Sex Tourism

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shygye said:

I have seen more money spent in NEP than Gaysorn Plaza.

Not sure I understand your point.

 

shygye said:

You are also forgetting the Malaysians popping across the border for

 

I have spent many weekends in Hat Yai and Sunai Kelok, trust me, the Malaysian ain't spending $27 million every day either. ::

 

Don't get me wrong, there is no doubt that some big money gets spent in Thailand by sex tourists, IMHO it is nowhere near $10 billion a year which is what some people claimed when the 6% of GDP was claimed.

TH

[bibblies]

You also forgot to include massage girls, karaoke girls and freelancers and other places apart from Bangkok, Pattaya (and there just the gogo areas within) in your Rose Bowl calculation. 250,000 is less than 1% of the female Thai population. How many Thai women do you think have had sex for financial gain with a non-Thai sometime in their lives, if only for a brief period? Quite a few have at least tried it, I think.

 

$27m seems large but if you said each tourist spent $150 a day on everything (including hotels, food, transport, bar fines, gifts, incidentals, etc) which isn't infeasible then you'd need a number of 180,000 tourists to get it. If you think that over 5,000 Swedes could have died in Phuket alone in one day alone and that Sweden's not a particularly big country, then consider how many Brits and Americans come here and then remember to include the Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Koreans and Malaysians and then the rest of the world, then it doesn't seem so unachievable.

 

Btw, if I'd chosen your method for US porn (assuming each citizen indulged) then I could have divided the $27m by all 10 million or so of Thailand's foreign tourists! I can't see all of those Mid-Western folks all forking out their $40 for Chicks With Dicks 11... ::

[Guest]

[color:"white"] XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX [/color] [color:"blue"] $27 million US dollars/day could easily disappear in Thailand. [/color]

 

 

[color:"white"] XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX [/color] Here is where the bulk of the money goes:

 

[color:"green"] Some of the girls have sent to them every month at least 10,000 baht and some get 40,000 baht. Multiply this by 10 'husbands' and you have a nice silent income each month between 100,000 to 400,000 baht. This translates to an extra income of about 3,300 to 13,300 baht per day! [/color]

 

Then there is the up front payment for a

ring - 4000 baht.

bracelet - 8000 baht.

necklace - 32000 baht

car - 1,000,000 baht

house - 3,000,000 baht

 

 

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[shygye]

My point is you do not see the guy paying $200/night at JWM. You do not see the guy that paid 4000 Baht at the MP in the afternoon. Do you even know how much revenue the Rainbow bars generate per day? What about the Kings Group?

[Guest]

Whichever way you look at it Thailand reaps a rich harvest from sex tourists. I don't think anyone really knows how much is spent directly or indirectly. There are many grey areas when it comes to sex tourism. There are guys with Thai girlfriends and wives who could still be considered sex tourists but their spending would never show up as money spent on sex tourism. There are thousands of guys working in the Gulf with Thai women who they plucked out of the sex industry and made them their wives or girlfriends.

Then there are all the bars and brothels who don't declare the correct amount of income. Sex tourists need hotels food planes etc so there is also that aspect.

Thailand also recieves a lot of income from all the Thai gals who work overseas in Europe Asia the Gulf etc that is a sort of reverse sex tourism if you like.

Many Thais are highly dependent on the sex industry for their bread and butter and it is unlikely that this situation is going to change any time in the near future.

Good point. This, in large part, is why I have tried to steer my argument clear of estimates on sex tourism's direct contribution to GDP. Even those who have seriously studied the matter - people like Dr. Pasuk (she co-authored the book on Thaksin with Chris Baker) - acknowledge that the numbers are very fuzzy.

 

But she also emphasizes that even though the numbers are fuzzy, p4p and, by implication, sex tourism, is significant to the Thai economy and the "financial mainstay" of many Thai people. She describes it as "hundred billion baht business", and I have no doubt that she is right.