Pat Pong

 

On one of my first trips to Bangkok, I heard about the infamous Patpong district.  It is politely billed as an entertainment district, but along with the night market it is one of the world’s most notorious red light districts.   I’ll never forget my first foray into Patpong.  As a woman, I didn’t expect to elicit much attention from the touts pursuing male tourists down the street, promising the most bizarre and exotic sex acts ever devised by man or beast, but I was not to be spared. 

 I was making my way through the early evening crowds imagining that was a safe time to approach the place when a photo album was thrust under my nose.  It depicted all kinds of things I wished I’d never seen.     This was a really crazy and depraved place… beyond belief!  I shuddered and tried to move on, but several other touts anxious to lure people into the bars hovered nearby, ready to pounce.

I headed for the outskirts almost in a panic.  This was more than I was prepared for.  I finally reached a place of relative safety on a residential street a few blocks away.  I walked slowly, trying to calm my nerves.   In the shadows, I noticed a young western man slouched miserably on the curb holding his head in his hands.  Something was terribly wrong by the look of it.  I asked if he spoke English and he looked up in welcome relief.  It turned out that he had just arrived in Bangkok a few hours earlier.  This was his 1^st time in Bangkok. He was employed by a major US airline and was to attend an important meeting the next day. On a lark, he arrived a day early to do some sightseeing.  In no time at all, he had gotten his wings severely clipped. He had been invited by one of the photo bearing men to have a complimentary beer in an air-conditioned upstairs night club.  He was quickly hustled by the girls and urged to buy them drinks in exchange for their company.  3 beers later, as he got up to leave, he was presented with a bill for several hundred dollars. When he protested, he was quickly surrounded by several burly men who blocked the exit.  They roughed him up pretty badly, took his billfold, wedding ring and watch and threw him down the stairs.  He had lost everything! Cash, ID and credit cards.  He struggled to the side street where I found him.  He was badly shaken and desperate for someone to talk to.  It turned out that he was a young, naïve Midwesterner who thought he could handle himself in Bangkok as he had in other world capitals.      
It was a rough introduction to the city of angels...

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 in another true story, things took a wildly unexpected turn.   I was on my own again, still determined to get a handle on Patpong.  I was drawn to try to understand this place and culture. Where else in the world do you find Buddhist monks sharing a sidewalk with prostitutes? There seemed to be no end to their calm tolerance in this society. It was baffling!    I wanted to see it as it was, but in my timid fashion.  On my next attempt, I thought I would go exploring earlier in the evening before it got too rowdy.

I wondered what the lives of the sex workers were really like, when they weren’t putting on a show  for drunken western tourists.  Did they make some kind of peace with what they were doing?    More than once, I saw them giving alms to beggars with money slipped from the wallets of their “temporary husbands” as they called the johns.  Often they were supporting a whole family with their work.  Some seemed to accept their lives as karma.  In any case, this culture had a vastly different sense of sexuality compared to the west. 

It was a hot, humid afternoon, sultry and slow-moving.  I entered one of the streets.
It was lined with open-air bars lit by garish neon lights.  Sin city…

There were a few bar girls sleeping on stools, still groggy from the night before.  A few others gossiped over bottles of beer.  It was their free time before the night crowd filled the streets.         It seemed perfect timing for me…
As I walked into the district, I cast sidelong glances around me, taking in the scenes.  I was discreet and pretended not to notice anything or anyone in particular.  Apparently I had been noticed, however. 
A strange scene unfolded as first one and then another bar girl got up from their stools and made their way toward me.  Others alerted, whispered to their friends who also left the cash registers they were tending and the counters they were cleaning.  I was alarmed as they gathered around me, taking my arms in theirs, holding me very strangely close.  I was sure that I was going to be robbed and possibly worse.  I couldn’t break their grasp and watched in horror as all the rest of the ladies of the night joined the clutch.  They were all smiling and friendly as they clung to me, eager to touch me as they escorted me proudly down the center of the street.  My mind spun as I slowly realized that no harm was coming to me.  Mortification overtook fear. I felt like I was being paraded down the street.  It was complete humiliation.  I just saw more and more girls swarming toward me.  What on earth was going on?!   They were all smiling and trying to get as close as  possible.  As my mind calmed I began to wonder if they were trying to practice their English on me.  They were all excitedly trying to get a message to me.  The girls off to the side were coaching the ones holding my arms.  Some sort of consensus was being reached.   They seemed to all hold their breath at once as one of the girls looked earnestly into my eyes and conveyed the message….

“ We know you are from God”, she said with respect. I looked astonished at the unexpected tribute.  My face revealed my feelings, I am sure.  How could these prostitutes know this?  I was seeing the real faces of these women and girls. “That is why we are all trying to touch you...to walk with you!”  Her words were chosen carefully and with effort.  The girls pressed in, delighted to be understood.    I still wondered why…how??  As if reading my thoughts, she said

“We KNEW you were from God when you came on the street.  Your face was SHINING.       That’s how we know…”