i think its the regular drinking that changes bargirls, the amount of girls ive seen change since when they first started working the bar, only takes about a month or 2 and their personality has usually taken a turn for the worst

Nothing to do with the crystal meth 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.

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.

Brilliant post that sets the record straight.

Yes, amazing how he knows what Brits, Americans and most Europeans think, despite being in Asia for 20 years.

And comparing paying for sex, to paying for a meal in a restaurant was eh, immense.

UKJ wrote:Yes, amazing how he knows what Brits, Americans and most Europeans think, despite being in Asia for 20 years.

And comparing paying for sex, to paying for a meal in a restaurant was eh, immense.

It's very easy to know what Brits, Americans and Europeans think, all you have to do is engage them in conversation about the topic in hand. Note I said "a certain class of people from the UK and US" and referred to their view of sexwork. Then I compared that with the perspective of people from other parts of the world, for example South America, Asia and Europe. I was not making broad generalisations concerning what "Brits, Americans and most Europeans think" as you are trying to infer. The statement "despite being in Asia for 20 years" is really a non sequitur, you are using to ridicule. The fact that I have lived here so long and have had the opportunity to converse with people from many nationalities on the subject of "night life" that makes my observations (I would have thought) more, rather than less valid.

With respect to your sarcastic rejoinder to my analogy of "comparing paying for sex, to paying for a meal in a restaurant", this infers that you really haven't understood my point, which resolves around the cultural acceptance/ none acceptance of an activity. In the UK for example going out and paying for a meal has positive cultural implications. You are going out and paying for something you enjoy. If you tell your friends you will get positive responses. However if you say you are going with a prostitute the response is likely to be far from positive. Although you are also going out and paying for something you enjoy, because prostitution has such negative cultural image you will be viewed in the negative. However this is not the case in much of the world, in Japan for example going out to a hostess bar has the same positive cultural connotations as going out for a meal. In fact in many cases the activities are combined. This is similar to here, when going out with Khmer friends could involve going to a KTV, or Beer Garden. Here food drink and sex are all "on the menu" so to speak with equal acceptance.

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!

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.

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!

Good post, kuroneko, don't let anyone try and pussy-whip you, LOL.

I was amazed to find women in Thailand who said they do it because they enjoy it. I told a weren't woman I knew and she said I was lying. So i took her to an area and told her to speak to some of the girls. She came back the next day and said, jeezuz, you're right, some of them do it because they enjoy it. cue; outrage from fat western NGO type females.

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 ...