Sex in Thai city frustrates junta

PATTAYA, Thailand: With mascots dressed as smiling fish and a police rock band, Thai authorities launched a ‘ Happy Zone’ at the weekend to improve the image of a city notorious for sex tourism.

Stung by foreign headlines portraying the seaside resort of Pattaya as ‘Sin City’ and ‘ The World’s Sex Capital’, Thailand’s junta has begun a new effort to rebrand it.

But the contradictions in Pattaya highlight Thailand’s challenge in tackling a side of its tourist industry that remains economically vital while being officially excoriated.

“I want people to see that we are not like what they say. We are not allowing prostitution in these entertainment places,” provincial governor Pakkaratorn Teianchai told reporters on the infamous Walking Street in Pattaya, southeast of Bangkok.

Less than 10 metres away, women accosted foreign men to offer sex for 2,000 baht ( US$$ 60). Others lined up with numbers so customers could take their pick. Masseuses in miniskirts offered ‘ happy ending’ massages whose euphemistic title has nothing to do with the Happy Zone of the authorities.

“Everyone is here to make a living,” said one 35-year- old woman who came originally from a village in central Thailand.

“I would rather be a waitress, but then I couldn’t send my children to school and I want them to have a better future than this,” she said.

The latest of many crackdowns in Pattaya happened after foreign newspaper reports last month, which drew an angry response from junta leader Prayuth Chanocha, for whom bringing order is a mantra.

A handful of bars were raided. Bar owners and working women were fined. Scared to venture out, tourists looking for sex stayed in hotels.

Street vendors and shops saw sales tumble. The money which flows to all levels in the city — including law enforcement agencies — fell off.

The Happy Zone approach is a softer way to try to show that something is being done.

If it works on Walking Street, the idea will be spread to the less sanitised side streets — the sois.

Businesses in the Happy Zone are asked to make the area feel safer, there are increased security patrols, police launched a mobile phone app for visitors to summon them in emergency.

“This is a pioneer project to organise a tourist destination and elevate it to promote Thailand’s quality tourism,” Apichai Krobpetch, chief of Pattaya city police, told Reuters.

“We will also stamp out prostitution in the area.” There was no sign of that at the weekend.

In fact, Pattaya’s sex industry has become an attraction in its own right for the millions of Chinese who make up about one in three visitors to Thailand.

“We just came here to see. That’s all,” laughed twentysomething saleswoman Linda Sieng in a group of 11 tourists from Guaghzhou in southern China.