Thread: Grumpy Old Men

Originally Posted by Bruno

Don't the Thai people themselves know this?

Thais can be incredibly naieve. Those other girls are working as prostitutes, but my daughter is working as a waitress in a bar.

It just so happens that the waitresses are topless and are wearing a number.

I also want to make it known that I don't frequent places like that. But people I work with do.

That is disturbing! Very sad.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I've wondered about this. How is it possible that the parents believe this? It is happening in their own country, on a very big scale. I could understand if this was an exceptional thing, but Thailand is globally known for its sex industry and the fact that age limits are not respected.

Don't the Thai people themselves know this?

Never been to Thailand so I can't speak from experience but I do know that in the Philippines and Korea, these girls are generally recruited from poor villages out in the country. Dad is typically an aging farmer/fisherman who literally busts his hump for pennies a day. Oftentimes their provincial niavete along with a cultural mandate for grown children to financially support their parents/younger siblings makes turning a blind eye to the moral and ethical "details" of how the money is actually made pretty easy. To those of us in Western countries, this sounds absolutely horrendous but the poverty these people live in absolutely defies description. In our countries, "poor" people live in government housing, have no internet connections and pay for their grocies with government subsidies. In their country, poor people live in plywood shacks with no electricity or running water and dirt floors. From the parents' perspective it's a win/win proposition. Their daughters are able to assist them financially and in the course of their "assigned duties" are exposed to rich foreigners. If she ends up marrying one of these rich foreigners, it really is a game changer for everyone concerned. So much so that "details" of how this came to be can easily be rationalized away.

PS: In dirt poor countries, ALL foreigners are, by definition the filthiest kind of filthy rich. Even those who aren't rich by their own country's standards (for example young Junior Enlisted GIs) can easily pass for Bill Gates. When I was in the Philippines, the TV show Dallas was popular. My in laws were convinced that Dallas accurately depicted the every day life of rank and file Americans. To this day I don't think they truly understand how far off target they really were.