We met up with a couple of the Canadian girls from the University Wednesday afternoon and had a great time hanging on the beach. We went for supper together and I had some roasted Duck. It was extremely spicy to say the least – I, unfortunately, am not great at eating really spicy food. Luckily I was able to share a little bit of Kelsey’s not-so-spicy leftovers.
That evening I saw things that blew my mind. I guess it’s fair to say that there are a plethora of prostitutes in Thailand. On Wednesday night I think we found the epicenter. I was glad to have been there with the Canadian girls because the “ladies of the night” seemed to leave us alone while practically jumping on every other guy that walked down the street. The thing that was kind of surprising is that the girls didn’t look like the typical prostitutes you would see in films, they looked like any other Tai girls with normal amounts of makeup and pretty standard looking dresses (IE. not something you’d go to church in, but nothing that would shock you at the bar either). Also of note was the fact that they were fairly good looking girls. A lot of older, “less handsome”, white males were making the rounds, some sitting down with a girl others just coming in and walking out with a “friend” in only a few minutes.
The thing about the prostitutes there, is that some of them are men. Or more accurately – “were men”. There are a ton of lady-boys in Thailand, men who apparently wanted to become women and so they did. Dave and I didn’t seem to have any problems picking them out (it didn’t seem very difficult) but the girls weren’t as quick to spot them as we were. Once we started pointing out the ones with really large hands, shoulders, feet, and adam’s apples, they started to get the basic pattern.