13th September 2004
Bangkok is a very popular venue for international meetings. It is in a part of the world which is accessible to Americans, Europeans, Australians and other antipodeans and even not too difficult for Africans to reach. The Japanese, with the South Koreans, seem to be there at any time of the year and any other Asians who can get there seem to love it. Alas, I can't say I like it very much.
My first visit to Bangkok was to one such meeting. There is a marvellous international airport which deals with passports and baggage with equal efficiency, shunting people and goods pleasantly along. But one of the first things that struck me was that far more of the people being shunted were middle aged males than females of any age. Some plane loads from Asia seemed to be entirely male apart from the elegant cabin staff. I knew that Bangkok had a thriving sex industry but did not realise its clientele were so obvious.
This was about ten years ago and I had been told that a big effort had been made by the Thai authorities to discourage sex tourism because all other forms of tourism were being adversely affected by this section of the market. Even so when I was asked to another meeting there, having already seen the Royal Palace and the Jade Buddha and had a trip on the river, I decided to fly out there on a Monday night and back on Thursday night, making my visit as short as possible. This meeting was the Global Fund Forum on HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. Only four hundred people were attending and it was on for two days. Although asked to the U.N. meeting on HIV/AIDS the following week I felt I wouldn't be missed amongst the thousands attending so I asked to be "included out" for that event.
The Global Fund Forum was excellent so on Thursday night I was setting off for home exhausted but glad I had been there. The flight left at 11 o'clock at night and I was out at the airport early. There was no dinner on the flight so after consultations with the helpful girl at airport information I went off to one of the Thai restaurants, although none seemed that great, to have something to eat.
It was while poking at my not very delicious noodles that the man and woman at the next table came to my attention. He was in his fifties, I'd say, with a shaved head and worn face. She was in her twenties, plump and quite contented. They were wearing matching gold wedding rings, I could see this easily because they sat with their elbows on the table and fingers entwined. They had matching gold chains, too, and looked pretty happy. The one thing they did not do was talk to each other.
Slowly ingesting the noodles I had plenty of time to look about. At another table was a balding man with thickish glasses and a very thin girl with frizzy hair, unusual in Thailand. Sitting with them and eating heartily were an older Thai couple. There was some conversation at this table but to the older couple enjoying a meal at the Anah Anah restaurant was obviously a bit of an event.
It was getting towards time to go for the flight but just before I got up to go, the male with the shaved head stood up and gently signalled to his companion, the plump young lady, to get up and come with him. I began to think they did not have a common language, unless the language of love. Off they went and when I got to the gate for the plane, I discovered we were flying together.
On the way to the gate we passed the enclosure where foot massages were taking place. There were about twenty "patients" and a similar number of masseuses. All the patients, except one, were male. All the masseuses were female and all were wearing face masks! I didn't realise you could get SARS from people's feet so there must have been another problem.
At the gate I found many of those flying with me were couples, male and female. Nothing odd about that except that all the males were Caucasian whites and all the females were Thai! There was a very tough looking guy, in his fifties, wearing an orange shirt with a bemused looking girl of about four foot ten inches. A young man, who was speaking French, with a girl of about his own age. A big blonde man, perhaps Dutch, (we were flying to Amsterdam), was filling in forms for a tiny little person who was taking no interest in the proceedings at all but who took the forms and went off with them and her passport when they were completed.
There were more and more and more such couples and one thing was definitely missing, that was verbal communication between them.
When I got onto the plane I discovered that the bald man with glasses and the woman with fuzzy hair who I had seen in the restaurant were sitting near me. She was older than I thought and they were chatting away, so this was a relationship of some duration. All around me were other couples with little to say to each other, I think because they could not communicate in the same language.
During the flight I asked one of the cabin staff if there were often couples such as these on the flight. She said it was usually so. Some of the men looked very tough and some of the women very miserable. One girl who obviously had asked to go to the loo was brought there, her companion gripping her arm tightly.
We hear so much now about the trafficking of women and children into Europe. I had always thought they came in the back of trucks but I wonder do some come in economy class, sitting beside people like me? I do know that some of these marriages break up early on and that the women leave for other men or for other employment.
It's hard to be enthusiastic about this demonstration of globalisation and cultural intermingling. A young Thai girl who had become involved in prostitution was murdered here a few years ago, no one has ever been convicted for her murder. I wonder how she got here in the first place.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
