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Chapter 2
Welcome to Bang Cock!

more than a few times. (If I did, I would report it to the authorities. My position is clear. Anyone who has sex with real children, I mean pre-teen, should be hung by the balls, then questioned later).

The only conclusion on this controversial topic of child prostitution in Thailand is this: What we've seen and heard in the media on Thailand and child prostitution has been nothing short of blatant lies and half truths.

SEX SLAVERY & EXPLOITATION

I think a friend of mine summed it all up when I asked him how he felt about going to Thailand and exploiting the women. He answered well, "I don't exploit the women, I pay them ...and I pay them well. That's why they keep coming back for more." Another friend, upon returning to Bangkok for his first time said, "I felt more like it was the women who were exploiting me!" And so it was. Many people have the misconceived notion that the prostitutes who work the sex industry in Thailand are sex slaves. When I think of a sex slave, I think of someone who has been abducted, tied up and against her will forced to have sex with one or more men (usually the female is the victim and the male the culprit).

Now, in order to intelligently discuss the issue of sex slavery, we must make the same distinction between the high class prostitutes and the low class prostitutes as discussed earlier.

The high class prostitutes are those girls who work the red light districts that cater to tourists. For example, the prostitutes who works as dancers in places like Patpong, Soi Cowboy, the Nana Entertainment Plaza and many of the bars in South Pattaya Beach Resort are all high class prostitutes. All these women have "falangs" (i.e., foreigners), not Thai men, as their main clientele. In what sense are they high class?

First and foremost, their salary is high. Why is that? Because tourists are very wealthy compared to your average Thai male and being on vacation, can afford to pay a prostitute up to twenty times as much as she would make from a Thai customer. For example, a high class prostitute will make anywhere from 1,500 baht ($40) to 2,500 baht ($65) as tip money from a single tourist. Her salary in the bar is extremely high (receiving nice commission on all the drinks and bar fines the tourists pay for.) Secondly, the working atmosphere in the bars is very comfortable and sophisticated. You would not believe how much money some of these bars put into making it high class. Air conditioning, fancy strobe lights, high tech music and staging, and well adorned costumes (what little they wear!) are all part of the bar atmosphere. Third, the prostitutes undergo medical testing for STD's (sexually transmitted diseases) and are not permitted to work and treated if sick.

By contrast, the low class prostitutes