Capitalism Run Amok
Early Days in Bangkok
I started going to Thailand in the late 1980s. At that time, Bangkok was a polluted sewer. You could easily get a migraine walking down the street from the pollution. It was crawling with prostitutes and the oil field workers and military people who camped out there. I was one of them.
I used to stay in the Patpong district and was a member of the infamous Lucy’s Tiger Den and the American Legion post called China Post One. Built by the obnoxious but likeable Tiger Ryberg, it had a steady stream of tourists, but the general membership was a lot cooler.
As dirty and smelly as Bangkok was, it had a certain romance to it. It was still very much a man’s world in 1983, and Bangkok had its share of old Vietnam vets, smugglers, soldiers of fortune, and bullshit artists. It was certainly poor, but safe. The street food was still very well made, and the service in the larger hotels was like stepping back in time to the old colonial era.
Luxury and Grit at the Oriental
The first time I went there, I remember staying at the Oriental Hotel. Back then it wasn’t the Mandarin Oriental and had a colonial feel. There was a café that looked out over the river, a room with a stock ticker, and every two rooms in the suites had a cabin boy who sat on a stool in the hall. If you wanted something, you just peeped out into the hall and he ran for it.
The week I was there, Pierre Trudeau and his wife were staying for a state visit or something of that sort. In front of the hotel, where you drove in, there was a huge banner that said, “Welcome His Majesty Pierre Trudeau.” It was serious luxury.
But step out one block from the Oriental and you were in some serious ghetto.
Bangkok Today: A Modern City
That Bangkok is long gone. And much to the better.
The army of hookers is gone. There are still some there, but they’re in a sad, nasty area called Nana Plaza and filled with (sorry Nana fans) losers. In fact, it looks like the same girls, only 40 years older.
Bangkok is actually quite nice now. The smog is gone. People complain about the traffic, but it’s light years better than in the ’80s. Tuk-tuks are rare, and the locals use the Skytrain, which is very nice.
My first new impression of Bangkok was three years ago when I stayed a month to take advantage of their reasonable and very competent dental offices. I was never really a huge fan of Thailand in the first place but was on my way to Vietnam and thought I’d give it a second try.
The new Bangkok is a business center.
I was never a fan of prostitutes, although one is prominent in my novels. But when I arrived in Bangkok three years ago, I immediately felt good. It took a while to figure out why.
As an American, I hate colonialism—not the moving of companies and trade to third-world countries (I’m good with that), but the British Empire condescending attitude that goes with it. That was as thick as a jungle in 1984. It’s gone today.
What made me feel good was the army of young people who were no longer coolies scraping by. No more emaciated people with tiny shoulders and hips from undernutrition. Thai women have breasts. That alone was rare in the ’80s.
Today, Bangkok is filled with healthy, happy young people who have boyfriends, nice clothes, and cell phones. They go to cafés, clubs, and yes, McDonald’s. Bangkok is a great city now, and I’d live there in a minute. It just isn’t an exciting tourist destination.
The Problem: Thailand’s Beach Towns
Thailand’s problem is its beach towns. Here is where it gets sketchy.
Years ago, back in the ’80s, I spent a good deal of time in Pattaya in the south. Pattaya at that time was a little fishing village, and even though the beaches were never world-class, it was a lot of fun. I learned how to scuba dive there. There was a horse farm called the Rio Ranch run by a couple of Australian alcoholics who had been run out of Australia. The golf courses and service were second to none, and a person could live in the beach bars.
Today’s Tourists and Troubles in Pattaya
Now there are three types of tourists:
Men over 75 on fixed incomes.
Gays looking for ladyboys.
And (drum roll please) criminals.
Pattaya’s beaches are an environmental disaster.
More to the point, the entire south is laced with overdevelopment. What used to be a sleepy beach town is now a major city with traffic issues, filth, and crime. This is due to the fact that for years it was a cheap travel destination, and Thailand—in need of foreign exchange—built a haven for tourists and expats with little money. The more they came, the more Thailand built out.
This worked for a while because huge numbers of Chinese and Russians came. But also people from “other Asian nations” came, and the Chinese started to leave. Thailand is in crisis mode, and they know it.
In short, I spent three months in Jomtien Beach (south of Pattaya) and four months in Da Nang, Vietnam. There is no comparison. Da Nang is a far better destination.
Crime, Corruption, and Illegal Businesses
The number of foreigners breaking the law in Thailand is staggering. It has gotten so out of control that they’ve started limiting visa stays to one month (from two), and in some nations like India, just two weeks.
The biggest issues are trafficking underage minors, gang rape, running illegal businesses, and counterfeiting. Gang rape is very common. The way it works is an “Asian” finds an unsuspecting young girl on the beach and makes her an offer—typically about $50 US. Then they go back to his room and there are four other guys waiting there. This is not an uncommon thing. It’s literally all over, even in some of the nicer areas.
If you think I’m obsessing about prostitutes, Pattaya and now Jomtien are built around the business. There are hundreds of tiny bars filled with girls and largely empty. In central Pattaya is an area called Walking Street, another bar street with all the class of a rural Louisiana truck stop.
My condo was in a very nice high-rise. It had a great pool, very good staff, a nice gym—all the amenities. But I can get that in Florida. I don’t have to fly halfway around the world for it.
Counterfeiting is an existential issue.
Poor countries cannot afford to spend $50 making and policing a $20 bill, as they do in the US. So the baht is an easy target. The situation has gotten so bad that the authorities have had to curtail immigration from “certain Middle Eastern countries” and are moving to an electronic payment system for foreigners.
Child trafficking is always a huge problem.
To put it mildly, people who have sex with 13-year-olds are sick fucks. I mean that literally. Pedophilia is a diagnosable sickness.
That said, Pattaya always had pedophiles, and in the ’80s they were pretty visible and hardly shy. Back then, girls and boys would come in from the rice farms, and many were sent by their parents. Starvation, privation, and poverty made these behaviors acceptable. Most of the johns—at least the visible ones—were American and British gays, many of them professionals with serious money.
But with the advent of Facebook, Telegram, and WhatsApp, it’s gone underground and is hard to stop.
Running illegal businesses in Thailand includes pot distributorships and farms, girly bars, gay bars, counterfeiting (it’s near crisis level), and tourist activities (scuba, jet skis, etc.).
Some of the “businesses” appear to be fronts.
For example, there’s one street that’s very nice and upscale. It’s entirely gay bars, and if you walk through, it’s amazing how aggressive the “boys” are trying to get customers. I walked through it a couple of times as it’s a shortcut from a pub I went to. I’ve never seen any customers, aside from a stray here and there. The same with girly bars. There’s an entire second street north of what’s called Second Street. Again, no customers.
To be sure, Pattaya’s upscale areas do well. The hotels and restaurants are nice, and the food and service is good, but they represent a sliver of the beach areas.
One of Thailand’s bigger issues is the corruption in their police departments. For anybody living there, it’s an annoyance. Thailand’s police adjudicate at street level, so if you get a ticket (they invent crimes), you pay the cop. At the restaurant level, the costs can be huge, especially if the business is deemed either illegal or immoral—which adds an additional ring to the illegal gay and girly bars.
The reason they have these problems is that they allow this seedy behavior to continue, and since everybody knows this, they come to Thailand for it.
Thailand vs. Vietnam: Different Paths
Thailand and Vietnam have traveled very different paths since 1980 and the end of the war era. There’s no such thing as a true “ism.” Countries don’t have pure economic systems. We might pretend that communism “worked” in Vietnam, but that would overshadow the brutality of that regime. Even today, the Vietnamese hate their government, as they should.
Thailand took the capitalist expansionist path with all of its pros and cons. Bangkok became a great city, but in turn, their beach areas became ghettos.
I stopped going to Thailand in the ’80s and started going to southern France on my rotations out of the Middle East. Even then I found the massive sex trade annoying. It took me 40 years to go back. Now, tough call. I love the Thai people, but a trip halfway around the world to a ghetto? No thanks.