A year in sex city

[colmx]

My Mother just SMS'ed me to say she is watching this program at the moment...

Luckily they are only talking about the female trade...

Homiterm would love this program - paints Pattaya in such a lovely light!

Wonder will my parents come visit my (proposed) holiday home in LOS now!


BBC ONE NI MONDAY FEBRUARY 11 - 10.35pm
Could you sell up and leave your comfortable home and loved ones behind to move to a poverty-stricken, sex-laden city with nothing but the dream of being able to make a difference?


A Year In Sex City, on BBC One Northern Ireland tells the story of one Belfast couple who did just that.

The documentary, made for BBC Northern Ireland by DoubleBand Films, follows married couple Andrew and Roisin McCarroll as they set off to realise their hopes of being able to persuade Thai people away from the lucrative sex industry in the city of Pattaya.

From the outside, Andrew and Roisin may have looked like a settled middle-aged couple but they both wanted something more meaningful in their lives.

Andrew had taken early retirement from his teaching job and Roisin soon followed suit leaving her career as a dental practice manager. The couple decided that they wanted to work as volunteers in a foreign country and soon sold their house and prepared as best they could for a life changing experience.

A Year In Sex City followed Andrew and Roisin over one year, from when they packed what belongings they needed and left everything in Northern Ireland behind, through to their arrival in Pattaya and then the work they carried out there.

Pattaya is a city of vice, where the local women come to work and the male tourists come to play. Situated 100 miles south east of Bangkok, this one time quiet beach resort is now a heaving magnet for sex tourists. Prostitution is the main industry in Pattaya and five million tourists pile into the city every year, many to take advantage of the people on offer there.

But as Andrew and Roisin become strangers in a strange place, will the challenge of trying to make a positive contribution there prove too great. Can they change Pattaya or will Pattaya change them?

A Year In Sex City director Jenny Morris says: тАЬWhen we first got in touch with Andrew and Roisin in March 2006 we were immediately interested in their story.

тАЬTo be honest, IтАЩd never heard of Pattaya until I met Roisin and Andrew but as soon as I did some research into the city, I found their decision to go there fascinating. Did they really know what they were letting themselves in for and was this really the right place for first time volunteers?

тАЬInitially, this was a story about a couple who planned to give up everything in order to start a new life as volunteers in a foreign country but I was also intrigued as to how they would cope with their new life.

тАЬAnd although I was struck by the strength of their conviction that they would be able to make a difference, I was also worried that they could be setting themselves up for a fall.тАЭ

A Year In Sex City is a DoubleBand Film production for BBC Northern Ireland.

Similar Threads:

• Mexico City
• BTS into the city
• This year Spain, next year Thailand?
• Success - New Year road toll down 14% on last year

[colmx]

For those intersted - the couple involved took one walk down walking street...

And then never left the Redemptorist Centre for the rest of their year!

Oks thats a slight exaggeration... but they were so horrified they never ventured back to Central or South Pattaya!

[RonanTheBarbarian]

Sounds like a laugh alright.

Pity I missed it!

[Sen Yai]

For those not in Northern Ireland (and I'm not) you can watch it here on BBC i-Player

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b008x518.shtml

EDIT: Sorry, this may only be visible to those in the UK, I've just found out!

Colmx,

it may be a "slight" exaggeration, but only very slight. While not wanting to be-little their efforts (actually that's totally untrue, as I think that as they agreed to be filmed doing their "good deeds" they are equally open to acclaim and ridicule) doing something "more meaningful" with their lives consisted of sponsoring a boy in the Redemptorist Orphanage and a girl in the Redemptorist Centre for the Disabled while staying in the pleasant surroundings of the staff accomodation. Nothing more, and nothing whatsoever to do with persuading Thais "away from the lucrative sex industry in the city of Pattaya".

I recall reading an interview a few years ago with the scriptwriter for that gay soap opera that the Americans then took over and turned into pure schmalz. You know the one - there's a rimming scene in the first episode. The writer said that his father is blind, so his mother always described to him everything that was going on for which there was no dialogue - and he always wondered how she coped with describing the rimming. It's rather like the scene in Prick Up Your Ears, where the mother-in-law is trying to decipher Joe Orton's shorthand. Mothers do have their uses

[Lunchtime O'Booze]

Andrew and Roisin McCarroll are really Mr & Mrs O'Booze (McCarroll is our stage name) and indeed we did set out to lure poor young lasses and lads away from the evil sex trade.

Sadly -like so many Catholics before us and is their wont-we jumped headlong in and have never looked back.

I did "give up teaching" in a manner..sadly I was run out of the preisthood over a misunderstanding..and Mrs O'Booze always gave her occupation as "dental hygenist"..having not a tooth in her head she was very popular down the Falls Road for giving the best B/J for 2/6 pence.

You could say after all these years we are still "strangers in strage land"..and there are none stranger than us.

As soon as I read the original post 2 books popped instantly into my head:

"At Play in the Fields of the Lord" by Peter Matthiessen

and

"Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

Should be required reading for all wannabe Proselytizers

[dab69]

hey but they got a years free ride on the backs of honest patrons,
much like other social workers and NGOs,
and probably did less damage

[TrongpaiExpat]

About 5 or 6 month ago I was walking on silom and looked down Patpong 1 and saw a middle aged white couple standing in the center of the road with a guy with a professional type camera pointed at them. They had a mike in their hand but I did not get close enough to hear what they were saying. Even without the camera, they looked very out of place.

A few nights ago I was at Dick's on Soi Twilight and about 20 arm-in-arm middle aged white couples were walking down the center of the soi. The door touts just looked, a few hid, and did not approach them. They looked left and right, but never stopped, just kept walking. You see couples walking down the soi all the time looking but I never saw 20 of them all together in formation, lock step, arm-in-arm. Men on the left, women on the right.

They left and everyone was scratching their heads, what was that?