan Ataev, and a British man, Marcos Hurst, he said were among the damaged parties.
He said the housing development at issue, the Phetchaburi Park Project, was built on 21 blocks of land covering 555 rai, one ngan and 49 square wah. The land title deeds were in the form of Nor Sor 3 documents.
However, he had found that 99% of the land was inside the Payang Hak-Khao Pum national forest reserve and the land title deeds were issued after the land was declared part of the reserve.
Therefore, he believed the land documents had been unlawfully issued.
Mr Srisuwan said officials from the Phetchaburi-based 10th Forest Resources Office went to examine the housing project land on July 17, 2020. They reported to the director-general of the Royal Forest Department that the land was part of the national forest reserve.
The land documents were subsequently revoked, he said.
About 100 foreigners had paid in full to buy land and houses in the project, causing them about 2 billion baht in total damages, he said.
Mr Hurst said he had been in Thailand for 10 years and was now living in Pattaya.
Six years ago he saw an advertisement for the Phetchaburi Park housing project, which catered to foreigners. He decided to buy a block of land with a house for 3 million baht, but never went to the construction site.
He had previously bought a condominium unit, and thought he would be eligible for the ownership of the land.
When the construction was completed, he learned that, as a foreigner, he was not eligible to own land in Thailand. The company which ran the project also accepted this fact and offered to buy back the property.
But soon afterwards the company was closed down, and he did not know how to claim payment for the damages. This led him to seek help from Mr Srisuwan, who turned to the DSI for help, Mr Hurst said.
Mr Srisuwan said the company which ran this project had run similar projects elsewhere, including Pattaya and Phuket, taking aim at foreigners.
By checking the registration of the company, he found that British and Russian nationals held 98% of its shares and the rest were held by Thais. The project was advertised on websites abroad, he added.
Pol Lt Col Korawat Panprapakorn, the DSI director-general, said his office would check with the Royal Forestry and Land departments to find out whether the Nor Sor 3 land title deeds for the project had been legally issued.
Since the alleged fraud involved as much as 2 billion baht in damages and the encroachment of 555 rai of land, it was possible the DSI could accept it as a special case for further legal action, he said.
Bangkok Post PUBLISHED : 3 FEB 2021 AT 16:00
WRITER: KING-OUA LAOHONG
Department of Special Investigation director-general Pol Lt Col Korawat Panprapakorn.
The Department of Special Investigation has been asked to investigate alleged fraud in a housing project in Phetchaburi province, with about 100 foreigners claiming damages totalling 2 billion baht.
The petition was filed with the DSI on Wednesday by Srisuwan Janya, president of the Stop Global Warming Association.
Mr Srisuwan was accompanied to the DSI office by a Russian man, Rusan Ataev, and a British man, Marcos Hurst, he said were among the damaged parties.
He said the housing development at issue, the Phetchaburi Park Project, was built on 21 blocks of land covering 555 rai, one ngan and 49 square wah. The land title deeds were in the form of Nor Sor 3 documents.
However, he had found that 99% of the land was inside the Payang Hak-Khao Pum national forest reserve and the land title deeds were issued after the land was declared part of the reserve.
Therefore, he believed the land documents had been unlawfully issued.
Mr Srisuwan said officials from the Phetchaburi-based 10th Forest Resources Office went to examine the housing project land on July 17, 2020. They reported to the director-general of the Royal Forest Department that the land was part of the national forest reserve.
The land documents were subsequently revoked, he said.
About 100 foreigners had paid in full to buy land and houses in the project, causing them about 2 billion baht in total damages, he said.
Mr Hurst said he had been in Thailand for 10 years and was now living in Pattaya.
Six years ago he saw an advertisement for the Phetchaburi Park housing project, which catered to foreigners. He decided to buy a block of land with a house for 3 million baht, but never went to the construction site.
He had previously bought a condominium unit, and thought he would be eligible for the ownership of the land.
When the construction was completed, he learned that, as a foreigner, he was not eligible to own land in Thailand. The company which ran the project also accepted this fact and offered to buy back the property.
But soon afterwards the company was closed down, and he did not know how to claim payment for the damages. This led him to seek help from Mr Srisuwan, who turned to the DSI for help, Mr Hurst said.
Mr Srisuwan said the company which ran this project had run similar projects elsewhere, including Pattaya and Phuket, taking aim at foreigners.
By checking the registration of the company, he found that British and Russian nationals held 98% of its shares and the rest were held by Thais. The project was advertised on websites abroad, he added.
Pol Lt Col Korawat Panprapakorn, the DSI director-general, said his office would check with the Royal Forestry and Land departments to find out whether the Nor Sor 3 land title deeds for the project had been legally issued.
Since the alleged fraud involved as much as 2 billion baht in damages and the encroachment of 555 rai of land, it was possible the DSI could accept it as a special case for further legal action, he said.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsa...as-upended-the-lives-of-thailands-sex-workers
How The Pandemic Has Upended The Lives Of Thailand's Sex Workers
February 3, 20216:44 AM ET
AURORA AMENDRAL
PHOTOS BY ALLISON JOYCE
Above: N., a sex worker at a bar in Pattaya, Thailand. The sex trade has offered good-paying jobs for many people from rural areas who were facing a life of tending rice paddies and digging up cassava roots.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Mos, 26, was a "moneyboy" — a sex worker — at a gay bar in the Thai tourist hub of Pattaya. For him, it was a dream come true. Now the pandemic has put his dream on hold.
Mos grew up in a poor province on Thailand's northeastern border, eating fish from the river and leaves foraged from the forest. He wanted to eat pork and pizza.
When he graduated from high school, he moved to Pattaya and became a sex worker. He says the job was fun, and the pay was great. He saved up enough money to build a cement house for his family in the countryside. He promised his younger siblings he would send them to college.
"I'm very proud of that," he says.
The relatively empty Patpong red-light district in Bangkok. In March and April, Thailand closed its borders and canceled commercial flights because of the global pandemic. The country's tourism industry — which is entwined with the sex worker industry — collapsed.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Indeed, for people in rural, landlocked provinces, Thailand's tourist hubs offered good-paying jobs for those otherwise facing a life of tending rice paddies and digging up cassava roots — the lives they grew up with and their parents still toiled in.
Mos is one of an estimated 200,000 to more than 1 million sex workers in Thailand, including full-time sex workers affiliated with bars, freelancers supplementing their regular income with occasional prostitution and migrants from bordering countries.
Sex work is practiced openly in the country, but it is illegal and subject to fines or, in rare cases, imprisonment. About 24,000 people were arrested, fined or prosecuted in 2019, according to the Royal Thai Police. Mos and many of the people we interviewed for this article asked that their full names not be used. In many parts of Thailand, the family name has been shamed by association with a stigmatized, illegal business, and individuals have been disowned by their families or ostracized by their community.
Working in the bars of the red-light district pays more than many office jobs or other service work that the women and men in Thailand's sex industry would otherwise qualify for. Sex work has allowed them to save money, buy themselves luxuries and support their parents and grandparents in retirements of ease.
Working in the bars of the red-light district pays more than many office jobs or other service work that the women and men in Thailand's sex industry would otherwise qualify for. Above: Women dance at a bar in the Patpong red-light district in Bangkok.
Allison Joyce for NPR
While revenue for underground activities is difficult to measure, a 2015 analysis by Havocscope, a research company that studies the black market, estimated the Thai sex trade to be worth $6.4 billion a year, or about 3% of the country's gross domestic product.
But now the international sex industry has come to a halt.
It's not because Thailand is seeing high numbers of coronavirus cases. Since the start of the pandemic, Thailand has had about 20,000 confirmed cases and 77 deaths.
Rather, it's the strict measures Thailand has taken to keep the coronavirus at bay.
In March and April, Thailand closed its borders and canceled commercial flights because of the global pandemic. The country's tourism industry — which is entwined with the sex worker industry — collapsed. (While prostitution exists for the domestic Thai market, it is separate from the red-light districts of Thailand's tourist hubs, which cater almost exclusively to foreign visitors.)
Before the pandemic, international tourists were frequent visitors to the red-light district.
Allison Joyce for NPR
More than 10 months later, the country remains largely closed to international tourism. A new wave of infections within Thailand in December has led to renewed lockdowns in several provinces. Pattaya was declared a maximum control zone on Dec. 31 after 144 cases were recorded in the district, closing most public venues, including bars. The country began lifting restrictions in late January.
In April, with rent in Pattaya adding up while he earned no money, Mos piled into a car with a few friends and went back to his hometown, where he now helps his parents sell papaya salad at a street side stall. By October, he had run down his savings.
He longs to go back to his job in Pattaya. "I would love to," Mos said. But he watches the news in Europe and the U.S. with dismay; deadly second waves and new lockdowns mean Thailand would not be opening its borders to tourists any time soon.
An owner of a bar at the Patpong red-light district in Bangkok.
Allison Joyce for NPR
According to government data analyzed by Dr. Yongyuth Chalamwong, research director for the Thailand Development Research Institute, an estimated 1.6 million people have returned from Thailand's tourist areas to the countryside. Those who found a way to stay — by piling into shared rented rooms, sleeping in hallways and cutting their meals to one or two a day — are barely hanging on.
At 11 a.m. at a bar on Soi 6, Pattaya's main red-light strip, the dancers who had moved into the spare rooms upstairs were just waking up, bleary eyed and untangling themselves from rumpled blankets printed with Disney princesses or SpongeBob SquarePants. The women were still in big T-shirts and basketball shorts or loose cotton dresses, their platform heels stacked on the steps of the hot pink-painted stairwell. A washing machine filled with last night's uniform of short shorts and crop tops rumbled in the hall.
Shoes line the stairway by the living quarters for sex workers at a bar in Pattaya.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Downstairs at the bar, the metal gate was rolled halfway up as the dancers got ready for another shift. One woman flat-ironed another's hair as she ate a breakfast of hot noodle soup. Others perched on barstools in front of the mirrors, applying makeup while Thai pop songs played from their phones.
N., 28, who asked that only her first initial be used, says that before the pandemic, "the men would just walk in." They'd buy the women drinks, for which they would earn a 50-baht ($1.60) commission. Perhaps a patron might hire one of them for the evening. On a good night, these sex workers could make as much as 3,000 to 6,000 baht, $100 to $200.
The night before, a Friday, most of them had made no money at all.
They were all working harder and earning less, N. says. There were about a dozen women at each of the Soi 6 bars that managed to stay open, fewer than before, but far outnumbering the foreign customers, most of whom were expats living in Pattaya or visitors from Bangkok.
"Boys, boys, boys, where are you going," the women said as a couple of men strolled by. "I love you!" they yelled at strangers. They pretended to swoon and called every passing man handsome. One woman, tilting on her stilettos, tugged with her full might at a man's arm to pull him in and perhaps oblige him to buy her a shot. He wrestled his arm free and walked on.
At a bar in Pattaya, a woman receives a traditional Thai blessing for good luck. The symbolic gesture of having her hands patted with cash at the start of her shift is meant to help bring money into her hands that night.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Rob, a 59-year-old Australian retiree and regular patron of the bars of Soi 6, who asked not to use his last name because of the sex industry's illegality, says only about a quarter of the bars are open and a quarter of the women have come back to work in them. Retirees on fixed pensions like himself can't make up for the droves of lost international clientele.
"I'm trying my hardest," Rob says, but there's only so much a man can drink — nor does he have the money to hire the women from the bars.
Rob says he can't compete with the clients that those in the industry call "Two-Week Millionaires" — foreign sex tourists.
Timmy, the bar's British manager, who asked that his last name not be used, says they're now left with "Cheap Charlies," low-income expats who sit at the bar nursing a Coke Zero, leering, while declining to buy the dancers drinks.
"It's getting deader and deader," Timmy says.
As much as tourist cities like Pattaya are suffering, the strict measures at the border have been effective in helping to contain the spread of the coronavirus in Thailand. Jessica Vechbanyongratana, a labor economist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, emphasized that keeping the borders closed at the expense of the tourism industry allowed the rest of the economy to reopen. Tourism is a large part of the economy, she says, "but it is not the entire economy."
Before the round of new restrictions that began in late December, which are now in the process of being lifted, Thailand's strict measures had allowed a level of normalcy to return to everyday life. Outside tourist areas, offices and government buildings were open and the malls and markets were crowded. In Bangkok, the capital, the streets were clogged with traffic, and the subway system was packed with riders. At bars and restaurants, people gathered freely.
The sense of safety is something a majority of Thais are keen to protect. An October 2020 poll by the National Institute for Development Administration, an educational institution, found that 57% of Thais did not want to open the country to tourism, another 20% slightly agreed that it would bring money in, but stressed the need for restrictions. And 22% agreed with opening the country to help in the economy during the pandemic.
"People who have nothing to do with tourism would not understand the need to open the country," says Pornthip Hirankate, vice president of marketing at the Tourism Council of Thailand, an industry group. She is referring to Thai citizens who do not work in the tourism industry and benefit from keeping the borders closed.
All this has left those in the international sex industry to find ways to make do. Some have moved their services online, or turned to the domestic market with new small businesses, like selling food.
At another bar a few doors down, one of the dancers propped a cellphone up against an overstuffed makeup case surrounded with half-drunk cups of bubble tea. It was mid-afternoon in Europe — prime time for the women to start performing Facebook Lives. They twisted into the camera, their skin tinged hot pink by the bar's neon lights, hoping to entice a man idly watching on the other side of the world to buy them a shot, paid through PayPal. It's money, but not nearly as much as before.
In Pattaya, the word "Covid" is drifting into a shorthand for economic hardship. Why did they move out of their apartments and into the rooms upstairs from the bar? "Covid." When one of the dancers shook a ceramic piggy bank I had just bought from a street vendor and heard no coins rattling inside, she laughed. "No money! Covid."
Left: M., who asked that her full name not be used, is a dancer and sex worker in Pattaya. It earns her more money than from her previous office job. She chooses clothes from her wardrobe at her home. Right: her room.
Allison Joyce for NPR
M., 37, used to work in an office, but she earned more as a topless dancer in one of Pattaya's go-go bars, and by taking on sex work. Before the pandemic she was saving money to buy more farmland for her family and dreaming of her own rubber tree plantation.
M. dances at a bar. With her income severely cut during the pandemic, she may have to move back to Isaan, the northeastern region where she grew up, and help her mother tend their small plot of rubber trees.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Now, she says, "It's all upside down. Covid." She wired 3,000 baht ($100) she earned in the previous two weeks back to her mother and son, leaving her with 100 baht ($3.30), relying on the hope of making some money that night. If it went on like this, she would have to move back to the province and help her mother tend their small plot of rubber trees.
M. gets ready at the bar where she works in a red-light district in Pattaya.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Vechbanyongratana, the labor economist, says that for people in agricultural areas, migrating to jobs in tourism or manufacturing has long been a strategy for families to earn money. In an economic crisis, like what's unfolding now, "the agricultural household can act as a buffer" against economic shocks. As in previous crises, people who migrated to the cities for work in higher-paying industries can return home to simple lives on their family farms to weather times of hardship.
A poses for a photo at her family farm in a northeastern province. Her first name consists of the single initial.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Three hundred and fifty miles north of Bangkok, in Isaan, a landlocked district of rice paddies and sugarcane fields in northeastern Thailand, a 26-year-old woman whose first name is the letter "A," sat on the floor of her family's porch peeling betel nut and grinding limestone to make into traditional Thai betel chew for her grandmother. Since A moved back in February, she's been spending her time taking care of her grandmother and helping her parents and cousins in the fields.
A passes paan — a stimulant chew made of betel leaves and other ingredients — to her grandmother. Since moving back to her home village, A spends most of her time taking care of her.
Allison Joyce for NPR
A moved to Phuket when she was 17. With the help of her aunt, who worked at a massage parlor, A got a job as a dancer in one of the island's bars, where she worked until she met her boyfriend, a German man who sent her a monthly stipend that allowed her to work at a souvenir shop instead, where she made less money.
A's boyfriend was visiting Thailand in February and March as the scale of the pandemic started to unfold. As a foreigner, the Thai people they met eyed him suspiciously. They asked her how long he'd been in the country, trying to determine if he was a disease vector. When she brought him back to her family home in Isaan, A's mother decamped to the local temple, afraid she would catch COVID-19 from him.
A knows the hardship the pandemic inflicts on people like her. Her friends, mostly dancers in Phuket who'd lost their jobs, flooded her with Facebook messages, desperate and asking for money. The souvenir shop where she worked shut down.
A helps a friend run her stand during a festival in her family's village.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Some of her friends signed up for emergency relief from the government, though that ran out after three months — and many sex workers with informal jobs did not qualify. Others took donations of food from charities, but within a few months that ran out, too. Most are just making do with less in their home provinces, setting up small shops selling milk tea or grilled fish balls, making 100 baht ($3.30) in a day when they used to make $100.
A's boyfriend, who went back to Germany in March, had to cut her stipend from about $1,000 a month to $150 every week or two, as his business struggled. Her backup plan of opening a food stand in front of her family home stalled; she only had enough money to buy three of the four cement posts she needs to build it, and they were stacked in the yard, muddy, vines beginning to climb up their sides.
Still, A supports Thailand's strict measures against the coronavirus. "It's better to close the border," she says. While she understands that it's tough and she pities the people who have lost their jobs, she prefers safety to the money tourists would bring in.
And at least there is an option for many of the sex workers from rural parts of the country, she says: "They can go back home."
Dogs roam at sunset outside A's grandmother's house in a rural village in the Isaan district. A says life in the countryside is not as much fun as in Phuket, the tourist island known for its nightlife where she lived and worked for most of the last eight years, but that living in her small village close to her family is its own kind of happiness.
Allison Joyce for NPR
How The Pandemic Has Upended The Lives Of Thailand's Sex Workers
February 3, 20216:44 AM ET
AURORA AMENDRAL
PHOTOS BY ALLISON JOYCE
Above: N., a sex worker at a bar in Pattaya, Thailand. The sex trade has offered good-paying jobs for many people from rural areas who were facing a life of tending rice paddies and digging up cassava roots.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Mos, 26, was a "moneyboy" — a sex worker — at a gay bar in the Thai tourist hub of Pattaya. For him, it was a dream come true. Now the pandemic has put his dream on hold.
Mos grew up in a poor province on Thailand's northeastern border, eating fish from the river and leaves foraged from the forest. He wanted to eat pork and pizza.
When he graduated from high school, he moved to Pattaya and became a sex worker. He says the job was fun, and the pay was great. He saved up enough money to build a cement house for his family in the countryside. He promised his younger siblings he would send them to college.
"I'm very proud of that," he says.
The relatively empty Patpong red-light district in Bangkok. In March and April, Thailand closed its borders and canceled commercial flights because of the global pandemic. The country's tourism industry — which is entwined with the sex worker industry — collapsed.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Indeed, for people in rural, landlocked provinces, Thailand's tourist hubs offered good-paying jobs for those otherwise facing a life of tending rice paddies and digging up cassava roots — the lives they grew up with and their parents still toiled in.
Mos is one of an estimated 200,000 to more than 1 million sex workers in Thailand, including full-time sex workers affiliated with bars, freelancers supplementing their regular income with occasional prostitution and migrants from bordering countries.
Sex work is practiced openly in the country, but it is illegal and subject to fines or, in rare cases, imprisonment. About 24,000 people were arrested, fined or prosecuted in 2019, according to the Royal Thai Police. Mos and many of the people we interviewed for this article asked that their full names not be used. In many parts of Thailand, the family name has been shamed by association with a stigmatized, illegal business, and individuals have been disowned by their families or ostracized by their community.
Working in the bars of the red-light district pays more than many office jobs or other service work that the women and men in Thailand's sex industry would otherwise qualify for. Sex work has allowed them to save money, buy themselves luxuries and support their parents and grandparents in retirements of ease.
Working in the bars of the red-light district pays more than many office jobs or other service work that the women and men in Thailand's sex industry would otherwise qualify for. Above: Women dance at a bar in the Patpong red-light district in Bangkok.
Allison Joyce for NPR
While revenue for underground activities is difficult to measure, a 2015 analysis by Havocscope, a research company that studies the black market, estimated the Thai sex trade to be worth $6.4 billion a year, or about 3% of the country's gross domestic product.
But now the international sex industry has come to a halt.
It's not because Thailand is seeing high numbers of coronavirus cases. Since the start of the pandemic, Thailand has had about 20,000 confirmed cases and 77 deaths.
Rather, it's the strict measures Thailand has taken to keep the coronavirus at bay.
In March and April, Thailand closed its borders and canceled commercial flights because of the global pandemic. The country's tourism industry — which is entwined with the sex worker industry — collapsed. (While prostitution exists for the domestic Thai market, it is separate from the red-light districts of Thailand's tourist hubs, which cater almost exclusively to foreign visitors.)
Allison Joyce for NPR
More than 10 months later, the country remains largely closed to international tourism. A new wave of infections within Thailand in December has led to renewed lockdowns in several provinces. Pattaya was declared a maximum control zone on Dec. 31 after 144 cases were recorded in the district, closing most public venues, including bars. The country began lifting restrictions in late January.
In April, with rent in Pattaya adding up while he earned no money, Mos piled into a car with a few friends and went back to his hometown, where he now helps his parents sell papaya salad at a street side stall. By October, he had run down his savings.
He longs to go back to his job in Pattaya. "I would love to," Mos said. But he watches the news in Europe and the U.S. with dismay; deadly second waves and new lockdowns mean Thailand would not be opening its borders to tourists any time soon.
An owner of a bar at the Patpong red-light district in Bangkok.
Allison Joyce for NPR
According to government data analyzed by Dr. Yongyuth Chalamwong, research director for the Thailand Development Research Institute, an estimated 1.6 million people have returned from Thailand's tourist areas to the countryside. Those who found a way to stay — by piling into shared rented rooms, sleeping in hallways and cutting their meals to one or two a day — are barely hanging on.
At 11 a.m. at a bar on Soi 6, Pattaya's main red-light strip, the dancers who had moved into the spare rooms upstairs were just waking up, bleary eyed and untangling themselves from rumpled blankets printed with Disney princesses or SpongeBob SquarePants. The women were still in big T-shirts and basketball shorts or loose cotton dresses, their platform heels stacked on the steps of the hot pink-painted stairwell. A washing machine filled with last night's uniform of short shorts and crop tops rumbled in the hall.
Shoes line the stairway by the living quarters for sex workers at a bar in Pattaya.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Downstairs at the bar, the metal gate was rolled halfway up as the dancers got ready for another shift. One woman flat-ironed another's hair as she ate a breakfast of hot noodle soup. Others perched on barstools in front of the mirrors, applying makeup while Thai pop songs played from their phones.
N., 28, who asked that only her first initial be used, says that before the pandemic, "the men would just walk in." They'd buy the women drinks, for which they would earn a 50-baht ($1.60) commission. Perhaps a patron might hire one of them for the evening. On a good night, these sex workers could make as much as 3,000 to 6,000 baht, $100 to $200.
The night before, a Friday, most of them had made no money at all.
They were all working harder and earning less, N. says. There were about a dozen women at each of the Soi 6 bars that managed to stay open, fewer than before, but far outnumbering the foreign customers, most of whom were expats living in Pattaya or visitors from Bangkok.
"Boys, boys, boys, where are you going," the women said as a couple of men strolled by. "I love you!" they yelled at strangers. They pretended to swoon and called every passing man handsome. One woman, tilting on her stilettos, tugged with her full might at a man's arm to pull him in and perhaps oblige him to buy her a shot. He wrestled his arm free and walked on.
At a bar in Pattaya, a woman receives a traditional Thai blessing for good luck. The symbolic gesture of having her hands patted with cash at the start of her shift is meant to help bring money into her hands that night.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Rob, a 59-year-old Australian retiree and regular patron of the bars of Soi 6, who asked not to use his last name because of the sex industry's illegality, says only about a quarter of the bars are open and a quarter of the women have come back to work in them. Retirees on fixed pensions like himself can't make up for the droves of lost international clientele.
"I'm trying my hardest," Rob says, but there's only so much a man can drink — nor does he have the money to hire the women from the bars.
Rob says he can't compete with the clients that those in the industry call "Two-Week Millionaires" — foreign sex tourists.
Timmy, the bar's British manager, who asked that his last name not be used, says they're now left with "Cheap Charlies," low-income expats who sit at the bar nursing a Coke Zero, leering, while declining to buy the dancers drinks.
"It's getting deader and deader," Timmy says.
As much as tourist cities like Pattaya are suffering, the strict measures at the border have been effective in helping to contain the spread of the coronavirus in Thailand. Jessica Vechbanyongratana, a labor economist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, emphasized that keeping the borders closed at the expense of the tourism industry allowed the rest of the economy to reopen. Tourism is a large part of the economy, she says, "but it is not the entire economy."
Before the round of new restrictions that began in late December, which are now in the process of being lifted, Thailand's strict measures had allowed a level of normalcy to return to everyday life. Outside tourist areas, offices and government buildings were open and the malls and markets were crowded. In Bangkok, the capital, the streets were clogged with traffic, and the subway system was packed with riders. At bars and restaurants, people gathered freely.
The sense of safety is something a majority of Thais are keen to protect. An October 2020 poll by the National Institute for Development Administration, an educational institution, found that 57% of Thais did not want to open the country to tourism, another 20% slightly agreed that it would bring money in, but stressed the need for restrictions. And 22% agreed with opening the country to help in the economy during the pandemic.
"People who have nothing to do with tourism would not understand the need to open the country," says Pornthip Hirankate, vice president of marketing at the Tourism Council of Thailand, an industry group. She is referring to Thai citizens who do not work in the tourism industry and benefit from keeping the borders closed.
All this has left those in the international sex industry to find ways to make do. Some have moved their services online, or turned to the domestic market with new small businesses, like selling food.
At another bar a few doors down, one of the dancers propped a cellphone up against an overstuffed makeup case surrounded with half-drunk cups of bubble tea. It was mid-afternoon in Europe — prime time for the women to start performing Facebook Lives. They twisted into the camera, their skin tinged hot pink by the bar's neon lights, hoping to entice a man idly watching on the other side of the world to buy them a shot, paid through PayPal. It's money, but not nearly as much as before.
In Pattaya, the word "Covid" is drifting into a shorthand for economic hardship. Why did they move out of their apartments and into the rooms upstairs from the bar? "Covid." When one of the dancers shook a ceramic piggy bank I had just bought from a street vendor and heard no coins rattling inside, she laughed. "No money! Covid."
Left: M., who asked that her full name not be used, is a dancer and sex worker in Pattaya. It earns her more money than from her previous office job. She chooses clothes from her wardrobe at her home. Right: her room.
Allison Joyce for NPR
M., 37, used to work in an office, but she earned more as a topless dancer in one of Pattaya's go-go bars, and by taking on sex work. Before the pandemic she was saving money to buy more farmland for her family and dreaming of her own rubber tree plantation.
M. dances at a bar. With her income severely cut during the pandemic, she may have to move back to Isaan, the northeastern region where she grew up, and help her mother tend their small plot of rubber trees.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Now, she says, "It's all upside down. Covid." She wired 3,000 baht ($100) she earned in the previous two weeks back to her mother and son, leaving her with 100 baht ($3.30), relying on the hope of making some money that night. If it went on like this, she would have to move back to the province and help her mother tend their small plot of rubber trees.
M. gets ready at the bar where she works in a red-light district in Pattaya.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Vechbanyongratana, the labor economist, says that for people in agricultural areas, migrating to jobs in tourism or manufacturing has long been a strategy for families to earn money. In an economic crisis, like what's unfolding now, "the agricultural household can act as a buffer" against economic shocks. As in previous crises, people who migrated to the cities for work in higher-paying industries can return home to simple lives on their family farms to weather times of hardship.
A poses for a photo at her family farm in a northeastern province. Her first name consists of the single initial.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Three hundred and fifty miles north of Bangkok, in Isaan, a landlocked district of rice paddies and sugarcane fields in northeastern Thailand, a 26-year-old woman whose first name is the letter "A," sat on the floor of her family's porch peeling betel nut and grinding limestone to make into traditional Thai betel chew for her grandmother. Since A moved back in February, she's been spending her time taking care of her grandmother and helping her parents and cousins in the fields.
A passes paan — a stimulant chew made of betel leaves and other ingredients — to her grandmother. Since moving back to her home village, A spends most of her time taking care of her.
Allison Joyce for NPR
A moved to Phuket when she was 17. With the help of her aunt, who worked at a massage parlor, A got a job as a dancer in one of the island's bars, where she worked until she met her boyfriend, a German man who sent her a monthly stipend that allowed her to work at a souvenir shop instead, where she made less money.
A's boyfriend was visiting Thailand in February and March as the scale of the pandemic started to unfold. As a foreigner, the Thai people they met eyed him suspiciously. They asked her how long he'd been in the country, trying to determine if he was a disease vector. When she brought him back to her family home in Isaan, A's mother decamped to the local temple, afraid she would catch COVID-19 from him.
A knows the hardship the pandemic inflicts on people like her. Her friends, mostly dancers in Phuket who'd lost their jobs, flooded her with Facebook messages, desperate and asking for money. The souvenir shop where she worked shut down.
A helps a friend run her stand during a festival in her family's village.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Some of her friends signed up for emergency relief from the government, though that ran out after three months — and many sex workers with informal jobs did not qualify. Others took donations of food from charities, but within a few months that ran out, too. Most are just making do with less in their home provinces, setting up small shops selling milk tea or grilled fish balls, making 100 baht ($3.30) in a day when they used to make $100.
A's boyfriend, who went back to Germany in March, had to cut her stipend from about $1,000 a month to $150 every week or two, as his business struggled. Her backup plan of opening a food stand in front of her family home stalled; she only had enough money to buy three of the four cement posts she needs to build it, and they were stacked in the yard, muddy, vines beginning to climb up their sides.
Still, A supports Thailand's strict measures against the coronavirus. "It's better to close the border," she says. While she understands that it's tough and she pities the people who have lost their jobs, she prefers safety to the money tourists would bring in.
And at least there is an option for many of the sex workers from rural parts of the country, she says: "They can go back home."
Dogs roam at sunset outside A's grandmother's house in a rural village in the Isaan district. A says life in the countryside is not as much fun as in Phuket, the tourist island known for its nightlife where she lived and worked for most of the last eight years, but that living in her small village close to her family is its own kind of happiness.
Allison Joyce for NPR
Many of these girls if they return to their villages won't die of starvation. We in Sinkiepoor no job or hard cash sure die standing.
In my next life, I want to be a screw salesman in Thailand.Lobster dinner
1.7kg of lobster
2 starters before the main course, calamari
and rocket
Lobster is big so done 2 styles, first with pasta
then simply grilled
Love the two big pincers, soft and succulent
Better do good karma, else kena miss hit as shrew
You must be a "special" kind of screw salesman to be on par with Froggy's status. Many of my kakis here in Thailand have never heard of local screw salesmen living the kind of life presented by Froggy...
Super extraordinary screw salesman!You must be a "special" kind of screw salesman to be on par with Froggy's status. Many of my kakis here in Thailand have never heard of local screw salesmen living the kind of life presented by Froggy...
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