bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

There is a fine line to be walked in writing a book that sets out to intellectualise the world's most famous red light district. Too dry and readers start snoozing in droves. Too racy and accusations of sensationalism fly thicker than a sex tourist's wallet.

  Cleo Odzer obligingly falls into the second category, making Patpong Sisters an easy book to dislike. It is an anthropological study, we are led to believe. Not so. It is a literary stripshow, full of titillation, carnality and the occasional topless photograph of some unfortunate bar girl.

  Far from de-mystifying and 'adrogynising' the Patpong experience, Odzer accidentally glamorises it and presents it as an alluring slice of Asian existence. Patpong is corrupt, debauched and depraved, she seems to be saying. Which is what makes it such fun.

  As a serious book about Thailand's sex tourism business, Patpong Sisters is almost a non-starter.

  It satisfies its writer's academic requirements with a number of paragraphs lifted from previous studies of prostitution.

  In 1983, for instance, Sukanya Hantrakul presented a paper to the Women in Asia Workshop in Australia explaining Thai attitudes towards adultery.

  Thai society, she wrote, still flattered men for their promiscuity and polygamy. Even religion did not defend them: 'As far as polygamy is concerned, the Lord Buddha neither condemned nor did he commend it. A prostitute is ipso facto a wife of no man, thus accessible, and an affair with her could not be considered adulterous.'   This is the extent of the scholarly stuff, some bare academic bones culled from other people's work and positioned carefully at the beginning of each new chapter as dubious justification for what follows.

  What does follow is sometimes absorbing and often well-written, but no more anthropological than Mills and Boon or Barbara Cartland novels.

  Patpong Sisters is best read as a rather hapless individual's curious account of her attachment to Bangkok's underbelly.

  This much you can say for Odzer: she certainly gets involved. Her affair with a Patpong tout is intriguing, involving, sad and distasteful all at once. It ends in minor violence, but not before she beds him, losing herself 'in a blend of East and West'. Later she writes of the boys in Ko Samet: 'There's nothing like a little cutie to induce a revival.'   Odzer, a New Yorker, wrote a dissertation on Patpong's sex workers for her doctorate. It was that dissertation that formed the foundation for Patpong Sisters.

  Her plan, she writes, was to visit Patpong every night and build a collection of people whose lives she could follow. There are 24 downstairs bars and 22 upstairs bars in Patpong. 'I would go to every one and find a contact in each. I would get a sample of different age groups, places of origin and styles of work.'   Odzer also looked for male sex workers, pimps and transvestites, katoeys as they are known. Ironically, she often had to 'buy girls out' of their bars so she could talk to them. One of her first subjects is a girl nicknamed the sex goddess. Odzer obliges her readers by including a semi-nude photograph on page 41.

  Patpong Sisters is not totally bereft of hard facts. Odzer is at her best when she stops writing like an excitable hippie and instead turns to good old-fashioned research for her information.

  Thailand's sex industry, we learn, had its genesis in 1972 when it became clear the nascent sex market for foreigners was booming. The authorities clamped down, imposing curfews and fining establishments showing lewd shows. In February 1972 a Bangkok columnist wrote gloomily of the end of 'fun city'. But by the end of 1972 equilibrium was achieved. Bars stayed open, police and government officials got payoffs. Everyone was happy.

  Until 1992, when British television aired a documentary, Foreign Bodies, which portrayed Thailand as the brothel of the world.

  The Thai Government was mortified. Foreign Bodies was a generally accurate depiction of the sex industry. It might have jazzed up some of the drier statistics with racy music and gyrating, half-nude bodies, but it also filmed Thai professionals stating outright that the Government repressed the true picture of AIDS infection for fear of hurting the tourist industry.

  At the heart of Patpong Sisters are the girls, a rag-tag collection of women from northern hill villages. Their attitude towards what they do ranges from shame, humiliation and resignation on one extreme to pride and passion on the other.

  'When you're making money yourself,' one prostitute says, 'there's an immediate value on you. It takes skill, definite skill, and a lot of strength. I've come to appreciate those qualities in myself.'   From the male foreigner's point of view, sex with a Thai prostitute is ambiguous. Are they sleeping with a girlfriend or a whore? Some academics have defended the men, arguing they often experience 'considerable anguish and emotional strain'.

  Simply put, the guy cannot tell if the girl is in love with him, or after his cash. Usually it is the latter, though sometimes a bit of both. Whichever it is, it is indicative of male artlessness that many men believe love comes before money for the women of Patpong.

  The controversial conclusion of Patpong Sisters is that many of Bangkok's bar girls are not downtrodden and abused, but intelligent and highly entrepreneurial. Odzer accompanies one prostitute to her village, where she is feted by friends and family because she wears fashionable clothes.

  Prostitution is something some Thai girls aspire to. It is not a conclusion that will be universally welcomed, but Odzer argues the case convincingly. Due to Thailand's rural-urban financial gap, women working in Patpong are usually able to buy houses back home as well as amass the capital necessary to begin their own small business. They use the oldest profession to lift themselves from poverty.

  Odzer writes, even more controversially: 'To me the prostitutes are pioneers in advancing women's autonomy by breaking away from the mold of suppressed and passive females.'   This is shaky ground. It makes no allowance for the devaluation of women or for morals or ethics. Are we to presume that sex for money is all right because it gives women a level of self-determination they otherwise may not enjoy?   In saying so, Patpong Sisters becomes more part of the problem than the cure.

PATPONG SISTERS An American Woman's View Of The Bangkok Sex World Cleo Odzer, Blue Moon Books, $250 



Titillating view of sex trade