UKJ wrote:

Kuroneko wrote: Why do so called "punters" have to feel better about anything? The is no issue here in dealing with prostitutes, hostesses, escorts or any other participant in the "water trade". The only people that seem to have an issue with sexwork and conflate it to a common denominator are a certain class of people from the UK and US

That contradicts the behaviour we see by some expats, who regularly "smear" people as sexpats, and lie their ass off that they were never a sexpat. And don't mention Pattaya to them!

TheGrinchSR wrote: This pretense that bar girls aren't prostitutes is charming but only serves to make punters feel better.

UKJ wrote: Anyone with any common sense would surely realize they can't tell what modern Brits and Americans think, by talking to a few tourists in Cambodia. The UK is very diverse, and has changed rapidly in the past few years. Within each class, there are regional, national and ethnic differences.

UKJ wrote: There are thousands of prostitutes advertising on one UK website alone. Add the other websites, and streetwalkers, and you have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Brits visiting prostitutes, who wouldn't class themselves as losers. Then theres lap dancing bars, stag trips to Amsterdam and Prague, while the women go to strip nights and hen parties. The UK isn't like the old 1950's BBC newsreels!

Jamie_Lambo wrote:tbh i respect most bargirls more than i respect the girls back at home...

Go to a bar in England and buy a girl a few drinks and she will open her legs for you for free.. wont request a condom
Go to a bar in Cambodia and buy a girl a few drinks and she will open her legs but for a price.. and likely demand a condom

Call the girls what you want , but ive grown up in a world where the girls behave no different to bar girls if not a hell of a lot worse, and they just do it for fun, everyone prefers their freedom and being single in modern day england so casual sex and one night stands are seen as the norm.. the girls over here in comparison have a lot more respect for themselves, and most of the time just doing it for the money to help themselves/their family in a world where they dont have all the benefit systems like they do in the UK for Single mums and struggling families

i put this article on another page but ill put it here also sums up modern british women... http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ma ... 100-321185 ...

Jamie_Lambo wrote:A lady drink is a drink bought from the bar for one of the ladies/hostesses, in Sihanoukville they actually usually tend to be the same price as a normal spirit+mixer = $3, although they usually only put about half a shot of spirit in the lady drink.. other places it will be the price of a normal spirit+mixer+$1 (the ladies cut)
Ringing the bell, all bars will have a bell or a gong on the bar that the customer can go hit if hes feeling a little rich, ringing the bell means your buying every girl in the bar a lady drink

Kuroneko wrote:

UKJ wrote:

Kuroneko wrote: Why do so called "punters" have to feel better about anything? The is no issue here in dealing with prostitutes, hostesses, escorts or any other participant in the "water trade". The only people that seem to have an issue with sexwork and conflate it to a common denominator are a certain class of people from the UK and US

That contradicts the behaviour we see by some expats, who regularly "smear" people as sexpats, and lie their ass off that they were never a sexpat. And don't mention Pattaya to them!

No it supports what I said. While there is no issue here in dealing with prostitutes, hostesses, or escorts in Cambodia, certain expats / tourists problematise or in your words lie about their connection with the night life because their culture constructs it in the negative and they feel compelled to cover it up. As one poster said:

TheGrinchSR wrote: This pretense that bar girls aren't prostitutes is charming but only serves to make punters feel better.

Implying that "punters"need to disguise their activity, which in reality they don't. In addressing the above statement I went on to say that :

"The only people that seem to have an issue with sexwork and conflate it to a common denominator are a certain class of people from the UK and US where sexwork is by and large illegal and not part of the culture as it is in, for instance Japan."

I think you will find that if you talk to many other nationalities (Italians, French, Brazilians, East Asians etc.) they do not have the need to hide their activities in the same way as the particular class from the UK and US do.

UKJ wrote: Anyone with any common sense would surely realize they can't tell what modern Brits and Americans think, by talking to a few tourists in Cambodia. The UK is very diverse, and has changed rapidly in the past few years. Within each class, there are regional, national and ethnic differences.

And to continue your insinuation, anyone with any common sense would also realise that many of the tourists are living in the US or the UK now, and have just arrived here for a holiday, or visit Cambodia from their own country regularly, and so are in fact modern Brits and Americans. Of course as you state there are people in each country from various classes and diverse ethnicity's, and that's why I was specific in saying that it is a "certain class of people from the UK and US" You seem determined to generalise my statements and miss represent what I said.

UKJ wrote: There are thousands of prostitutes advertising on one UK website alone. Add the other websites, and streetwalkers, and you have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Brits visiting prostitutes, who wouldn't class themselves as losers. Then theres lap dancing bars, stag trips to Amsterdam and Prague, while the women go to strip nights and hen parties. The UK isn't like the old 1950's BBC newsreels!

While the public's attitude to sexwork in the UK has relaxed over the last 50 years or so its still fairly split with roughly 40% of people thinking that selling sex was acceptable, this figure drops to %22 if the person selling sex was a relation.https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpubl ... ution.aspx Similarly in the US from a 1998 report "few see prostitution as beneficial to the country. 60- 64% say it is never justified" and "38-49% consider prostitution to be a major problem"http://publicdata.norc.org:41000/gss/do ... s/tr31.pdf The point being that while prevalent it is not wholly socially acceptable. Many related activities such as curb crawling are illegal and "sting operations"are in progress. Also there is a strong loby to adopt the Swedish model of criminalisation of purchase.

Jamie_Lambo wrote:Pretty simple this one, whats everyones opinions regarding lady drinks? do you buy them? are you a bell ringer? or are you a "Cheap Charly"?

some times i can be really strict regarding to lady drinks, mainly when the first thing a girl says to me is "you buy me lady drink?" before shes even striked up a decent conversation (if thats possible lol) and plus its never just the one..

other times i can be quite loose and ill have a group of about 5-6 girls with drinks, i dont mind especially if their friends as they do get a Dollar out of it, but ive even had girls come up to me and ask for a lady drink even though she has a full drink just bought by the customer shes sat with lol

it does get on my nerves though when youve got a few girls pestering you for drinks all night, especially when youve already told them no

i do like the girls in king tiger though up victory hill, they wont ask me for lady drinks they will just ask me for a dollar and then they go buy a can of beer from the street vendor, and one day, when i had a few asking me for drinks, they suggested just buying a jug of beer and they would share it between like 8 of them, kept them all happy and a jug of beers not too pricey $4-5

Kuroneko wrote:

TheGrinchSR wrote:Nothing to do with the crystal meth to or endless numbers of people they're not really sleeping with when they are bar fined? This pretense that bar girls aren't prostitutes is charming but only serves to make punters feel better.

Why do so called "punters" have to feel better about anything? The is no issue here in dealing with prostitutes, hostesses, escorts or any other participant in the "water trade". The only people that seem to have an issue with sexwork and conflate it to a common denominator are a certain class of people from the UK and US where sexwork is by and large illegal and not part of the culture as it is in, for instance Japan. Such people usually make statements such as "I don't pay for sex"or "people that pay for sex are losers"etc. etc. They appear to have some sort of guilt complex about night life that does not exist in much of the world, for example South America, Asia and much of Europe.

To illustrate the above point, one could make a comparison with food. I like to cook at home, but also spend quite a bit in restaurants around Phnom Penh. Both enjoyable experiences in different ways. However no one ever questions eating out by saying such things as "I don't pay for food in restaurants" or "people that pay for food in restaurants are losers" , "real men only cook at home". Similarly I don't think many would conflate, say Armand's or La Residence with Lucky Burger or KFC on the grounds that its "all the same" as you are paying for prepared food. All the food is good in its own way but it is different, in the same way that Hostesses and street prostitutes are different.

My issue with hostess bar critics in general is they usually start the critique with phrases such as "I don't buy lady drinks", "I went in a hostess bar once", or "I don't usually go in hostess bars but..."and then go on to give what is a largely uniformed opinion based on little more than supposition. They are either, tourists, new arrivals or Pattaya visa runners. The latter who often assume that the "scene" in Phnom Penh is the same as Pattaya. While that may have been to some extent true of Pattaya in the '80's it is not true today.

There is also the issue with assuming that all the girls are on drugs, and this is of course part of the western concept of the prostitute as in some way degenerate. While I admit that since the mid '90's when I arrived here the use of Amphetamines has skyrocketed, however by and large you will not see much drug use or even smoking among the Hostesses, certainly in the better bars. Of course places like GSM are a different matter.

Then there is also the class of girl working in the bar to consider, which is not monolithic. There are the "trailer trash" girls with dysfunctional families who will pretty much go with anyone and may take anything that is not "screwed down". Incidentally these girls are usually the "trashiest"dressed and likely to target any new customers. They are desperate and very pushy. Then there's the working class or lower middle class type girls, who may have a day job as hairdresser or seamstress and etc, and working at the bar for extra cash because they have a child to care for or mother or father has some financial problems. These girls can earn two or three hundred dollars a month without going with customers. They are generally on the the lookout for a Barang boyfriend and go with a customer when they consider they may have a "good catch". Some have sponsors already and are receiving anything up to $1500 a month. Some have more than one sponsor. They are obviously careful as they don't want to "screw up"what they already have.

While some customers view all the hostesses as prostitutes, the girls themselves don't see it that way. The girls start out optimistic and hopeful that this customer is "the one" The customer that treats the girl as a commodity is responsible for her progressive disillusionment and cynicism that creates the hard bitten gold digger, who ends up wreaking her revenge on some hapless customer. The sad irony is its the cynical customer who turns a "nice girl" into a cynical gold digger who "cleans out" some "nice customer". The cynical customer will then come along and say "I told you so"

Fortunately in the twenty years I have been here I know far more success stories among hostesses than failures, and a lot of remarkably resilient girls who have remained positive and cheerful despite many years in the industry.