By May Yee

Day three of our Bangkok tour, and I’d already done the touristy bits. Had my pad thai and tom yam. Bought overpriced souvenirs from roadside vendors. Rode the infamous tuk-tuk through the busy streets of the city. But one thing was left to do: we had to visit Bangkok’s shady red-light district, Patpong.

We made our way there easily enough. Standing in the middle of one of the main streets in Patpong, we took in the sights. Glaring neon signs on both sides of the narrow road, skimpily-dressed Thai girls standing on the pavement, seedy men holding up signs for ‘pussy shows’ (“Cheap cheap for you, only two hundred baht!)

It was all quite overwhelming. As I made my way through the main road in Patpong, dodging offers for sex shows and cheap beer, I noticed the sheer variety of people dotting the walkways. Sex-for-hire never looked so bewildering. The women came in all shapes and sizes, they were young, middle-aged, inviting, friendly, weary. And the men (yes, there were plenty) were chatting up the interested males walking by, or sitting languidly with them once they had found a willing customer.

But that was just on the outside. I knew I had to see what really went on behind closed doors, and why this place had become one of the Bangkok tourist’s must-see spots in recent decades. So – half motivated by research purposes, and the other half by curiousity – I ventured on to get the mildest possible taste of Patpong: its sex shows. Unsurprisingly, I found some very willing accomplices among our group. About sixteen of us – including a certain lecturer and admin member (names omitted to protect the innocent) – broke into two groups and trooped into different sex clubs offering ‘pussy shows’.

Juli wrote about her experience of this show in detail. Me? Honestly, I did not know what to think. I was alternately amused, impressed, shocked, entertained, disgusted. Here was a bunch of women pole-dancing on a small stage in a dingy room lit by rotating disco balls, performing tricks for an incredulous crowd who paid 200 bahts (about RM20) to see some very bizarre manifestations of human talent. What struck me most was how routine it all seemed to them. The dancers were writhing and grinding, unmotivated, bored almost – while chatting with each other on stage, just doing what they needed to do.

At a subsequent male sex show (which was personally more enlightening), we got a chance to talk to two of the men from the performance. They echoed the sentiment that most of them worked at these jobs simply because they needed to. It is not uncommon to find sex workers who have debts to pay off or troubled families who need financial support.

This got me seriously thinking about what a sex worker endures daily just to get by, and how hundreds of workers in Patpong – and million others the world over – live their lives this way. It made me realize that while we live our comfortable middle-class existences, there are pockets in every city where nameless figures put themselves out on the streets for sale. Because they need to get by, just like the rest of us.

As I walked out of the club, I noticed that there was much more beyond the neon lights and the dodgy pimps who called out from the entrance of their premises above the din of gawdy Patpong. What I saw was a quiet desperation, a vicious, numbing urgency that permeated that humid Bangkok night.