This is one of the most interesting posts I've read on sgt over the past few years. Really enlightening - a great read. Newalaan I hope you can post more down the track.
Thanks.
This is one of the most interesting posts I've read on sgt over the past few years. Really enlightening - a great read. Newalaan I hope you can post more down the track.
Thanks.
thanks for an excellent inside look at life and the options for young issan men.
can you say more about the one lad that lasted a month in the gay bar?
here in chiang mai the underclass (often illegal) is shan state boys.
when they are illegal, they are exploited with day work typically paying 150-200 baht/day
who tends to work at a gay bar longer seems to depend on 3 factors:
not already having a reasonable day job (working day + night results in a quick burnout--even if they want that new iphone);
being offed at least a few times per month;
developing good social connections at the bar;
since the boys are not offed very often, most of their work time is with each other, if a new
boy has a good social fit with the others at the bar, it makes being there much better.
here the boys have the option of saying no to a customer. they seem to do that one out of 10 or 20 customers,
usually because the customer is drunk. a new boy that fits in is told which customers can be a problem.
"So the main options for a gay lad in bfs Issan village are still the same as a decade ago. Work on the family land/family enterprise, pick up a good shopwork job with a steady income (Bt7-10,000 per month) in the area, move to an area with factory work (Bt10-Bt15,000 per month) or consider trying your luck in Pattaya/bkk bars/massage."
Great post. The quote above led me to think about some of the guys (6) I have known for more about 15 years. They all came from the same village near Korat. All friends of my fiance (yes, he and I will marry in the next few weeks in USA).
During the last 5 years, they have either started their own business or started working for Ford, Mazda, or Toyota. None had more that a high school education (most 6 grade). None other than my fiance, has the support of a farang.
All have a fairly new truck or car. 2 have been able to open a business for their parents. All go back to there village when they can,
Those that work for the car companies (3) do have good salaries, are paid overtime, get paid vacations, and so far a substantial yearly bonus in excess of 100,000. They also get job training. One sent to a plant in Japan for 2 weeks.
I believe that these opportunities did not exist for many Thais then. Maybe the opportunities to move closer to middle class are improving in Thailand.
Another observation, several of those working at bars/massage are Laos and Burmese.
Just to put some detail on the guys I refer to on the thread and may pop up if I post a follow-up post (the stuff I cut out from the original post as it was far too rambling and long). I have a thai bf whom I met in Oct 2006 in the home town/village I describe in the post. We didn't become 'an item' until 2007 a good few months later. So for the first 6-7 years of Thailand trips I visited Bkk, Pattaya, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Cha Am/HuaHin regularly and had various overnighters, giks, fuck-buddies, bar boys etc... just like most of us here have experienced and no doubt are still experiencing!
I also have known my closest and most trusted thai friend (apart from bf) for near 14 years whom I met on my very first trip to Thailand in a folk club/pua-chee-wit venue. He is straight with occasional bi-moments. He is married now with a son. I borrow his pick-up to travel round Thailand when visiting. He and my bf have turned into very good, trusted close friends, although bf is more at home with his lady..haha.. He used to have a typical Issan food roadside eatery with 5-6 tables/living accommodation attached in Ayutthaya for a few years until the big floods a couple years back. He then moved to Navanakorn to find steady work with his lady. Coincidentally it was the very same area (couple kms apart) that our gay friends from bf's village went to work. There are also 2 female friends from the village who have worked in Navanakorn for 3-4 years previously who the gay lads stayed until they found their own apartments. These were the reasons I found myself visiting Navankorn every trip for the last 2-3 years.
I have another Thai guy, (now only friend), who was a fuck-buddy before I met my bf who lived in Bkk but was not in the sex-industry with a very stable home life... mother in local government.... father pen-pusher in police. He was not one of the sheep and had a mind of his own which his parents have been very understanding of. They accept his gayness and I am his only Western friend......again they accepted that. We finished as occasional lovers after I met my bf, but have kept in touch and he gets on ok with bf when we met up and have gone out to the clubs/bars in Rachada and elsewhere around Bkk....but never Silom he really wouldn't be seen dead there. That is how dismissive his friends are about boys in the sex trade.
I have a number of gay lads I know who were previously long time sex buddies, working boys from Pattaya, again before I met bf some who still work in Pattaya bars many now waiters, managers etc.. including M the owner of Happy Place who I met the very first week he arrived in Pattaya from his home in Bkk to work the bars. That was my connection to Neal and the ONLY common ground I shared with him. From that relationship I have a great deal of detail from Neals time as bar and forum owner but which I would not post on public forums as that would be lowering myself to Neal's gutter dwelling life, and anyway, have yet to establish from the owner here what subjects can be tackled without concern of deletion or censorship.
I actually cut out a stack of text after I read back the post to correct spelling errors and realised I had rambled far more than I thought as I composed it 'on the hoof' without any real structure. I had moved on to talk about life in the village for gay lads and examples of some misconceptions of attitudes to westerners and aspects of village and gay life in the 'sticks' some who have never visited might have. I'll try find time to re-post it.Originally Posted by a447
Well I had always been aware of these areas due to various friends not really connected to the sex scene going to work there for periods of time. When my long time friend and bfs friends from the village went to work there I started visiting more regularly and finding out bit by bit.
Originally I went there with my bf to visit my long time friend (i'll call Tee) whom we had visited regularly when he lived in Ayutthaya with his lady, then moved to Navanakorn after Ayutthaya was flooded and their small eatery and room were ruined. But yes, no problem with me visiting the area and although I get a lot of double-takes from many thais as they are not used to seeing a white face, I am welcomed everywhere I go. I can speak a very little thai so can order food, talk to motocy taxi drivers, bar staff, shop staff and general folk which clearly helps. I always usually remember to talk 'normal' thai in Bkk as opposed to throwing in the Lao/issan words I hear all the time, as I only learned thai from books for the first 2 years after which I got lazy and just used the same language of the thais I was 'socialising' with...oh and from songs on Karaoke VCDS I played on my portable DVD.
Yes, residents are free to do what they like and no restrictions on who can come and go. The apartment blocks are 5 storeys, all have balconies, lots of street parking all round. There is even a central bin collection/emptying centre where the refuse trucks collect rubbish and residents can clean out their wheeled-bins and leave them to dry in the daytime sun. There are absolutely NO SHOPS within the apartment blocks area, only room for parking and motocy taxis. But everything is a stones-throw outside the apartment block compound and everything within is very orderly, clean and well kept. The 'town' area with the shops, restaurants and bars has only one way in and one way out, which is why unless someone takes you there specifically you would probably never know of it's existence, yet there are thousands of people. It is very ghetto-like.
It is set apart from the main Navanakorn through which the main Bkk trunk road from the North/north-east runs. The traffic jams on this 5 km strech last from 8am Sunday morning to midnight, and every night from 5pm to 10-11pm. The highway is in fact one long and slow que with dozens and dozens of buses in the jam. These are the chartered buses for the workers of specific factories who transport their workers to the further-flung living areas outside Navanakorn itself...even as far as Ayutthaya. It is actually difficult to take-in the numbers involved in the industry there. The numbers are staggering.
Thanks for the education and website link. When I hear Thais mention Saeng-Jan, it has sounded to me like, sanjan, sainjan, sentjan....but I have never seen it Romanised anywhere. I knew it meant "moonlight" as it is the name of one of the most favourite and well-known songs of Thai folk/rock superstars Maleehuanna. Who write deep meaningful, thoughtful songs about life.....and it's good and bad elements, romantic and realistic looks on life, and are my, and many of my thai friends favourite band of Thai musicians.
Ah yes "kommentariat" I deliberately kept out any politics and opinions I may have.......in favour of a factual account of my experiences to save getting into any disagreements/arguments etc.. as opinions tend to encourage. I have the same opinion of Organised Religion through the centuries to now, but that's a different thread.
Anyway according to my bf thai politics have "nothing to do with me". BUT! of course you are correct with your comments as you already know, and even from my occasional interaction with more middle class Hi-so Thais I can gauge their snooty, superior attitude to lower classes and working class boys, although my middle class bkk friend is very open minded many of his 'friends' who seem to accept me ok, are downright insulting to boys who work in the sex industry.
From my observations in Navanakorn I can see the full extent of the unskilled factory fodder you mention and the sheer numbers it takes to keep that industrial output going. It is difficult not to compare those bland purpose-built apartment blocks for the workers in Navanakorn to the same equivalent rows of terraced housing built by factory owners during the British Industrial Revolution in the Northern English towns and cities last century. But the actual politics are for another thread.
I do know one Thai who I helped to leave the bar scene and who did get a job with Ford at their plant in Laem Chabang . Although the pay is decent it still is a hard life for him. But a100,000 TB annual bonus? That would be equal to what they earn in one year.
What an excellent, detailed and thoughtful topic you've started Alaan. I can relate to a lot of what you've included in your original post - especially the time line.
The board needs much more of posts such as yours. (I'm thinking already).
Just another reason why I love living in Thailand
Great thread and some very valid observations.
Here in Chiang Mai most of the time I am with younger Thais, both friends and work colleagues, some gay, all gay friendly. Although none work in factories, many have regular тАЬworking classтАЭ jobs, be it electrician, air-con maintenance, delivery drivers, hotels, restaurants or what have you and their lifestyles are similar to what newalaan describes.
Actually, Tawan Deang in Chiang Mai is a regular couple of times a month night out for these guys. And itтАЩs a mixed crowd, not all gay that go out together. They go out to plenty of other local places too, largely Thai style bars and restaurants that many farang living here arenтАЩt even aware of.
Coincidentally, IтАЩve just written an article about similar themes to those set out in the first paragraph of the OP. Aside from economic factors, a big change I see is the fact prostitution is far less acceptable than it was a few years ago. I have seen this in our circle of gay friends from various rural villages in Northern Thailand.
Back when, several of the older boys were real Soi Twilight pros, yet the younger generation, now in their late teens and early twenties want absolutely nothing to do with that scene. Some even express considerable distaste for Farangs who automatically assume them to be prostitutes and available for a fee. Despite being gay, they wonтАЩt go anywhere near Chiang MaiтАЩs so called тАЬgay barsтАЭ.
You can read more of my thoughts on the subject here, though some may find the conclusions unpalatable: Chiang Mai City News тАУ Where did all the Nice Boys go?
N.B. sorry to post this twice as I'd already mentioned this article in the A bit of nostalgia from Chiang Mai But it seemed to have some synergy with the discussion here.
Chiang Mai Connoisseur - [url=http://www.gayinchiangmai.com/News/]www.gayinchiangmai.com[/url] and [url=http://www.bontong.com/]www.bontong.com[/url]
Whilst I agree with the statement and strongly sympathise with the plight of Tai Yai people in Chiang Mai, I'm not sure it's relevant in the context of this thread. Whilst clearly an underclass here the Tai Yai's do not have a monopoly. There is another underclass which is the different hill tribe people and there is a very clearly defined Thai underclass; northern Thai people (with ID and Thai ethnicity) who come from rural villages. They are badly looked down on by the Thai Chinese hi-so families that run the city in the same way that the rural Isaan boys others have referred to are.
Ummm, again, not untrue, but its not the way most of the Tai Yai guys I know have come to be, or stay in the sex business. The Shan have a strong social network here, not to mention their own mafia that control a lot of what goes on :-o . Most Tai Yai bar boys I've talked to were introduced to the bar through their friends and social connections, rather than that being something developed in the bar (i.e the "social connections" are more expansive than just the bar, or even all the bars). The route I see as more common is guys coming to CM to work in construction or other menial jobs (either voluntarily or trafficked), then they get into a peer group who's lives revolve around Yaabaa, alcohol and gambling. Their peers introduce them to the bars as a way to finance their lifestyle.
On the other hand, there are almost no gay Thais working in Chiang Mai's gay go-go bars, but that's another topic.
Chiang Mai Connoisseur - [url=http://www.gayinchiangmai.com/News/]www.gayinchiangmai.com[/url] and [url=http://www.bontong.com/]www.bontong.com[/url]
Thanks for your post. I found it was NOT rambling and very interesting. There is always much more to Thailand than meets the western eye. I will look forward to more such posts! From you or anyone else.
Thanks for your response from a Chiang Mai perspective, it was just the kind of reply I was hoping for.
I'm hoping others can chip in with their experiences of the gay thai guys lives they know of, it would be great to hear from those with Issan gay friends to see if there is common ground between the various responses and to see how they compare to my own. Especially their experiences with village life for a gay lad, which I hope to find time to also post about.
Hope you can turn that into a post, your engaging post about the house trouble back in your boyfriends village was actually the inspiration for me to post something outwith the usual Pattaya bar reports.
Yes this seems to happen in many companies. One of the details I didn't mention about the boy who tried the bars for only a month before giving up, is that he will be going to Sth Korea soon for training (start of the year), he hasn't the best English skills and is a very dedicated guy on whatever he sets his mind to (apart from bar work apparently!) and that must be what his bosses have picked-up on, he is excited and hesitant at the prospect in equal amounts. I hope he is back before my trip late next month, so I can catch up with his progress. Thanks for your input.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
