A future for Soi Pratuchai?

[fountainhall]

Soi Pratuchai, and other bar zones in Thailand, will continue for sometime yet, but will rely increasingly on foreign guys as they can't find Thai's to do the job, anymore than the construction industry can, or the food processing or fishing industries can. The business will turn increasingly to the dark side as more human traffickers move in.

I've written about Alex Kerr's book "Bangkok Found: Reflections on the City" before and his very perceptive comments not only on Thai culture but also his views on the Thai sex business. Given the comments in this thread, I think it's appropriate to repeat some of his writing. Kerr who admits in the book he is gay has lived in Asia for most of his life - in Bangkok for over 20 years. The book was published in 2010 and is based on his observations and discussions with a wide variety of academics, professionals and ordinary Thais. This is an exceedingly well thought-through and illuminating book, nothing like the cheap novels of the lives of go-go boys.

For whatever reason, Bangkok unquestionably has the most extensive and international gay scene in all of Asia . . . Yet despite the festival atmosphere at Silom, Thai society is hardly the open sexual paradise that many foreigners imagine. This is another of those illusions propagated by the constant surface smile of sanuk . . . In fact there's a strong streak of puritanism running through modern Thai society. Austere Chinese morality, which frowns on sensual indulgence, plays a role, due to the large share of Bangkok's population with Chinese roots. You can also see vestiges of colonial Western values from the 19th century which Thailand took to heart in the process of modernization . . .

Underlying this is a sense of revulsion that society at large expresses against the more obvious signs of Bangkok's booming sex business, It gives the city an unsavoury air, and is a source of embarrassment internationally . . . Ironically, openness to foreigners works against Bangkok in the eyes of the world. Prostitution is just as large a business in Japan as it is in Thailand, maybe even larger, but it bothers foreign visitors and journalists much less, if at all. One doesn't often see an outraged article about the scandalous sexuality of modern Tokyo. This is because most of the sex is not accessible to foreigners; they just don't see it. In fact, much of Thai prostitution is also hidden . . . and the customers are in the vast majority Thai, not foreign.

I have what I call "the Weimar Republic theory" of Bangkok. As dramatised in the movie Cabaret, there was a brief moment of sinful freedom in Berlin during the Weimar Republic (1919 to 1933). It was the era of Kurt Weill's bittersweet music and Christopher Isherwood's novels and stories. By the mid-1930s the Nazis had stamped it out, and eventually all that remained was a legend of "Berlin in the 20s." Those who experienced it spent the rest of their lives telling others of the wild days that were now gone forever.

In time, the more outrageous forms that prostitution takes in Bangkok will disappear. For those things, Bangkok stands far out on the scale of what most cities in the world see as acceptable. I don't believe it will last. Slowly but surely we are seeing a clampdown, and it's a matter of time before the "sinful" Bangkok we see today fades away into legend, just as 1920s Berlin did.

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