Han Le

Essay 2

ENG0902

Professor Kevin Varrone

DARK SIDE OF PARADISE: SEX TOURISM IN THAILAND

In our modern culture, traveling has become an important part of the modern

lifestyle. For many people, the most important highlights in a year are memories from our

trips exploring new places, or relaxing vacations with beautiful white sand and blue water.

As the world becomes more globally connected, allowing one to be halfway around the

world in less than 24 hours, the travel trend to visit third world countries with famous

tourism industry - for example: Uganda, Thailand, Dominican Republic, etc. - is becoming

increasingly popular. These countries are the definition of a traveler’s paradise: for a price

of a paycheck, you can have the adventure of a lifetime. On the outside, it seems like a win-

win situation: many of nations in this category rely heavily on travelers’ spending to finance

their local economy while foreign tourists are able to enjoy the time of their life in an exotic

destination affordably. However, the reality in paradise is not that simple: tourism industry

creates more complicated consequences than solely financial benefits for the locals. Among

many disadvantages, tourism negatively affects the local society by creating service

industries that are willing to go beyond what’s right and appropriate to service the most

indecent needs of tourists (The Advantages and Disadvantages of Tourism). These impacts
can be seen clearly in some countries with long history of allowing tourism to shape their

societies in order to to adapt to tourists’ demands.

As the 10th most popular for global visitors, Thailand is a notable example of such

an overly accommodating destination, welcoming 35.4 million travelers in 2017 (Bangkok

Post Public Company Limited). Thailand is an epitome of a tourist’s paradise: speaking of

Thailand, images of gorgeous scenery, beautiful temples made of gold, sun-drenched

beaches and exciting nightlife immediately call to mind. Thai people are sensationally

friendly to tourist, and the costs of travel here are astonishingly low. Here, you can have all

kinds of exotic adventure that you can think of: party all night on an island, riding an

elephant through the valley, exploring a wild jungle, petting a tiger, enjoying erotic adult

shows, etc. Nothing is off the table when it comes to making the tourists happy. The locals

are willing to exploit natural resources, wild animals and, even more troublingly, their own

people to entertain travelers. Among the negative effects arising from the dominance of the

service industry: littering pollution on the islands, damage to the virgin forest, wildlife

endangerment, animal abuse, etc., the most detrimental byproduct of tourism is the rise of

sex industry and the consequences this line of service has on its workers.

Sex tourism originated from a long history of women marginalization in Thailand.

Until this century, men could legally give away their wives or sell their daughter (Seabrook,

79). The double standard belief that men are naturally promiscuous when women are

supposed to be virtuous gave rise to the only mechanism that can satisfy this arrangement:

prostitution. In the 20th century, women were treated as a commodity to be accumulated by

militants with high position to show off military prowess, social prestige and wealth

(Seabrook, 81). Women had little power in their own family when a man could have

multiple wives and punish them corporally or even sell them (Seabrook, 81). Equal rights
were granted in 1974 but closer examination reveals that women weren’t completely

liberated with significantly limited rights in certain aspects of marriage (Seabrook, 82).

In 1960, the Prostitution Suppression Act was passed making prostitution illegal but

the penalties were light (Seabrook, 83). The Entertainment Places Act of 1966 indirectly

legitimized prostitution, which allowed women to perform ‘special services’ which are

open to the customer’s request. The sex industry’s operation is protected by an unclear

definition of “special service”. This also contributes to an unequal relationship between

employers and workers when the former is free to operate, but the latter is subject to legal

restrictions (Seabrook, 83). The demand for woman sexuality created by sexist ideology in

Thailand coupled with the venereal needs of USA troops when the government contracted

with the USA to provide rest and recreation services to troops in Vietnam gave way to a

booming sex industry (Seabrook, 79). The adult entertainment sector made a significant

contribution to the rapid industrialization of the country in the 1970s (Seabrook, 79). And

even though a majority of the clients of prostitutes are Thai men, vested interests of the

ruling elites made successive promotion of the expansion of tourism while integrating the

sex industry with it (Seabrook, 79). Between 1985 and 1990, earnings from tourism

increased by 50 per cent; and it remains one of the country’s major earners of foreign

exchange (Seabrook, 79).

After decades since its illegitimate legalization, besides sex workers who chose the

profession by choice, most of the workers were forced into the industry. Rampant poverty

and political instability has marred the Southeast Asia region and has led to the infiltration

of organized criminal networks seeking to exploit vulnerable men, women, and children

(Blackburn, 105). Many fell prey to forced migration to Thailand and trafficking for

purposes of sexual exploitation. Women and children are often coerced into prostitution at
the hands of their captors. Estimates in Thailand are similarly wide in scope, with some

being as high as 2 million (Blackburn, 106). Statistics vary between an estimate of 30,000

children involved in the Thai sex trade to up to 75,000 children younger than the age of 16

working in brothels, bars, and nightclubs (Blackburn, 106).

It is no surprise that sex workers face high sexual and reproductive health risks.

Commercial sex work is widely recognized as a primary context for heterosexual

transmission of HIV/AIDS in Asia and elsewhere (Decker, 334). Within Southeast Asia,

Thailand faces a disproportionate HIV burden; it leads the region in total number of persons

living with HIV: 1.7% of Thai population has HIV (Decker, 334). Despite of prevention

and awareness programs, it is estimated that 5% of Thai female sex workers has HIV

(Decker, 334). Moreover, the persistence of inconsistent condom use, condom failure,

pervasive client condom refusal, client pressure and coercion into unprotected sex, and

other dimensions of female sex workers’ difficulty in negotiating condom use in Thailand

pose huge threats to their health and well-being (Decker, 236).

The Thai sex workers’ plight is connected to an idea in Kincaid’s essay “A Small

Place”: “Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every

native would like a tour. But some natives––most natives of the world––cannot go

anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to

escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where

they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go”. The sex workers are forced

into this business to service tourists; they cannot escape due to poverty or violence.
 Works Cited

“The Advantages and Disadvantages of Tourism.” Soapboxie,

soapboxie.com/economy/Advantages-and-disadvantages-of-tourism.

“THE SEX INDUSTRY: SUPPLY.” Travels in the Skin Trade: Tourism and the Sex

Industry, by JEREMY SEABROOK, 2nd ed., Pluto Press, LONDON; STERLING, VA,

2001, pp. 79–110. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18mvnrh.10.

Decker, Michele R., et al. "Sex trafficking, sexual risk, sexually transmitted infection and

reproductive health among female sex workers in Thailand." Journal of Epidemiology &

Community Health 65.4 (2011): 334-339.

Decker, Michele R., et al. "Violence victimisation, sexual risk and sexually transmitted

infection symptoms among female sex workers in Thailand." Sexually transmitted

infections 86.3 (2010): 236-240.

Blackburn, Ashley G., Robert W. Taylor, and Jennifer Elaine Davis. "Understanding the

complexities of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation: The case of Southeast

Asia." Women & Criminal Justice 20.1-2 (2010): 105-126.

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York, N.Y: Penguin, 1988. Print.