Guest Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 Shotover asks fly, ?Would you mind expanding on these traditional village structures?? Hope fly doesn?t mind if I weigh in on this. Idealistically when a girl was of marriage age, 14-15 years old, a marriage was arranged, dowry paid and the husband would live with brides family and help with the farming. Families had enough land to accommodate and welcomed the extra help. The dowry was re-invested in the bride and groom maybe expanding the farm, new home for the newlyweds etc. Nowadays dowry is squandered on motorcycles, pickups, marriage party, drinking and gambling. Farms are mortgaged at obscene interest rates so the son-in-law might work abroad, an exorbitant fee paid to brokers. Often the loan is not repaid and the farms are lost to money lenders or brokers. The son-in-laws are expected to go work in Bangkok and send money back to the village to support lazy in-laws. They end up abandoning their wives and children and sometimes I can't blame them. The daughters also go to work, in the factories, bars, brothels, MPs etc. to help support their lazy, greedy, families. I think that people misunderstand what poverty in LOS is. I see villagers with enough food, access to medical care with clothes on their backs and a roof over their heads sitting on their backsides eating, drinking whiskey, and buying lottery tickets. I see them living on a piece of land for twenty years and 90% of the land is left fallow because they are to lazy to haul water 100 meters to keep fruit trees or vegetable gardens alive through the dry season. Sorry about the rant and generalizations but so many people assume that poverty drives the girls to prostitution. OK, if they don't have enough food for their family or need medicine they can't afford, then you can say that selling their body is a neccessity. It is really just an occupation, better paying than the alternatives and yes, maybe a way to meet someone who will take care of them. Personally I have no problem with this career choice. Some of my best friends are prostitutes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanukdee Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 <<Statistics show there are just as many prostitutes in Australia per head of population as there are in Thailand.>> Where did you find those fuzzy statistics? No way. You don't actually believe this do you?!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 Quote: "That's actually crap. Statistics show there are just as many prostitutes in Australia per head of population as there are in Thailand." I am also curious about the source of your statistics. I am no Australia expert, but I have been there several times, and I don't recall seeing anything that came close to what you find in Thailand. Maybe there is another part of Australia I have not yet seen. Quote: "re the mia noi to a rich man etc...that goes on everywhere. Go to any big firm in the west and you'll always find guys in their 40's with young girls hanging off them...because they like the fact the guy can take them to Fiji / Bali for a holiday...take her out in his new BMW...while the guy her own age has hardly a cent to his name." I travelled to NYC several months ago. I work in the financial sector here in Bangkok (I will leave it at that) and still have many friends in the financial sector in NYC. They are all my age; in other words, they are in their 40's. Several are now partners at big accounting firms. None of them have young girls hanging off of them. And not for want of trying. Mostly they come here for that because it is not available for them in the U.S. Maybe my friends are just sad sacks. But this suggestion that Thailand and "the west" are the same when it comes to this sort of thing strikes me as ludicrous. I am not making a judgement call on whether it is good or bad. And I do agree that it is a matter of choice, and that there are other options. But trying to suggest that Thailand is just like the west on this issue strikes me as off the wall. It is not a matter of unfair sterotypes; it is a simple recognition of reality. ...or perhaps I have been out here for too long and there have been radical changes in the west that I just haven't noticed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJsushi Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 I travelled to NYC several months ago. I work in the financial sector here in Bangkok (I will leave it at that) and still have many friends in the financial sector in NYC. They are all my age; in other words, they are in their 40's. Several are now partners at big accounting firms. None of them have young girls hanging off of them. And not for want of trying. Mostly they come here for that because it is not available for them in the U.S. Maybe my friends are just sad sacks [color:purple] Your friends are sad sacks as well as clueless because I have also worked in the Financial district in NYC. I know many a Managing Director and Wall St trader that had a stripper girlfriend or a kept lady on the side. While the wife was home in upstate New York or Greenwich CT taking care of the kids. There are quite a few brothels in NYC if you know where to go, I'm talking Manhattan proper(the boroughs are a whole other world). I won't even bore you with the number of call-ins available from the classifieds or internet. Did you ever wonder why the masseuse section in the classifieds was so large? The prostitution scene in the States may not be as visible as LOS but trust me it is very large and thriving. You did mention that your friends were accounting types so that actually explains why they have no clue. color=purple> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pattaya127 Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 It's wrong to stereotype Thai's for things that happen everywhere ---------------------------- Ok, tell us where is the australian Pattaya, and while you are at it, the french, american, english, italian etc..... Also, if guys do not have the time to leave the big cities, just tell us the name of neighboroods or street where tourists and expats in Australia go and avoid the sleazy feel of the local brothels and streets of shame, as they do in Patpong and Sukhumvit sois. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 Hey, bean counters having feelings too But seriously, are you actually claiming that NYC is on par with Bangkok when it comes to available attractive woman for middle aged men? Are you seriously claiming that young, attractive woman are as available to 40ish professional men in NYC as they are in Bangkok? Boy, if this is true, I really do have some sad sack friends. But fortunately for my friends, I don?t quite buy what you?re selling. So you also worked in the NYC financial district and know ?many a Managing Director ? that had a stripper girlfriend or a kept lady on the side.? For someone who worked in New York?s financial district, that is an interesting choice of words. Although you constantly hear references to the ?Managing Director? here in Asia and in Europe, that term is rarely used in the U.S. In fact, I have had to explain to colleagues here from the U.S. exactly what a ?Managing Director? is (or what I think it is, since I was trained in the U.S. and we don?t use that term) on several occasions because they were unfamiliar with the term. I will agree that many things are available in NYC, but it seems like quite a stretch to claim they are as available in NYC as they are here in Bangkok. And I note that you carefully avoided making that claim. The point here is not the existence of prostitution, mistresses, mia nois and whatever outside of Thailand, but the substantially greater prevalence of these, uh um?"options? (forgive me, but I am bean counter, and thus, lack the creativity to find an 18 year old mia noi in NYC or a more descriptive term) in the Big Mango. P.S. My world is not that limited; I also have friends in the exciting field of economics! Hey, I even know a few investment bankers and CEOs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mentors Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 because there are some places with big white skinned long nose guys throwing a lot of money around so this is why TG become BG. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJsushi Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 Are you seriously claiming that young, attractive woman are as available to 40ish professional men in NYC as they are in Bangkok? [color:purple] if you have the cash the NYC chicks are very available. Problem is that not many guys can afford the chicks; the same as if one was making Thai wages then they couldn't afford most of their extra activities with the Thai ladies. Foreigners can afford the Thai scene because of the value of their currency. I am sure that if one had to pay the equivalent on a relative basis in their currency to a native hooker then one would easily be priced out of the P4P arena. Unless that is you mess with skanky street walkers. I will not go as far to say that the prostitution scene as a whole in the States is larger than in Thailand on a percentage basis. I really don't know those numbers. I will say that the P4P scene in the States is way larger than most people realize and readily accessible if one knows how to look and is willling to pay for it. color=purple> For someone who worked in New York?s financial district, that is an interesting choice of words. Although you constantly hear references to the ?Managing Director? here in Asia and in Europe, that term is rarely used in the U.S. [color:purple] The term is still very alive and well used at investment banks and money management firms. One of the last vestiges left over from the partnership days. Maybe they don't use it in the accounting field nowadays but it is still abundant on Wall St. The term "principal" is the one I rarely hear these days. BTW- Economists are even worse than accountants. The only way they indulge in P4P is to collect third party data for a supply and demand schedule. color=purple> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 i make always a distinction between material poverty and cultural poverty. when both go hand in hand it is the worst. that is what i see happening in the villages here. somehow all the incentitive for selfimprovement is gone here. another side is the endresult. when people have lost their land it is basically impossible to buy it back due to the artificially inflated land prices. when someone is finally reduced to a landless labour he will never be able to buy enough land to start again. the land distribution system for the poor is so riddled with corruption that the ones who actually need the land have to wait for a generation. one of my missus's younger brothers registered years ago, he gave up, seeing the guys close to the puyaiban getting all the land while he gets none. the last straw was the incredible rise of drugaddiction after the crises. before the crises in the villages you saw the old and the children, now they are crowded again. with the young unemployed. they are bored to death, surviving from the few daylabour jobs available and spending most of their income on jaa maa, killing their depressions. during the boom, when all what you described happened, so many there were under the illusion that they gonna be part of that great modern world, selling off their farms, buying pick up trucks, having these jobs in the city. now they are back again, all the new beautyful stuff reposessed, the land gone forever, no jobs. i don't know, but much of it i blame on the politics since the last decades. no one prepared those people for the changes thailand has to go through, and for the adaptations they have to make. when i look at my wife's family i see their minds still living in the old days when you were able to live from day to day. enough food to hunt, plenty of land. those times are over. i think they started realising that, but they just are lost somewhere in between. so much of the poverty here is in the mind. and changing that is a very difficult undertaking, a very slow process. yesterday, in a taxi, the driver listened to an endless lecture in the radio about the selfsufficiency farming system. they talked about how to make their own fertilizers, about the advantages not to be in the debt trap small scale commercial farming brings you. very good, the only problem is that the farmers already in the debt trap cannot change to that system as they have to pay their debts first. catch 22. and the landless can't get the land where they would be able to start off again. catch 22. what it would need would be a serious political will to sort that stuff out. but i don't see that happening. only empty talk and a publicity catching drugwar. great, catch the addicts, send them to a reeducation camp for some time, release them into exactly the same depressing situation they started off with. catch 22. catch 22. catch 22... cancel their debts if they change to selfsufficiency farming. give land to the poor which they can't sell, if they do selfsufficiency farming. i believe that this could be an important first step in solving thailands huge problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 3, 2002 Report Share Posted August 3, 2002 "You did mention that your friends were accounting types so that actually explains why they have no clue." Maybe they work at Andersen? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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