The Good Manner: Advice on Thailand from WoWasis’ Pa Farang
This week’s dilemma: Thai prostitutes are in my hotel 

Dear Pa Farang, 

I’ve been brought over here from Singapore to manage a hotel, and, as a western-educated woman, I’ve become concerned that our hotel bar has become inundated with Thai prostitutes, who appear at all hours in our hotel bar. I didn’t have a prostitute problem when I managed our hotel in Kansas City, as we just called the police, and had them all thrown out. Here, I can’t tell the difference between regular girls and those selling themselves for money. When I ask my Thai employees to fix the problem, they just shake their heads and smile. Can you give me a pointer or two on how I can clean up my bar? 

–          Trying to go the straight and narrow 

Dear S & N, 

Welcome to Thailand. Western managers working in Thailand often find themselves in a situation where they can’t understand the Thai class structure, and the lack of the western concept of “sin.” Here’s an explanation. Thailand, like the U.S., is a democratic nation.  Unlike the U.S. it is class-conscious. A girl coming from a poor rice-farming family in the northeast has, most probably, a sixth-grade education.  After the age of 12, she’s expected to help out with farming tasks, and school takes a back-seat.  If she doesn’t want to continue doing back-breaking farm labor, she often comes to Bangkok, where she engages in either back-breaking construction work, or finger-breaking work at large factories.  Eventually, she’ll meet girls from her locality who meet travelers, have sex with them, and make more money in one evening than they could in a month of manual labor.  They elect to join them.  Thai girls do not necessarily think sex out of wedlock is a crime.  Instead, they look at this as not only a money-making activity, but also as a way to meet a potential husband. 

These are the girls you refer to as prostitutes.  They are making their way to the top, without the educational or job opportunities that western girls have.  And that’s the reason you have a difficult time telling the difference between regular girls and irregular girls.  Thai irregular girls send copious amounts of money home to their families, and in doing so, pay for farm mortgages and university opportunities for family members. That is why your Thai employees won’t help you.  The vast majority of them have relatives engaged in the same activity, and recognize that, in the Thai dynamic, this is the way things work. 

So what will you do?  Most hotels have recognized the fact that it’s up to the traveler to determine what, if any, interaction he’d like to have with a Thai girl from any class. You can, of course, make your club inaccessible to those without memberships, or high entry fees.  Then, you stand the risk of losing the very clientele you’re trying to attract.  Many hotels take the tack of letting things happen as they happen, and concern themselves with counting the money at the end of the day.  It is up to you to decide whether making money or keeping to your own personal moral code is the bottom line. 

Marayat dee,  

– Pa Farang 

Read Pa Farang’s other columns in WoWasis for more advice on relationships and cultural matters in Southeast Asia