Good.  My choice of Thailand Sex tourism in my title has gotten your attention.  I will now justify Thailand Sex Tourism  as a good thing.  So now that you are here, let me expand the group of people I'm talking about to include any man who comes to Thailand looking for women or for that matter men who might or even choose a lady men composing what is oftentimes called Thailand's Third Sex.

Click here for the video 

Now here's what a lot of you neo-conservative judgmental types are going to hate hearing, and that's Westerners giving money to Thai  sex partners are do-gooders due to the positive effects of their actions even if they are scoundrels.

This is a fact one cannot argue with, and If you don't believe me, please carefully review the   accompanying video before reading my explanation below. 

What happens to that money you pay a woman for sex?

It is not going to make any difference if you are a good person or a bad person, or whether you go out and pay over 100 Thai  women for sex or if you  single out just one woman for a girlfriend or if you come here to retire and wind up marrying a Thai woman, in most cases the end result is going to be the same--you are going to wind up helping a lot of people while improving the performance of the Thai economy which is going to produce jobs while making many people happy.  The reason for this is in Issan, which is that portion of Thailand from which most of the girls will be coming from you are likely to be meeting, Thai women are brought up believing that the greatest thing they can be doing with their lives is to take care of family, especially their mothers and fathers. 

Keep in mind that Thailand is a class society in which members of the lower classes are predestined to live lives of relative poverty.  The average girl from a typical Issan household receives a sixth grade education.  If she ventures out to major cities such as Bangkok or Pattaya, the average cleaning woman makes $200 a month.  If she's been lucky enough to get a college education, in Pattaya a typical salary for a college graduate is $400.  Meanwhile back in the village where her mother and father are living, there is no such thing as Social Security or hospital care for those who cannot afford insurance policies or to pay cash for medical treatment.  Chances are her mother and father are both unemployed. 

But she has been brought up believing that it is her responsibility as a woman to provide for her family so that her mother and father in particular can experience better lives.   One must keep in mind here that the culture in rural Thailand is vastly different from the cultures in Western countries such as in the United States.  In the U.S. it is considered to be up to the individual to provide for retirement and a good standard of living while working.  In Thailand, it is often recognized that family members must look out for each other, that there is a lack of opportunity for (by U.S. standards)  good paying jobs for the members of poor families, and that neither the Thai government or the wealthier members of Thai society have any intentions of changing this. 

So here's what often happens.  Women  who  are working in the bars and other venues as sex workers in such cities as Pattaya as well as those women who are being supported by foreign men periodically come back to those rural communities they came from, and when they do it immediately becomes obvious to the entire community that they are doing quite well  both for themselves and their families.  Keep in mind that a typical German, English or American expat who's moved to Thailand who keeps a girlfriend or wife is typically giving her $300 to $600 a month and that the girl's family is probably getting at least two thirds of this. 

Take the girl who lives with a falang (which is what all Western men are called) who's getting just 10,000 baht a month which is roughly $320.  Chances are she's sending half of that home so the family's already getting what a typical cleaning women gets for working hard for her monthly wages.  However, that's just the starting point.  If the girl's mother or father gets sick, she's going to be trying to send even more money back home to pay for the medical expenses.  She's also going to be laying money aside to buy a new house for her mother and father.  She's going to be constantly looking for new things to buy for her parents to make their lives more comfortable.  And all of this is going to come from her share of the 10000 baht she is getting from her Western boyfriend or husband. 

The Video

Note that there are two sections of the living quarters in the house in the video.  There is the "new house" which comprises a main room or living room and a solitary bedroom.  The toilet facilities are outside in a separate structure.  The old quarters where the parents used to sleep are in the ramshackle structure that is behind this new section.  The entire family still oftentimes takes their meals in the old quarters.  It is obvious that the new house is far superior to the old living quarters. 

There is no heating or air conditioning system in the new house and there's no need for either.  You will notice that the electrical system is pretty basic.  There aren't even any switches so the power is turned on or off simply by plugging in appliances into the wall sockets.  Lighting is fluorescent because fluorescent lighting is inexpensive.  Total cost of the new house is roughly 220,000 baht or $7000 U.S.  Lek paid 120,000 baht of this while a brother contributed the remaining 100,000 baht from his job in Bangkok. 

It took Lek less than two years to come up with the 120,000 baht which she had gotten from her falang boyfriend out of what he gave her each month. 

Now let's put this money in perspective.  Assuming Lek was able to save 5000 baht each month from where her Western husband was giving her as an allowance, this meant she was able to put 60,000 baht each year towards a new house for her parents.  It would have taken her two years to contribute 120,000 baht for the house.  And had her brother not been able to contribute at all, in less than four years, she still would have been able to buy her family a new house.  This does not even count for the fact that in this less than four year period of time she was paying her parents 5000 baht each month for food and necessities. 

You will have noticed the new irrigation system with all that blue pvc tubing the family just bought.  In the video you will also have noticed that Lek's new parcel of land is larger than her parents' plot of ground.  The financing for both the irrigation piping and Lek's strip of land came from Lek and you can be sure that once the family has planted vegetables on Lek's parcel that Momma and Papa will be getting all revenues earned from the land when they take the sweet corn and other vegetables to the local market.  As for the lack of vegetables on the new piece of ground (Lek's), it's not rained for a couple of weeks so the family is waiting for new irrigation tubing to supply the needed water for new crop plantings.  And since the family has virtually no funds for the new pvc tubing, that money will come from Lek out of her allowance money from her Western husband.  Also....the electric pump at the well most likely cannot generate the power for supplying water to the new pvc irrigation pipes due to its being undersized for the project and its being over 10 years old.   Lek will be buying the family a new electric motor and pump along with the new irrigation tubing.

All of this is pretty small scale.  However when you consider that vegetables can be grown here year round just that little parcel of ground Lek recently bought could feed an entire family for a year. 

You will have also noticed all the chickens wandering about.  They too can be  sold at the local markets.  They can also be slaughtered to supply the family with meat.  As far as food for the chickens they are getting a lot of their nutritional requirements from all the insects in the top inch or two of the soil on Lek and her parents' plots of ground along with scraps of food left over by the family members.

All in all it's pretty much of a self sustaining operation so long as a little capital is given to the family.  Land---even a little plot of land such as Lek's is King.  One can put money in the bank and lose it to inflation and one can buy stock in the stock market.  It's only paper and the paper can turn out to be worthless or go way down in value, but the land supplies a site for a Thai family's home, it supplies the water needs for the family to live on as well as for crop irrigation, it supplies a place where insects can multiply which in turn feed the chickens which feed the family members or can be turned into cash at the local market, and it provides a place where  crops can be grown. 

As far as the human comfort of family members, just a little money can go a long way.   You will have noticed how basic the bathroom is.  The facilities are private enough even though they are in a small out building.  But there's no shower, and there's no running water for bathing.  One must use the blue plastic bowl to fill up the toilet bowl in order to flush it which is not a huge inconvenience once one gets used to it.  In the past the family had a garden hose close by which they used for a makeshift shower.  Presently the garden hose is being used to the new irrigation tubing.  But it wouldn't take much to run a new string of pvc tubing to the out house out of a T-connection and use either a short hose or cheap shower head affair.  Presently anyone wanting to take a bath must use the blue plastic bowl to dose themselves with water or to wet down a towel to bath with.  But the water is cold.  A hundred dollars would buy a small electric on demand hot water heater.

A little money goes a long way.  $2500 bought that parcel of land for Lek.  Yet that little parcel gives the family a  lot of economic security it didn't have before Lek met her husband.  Lek's husband is nearly forty years older than her so she will still be a relatively young women by the time he's gone to better places.  She will still have her land and she will no doubt either have the money or have already bought a small house which she will have put on her land which she can enjoy in her older age. 

Taking things up a notch--or three

The video includes footage of a much larger home that Rick bought for his Thai wife and himself.  You will have noticed the toilet facilities that Rick built outside his home for the Thai members of the family who are living in small houses he had built inside his yard.  Rick admits to having spent a great deal of money for his impressive home most of which he spent on the various outbuildings and other items outside his house.  From the looks of things he's provided a home for the entire extended family which in turn supplies the labor spent maintaining Rick's impressive showpiece.

By now it should be obvious what all that money is being spent on when men come to Thailand to either have sex with large numbers of women or to have a monogamous  relationship with a single woman he selects for either a girlfriend or a wife.  The nay sayers can scoff all they want about the evils of prostitution and how sex hungry men go to Thailand to exploit all the poor women or how awful it is for so many old guys to be having girlfriends who are 20, 30 and even 40 years younger and how perverted all of this is.  Nothing can be further than the truth and I hope this video shows this quite clearly without leaving any room to question what I'm saying here. 

The exploitation of women by Western men simply isn't happening here. If it is, it's only on a small scale that is no larger than it is in their home countries.  That is my whole point.  I am not advocating that every man reading this article go out and buy a Thai family a house and I'm not even advocating that any of you come to Thailand to find yourselves a Thai wife or girlfriend.  These in themselves are very complex subjects that oftentimes do not lead to any clear cut answers.  I am only saying that no matter that a man's motives might be when dealing with Thai women, that the end result is going to much more often than not be extremely positive both for the woman involved, her family and their entire community.  The funds he expends whether it's for promiscuous sex to satisfy insatiable sexual desires or for his wife or girlfriend is almost inevitably going to wind up helping a lot of people.  And whereas buying sex from a Western prostitute will often result in buying a lot of drugs for a lot of worthless people, this is not usually the case here in Thailand.