Sex Tourism: That One Time in 2017

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                                                              Image: Mine, a local sex park in Jomtien, Thailand
 

Everyone tells you to travel alone at least once in your life. So I did. I traveled alone to Thailand in 2017, a few months after sauntering on over to China.

My boss recommended the Jomtien/Pattaya area to me, and my co-workers agreed that Thailand was beautiful and sunny and it came with a fun fact! Pattaya was well known for its sex tourism!

There's something really different about hearing about sex tourism and ping pong balls and beautiful lady boys (sorry if that's not the politically correct term, that's the term I commonly heard) and actually being there. The prospect was exciting-- getting to see something new and weird. I didn't know what I was looking for exactly, but I brushed over that. There would be something that I could tell my friends, share with people, maybe write about one day.

I went to the Pattaya walking street and was immediately approached by men with laminated flyers of cartoon women in various positions shooting ping pong balls and darts out of their vaginas in a page worth of positions.

I walked up a short set of old velveted stairs on the promise of the first drink being free and upon having the bar doors opened for me, I was greeted by a woman tooting a horn at me with her vagina. It only took a quick glance around to notice I was the only person in this bar that was not on stage. The assortment of women on stage were topless and if there was a look of boredom beyond boredom, that was the look they had: eyes looking forward, never down; lines permanent around mouths that did not smile; knees slightly bent to support thin frames; heels two inches high, occasionally tapping the counter; lingerie a muted green in the blue slow moving lights.

I left before I even reached the seat.

Talking about it later with a friend of mine, we discussed how many people working in the sex trade, not just in Thailand, but worldwide, might have been sold into it from a young age or forced in due to poverty. It made me want to bury the experience, left me feeling like I had participated in something immoral, unjustifiable.

I'm not saying I have anything against sex workers, I just want it be... responsibly sourced?

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