A popular bar in Nana was shut down for 1 week for employing an under age girl. You have to be 20+ to work in a bar in Thailand and most of the girls working these bars are 25 - 35. An Australian news channel picked up on this and ran this story:
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/channel-seven-investigates-the-sex-industry-in-thailand/story-fnq2o7dd-1227609850288
The girl in question was 18 and had borrowed her sister's ID card in order to get employment in the bar. There was no trafficking involved but simply a desire to make some big bucks in a short time. Most Thais are finished school shortly before they turn 16 and start work somewhere at the minimum wage of $10 a day. Compare that with what they can make working in a bar and you begin to understand the lure of the bar scene for young Thai girls. Most of them hear about the bars from sisters, friends, and mothers who turn a blind eye as to how their daughters earn the money to send home.
I have heard stories of young girls sold to older Thai men by the mothers but this is not unlike the customs in many Asian countries for pre-arranged marriages. The money is viewed as a dowry and often the family can no longer support the girl on their meager income. However, this is the exception and not the norm. The majority of Thai girls working in the bars are doing so for economic gain and hop from bar to bar looking for the most money or hoping they hit the jackpot and find some farang who is willingly to 'look after her, and her family'.
As the Thai economy grows and jobs begin to pay better I would think it will be more difficult to find bar girls to work in the bars but the lure of a farang boy friend will always be there. It is the only avenue that offers a quick route to hi-so from lo-so.
It is only after you have talked to many bar girls over many years that you begin to realize that the girls are there by economic choice as they laugh at the notion of giving up their 50,000 Baht a month life style for a job at 7-11 paying 10,000 Baht a month for a 12/7 job. Many of the older ladies I meet are in the bars because their Thai boyfriends or husbands have forced them out of their marriage because of 'boxing me' or 'him a butterfly'.
The hidden agenda of many of these crusaders are the conversion of the girls to Christianity from Buddhism. Christianity has a lot to say about sex and what goes on between men and women. Buddhism leaves it up to the men and women. I find it difficult to believe we need missionaries in the global world we now live in. What is the difference between a missionary and a jihadist .. a gun :-)
TTYL
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