Penny Walker: Bangkok's sinister world of shame

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BANGKOK - In New Zealand taking your kids to play at a friend's house is likely to mean a walk around the corner or a quick trip in the car.

When my son is invited to play at Henrik's house, we take the skytrain then walk down Soi Nana past the bars where Bangkok's tourist sex industry thrives.

Henrik's house is just beyond them, opposite the Topsy-Turvy pre-school.

I walk with loathing and curiosity. This is the buying and selling of sex on the footpath after school.

We once saw a man walk towards us. His eyes were fixed on a poised, delicate Thai beauty standing nonchalantly outside a bar. He moved towards her with the heavy, breathless waddle of the obese.

Sweat dampened his bright yellow T-shirt and matching baggy knit shorts. It dripped down his calves into his grubby, grey runners.

As we walked by he took her shoulder and said, "I need you".

My son asked me why this man needed this woman. I found an answer for a child.

Bernard Trink is a weekly columnist for the Bangkok Post. He gives tips to readers, writing openly of his experience with prostitutes.

He advises that if you make the rounds often and are observant, you can find young women new to the trade, very inexperienced, easily hurt and tearful.

"Are we done yet, can I go?" she will ask him.

Trink says this sort of girl is his favourite. He shares his technique for training these girls until they become fond of you and more.

It doesn't mix well with the cornflakes and my daughters who read newspapers.

Foreign sex tourists share my sky train carriage. A pack of British lads sit large and loud. They look like they've come from a sports match; they've probably just walked off a plane.

Their first day in Bangkok and they're in high spirits. "Look at that ... traffic!" one exclaims to his friend and points out the window. The quiet neatly-dressed Thais sitting next to him say nothing.

It's standing room only, so I have put my supermarket shopping on the floor. A watermelon rolls out and hits a thug's foot. Embarrassed I retrieve it and joke, "Do you play soccer?"

"Yes, but not with melons," he leers at me as he cups his hands, "I like playing with two melons in my hands."

His mates laugh. With a coward's smile, I say ruefully that that is what most men come here for.

He stands; it's their station. He's a scary Jonah Lomu size.

"Not us" he says as they leave. "We only came for the shopping."

They laugh all the way through the doors and down the stairs.

At McDonald's, among the happy meals and ice creams, I witness the termination of a contract.

Opposite us, a young Thai woman sits unsuccessfully stemming tears. The man beside her lays money on the table.

It looks like a deal gone wrong. Perhaps he isn't going to marry her after all. Perhaps he is flying home that night to his wife in Christchurch.

With pauses and further tears, the cash keeps going down, note on note. What price is her grief?

Distracted by demands for more tomato sauce I miss his departure. I see her walk out alone; her head is high. No time for tears. She is looking for a new client.

Outside McDonald's, we pass tourists shopping for bargains on bright street stalls. They are hand in hand with their rented girls. Many have an air of failure about them.

Our Western world has spat them out - lonely, unattractive, below par, the old and fat, the socially incompetent, the slow. In Thailand they are wealthy, attractive and powerful.

They can buy a $50 rip-off Louis Vuitton bag for their wife, or a young Thai girl for themselves.

Many girls are beautiful with their slight figures and brown eyes. They gently pat their clients' paunches. "Big boy" they call him and tell him he is handsome.

For the first time in his life he has a bevy of beauties surrounding him. They laugh enthusiastically at his drunken jokes. She pretends to like him long enough to get paid, and he suspends disbelief.

When I pick up my son from his friend's house and we walk back past the bars, he will chatter about his whimsical world of dragons and danger, of soccer games, winning and losing.

He's oblivious to the adult fantasy world in the streets we are on, a sinister world where I see no winners.

I want him to close his eyes so I can carry him home.