Prostitution - A brief guide
Posted: Saturday, November 04, 2006
by Ieuan Dolby
The Mariners Articles
Prostitution is a massive trade that exists in every town and city across the globe! People know about it but ignore it as it serves a purpose for many males and females alike and nobody is willing to oppose the business or to attempt to stamp it out as it is either too big to contemplate, livelihoods will be lost and there would be oh, so many males twiddling there thumbs of an evening.
The word prostitution carries with it a heavy connotation! It sounds dirty, wrong and illegal! A whore suffers worse; a whore could be described as an ugly old hag well past her ‘heyday’ and dressed in a skimpy skirt and high heels, who is hanging around street corners under the dim ray of a red 20 watt light bulb! There are other words to describe the trade of selling sex for cash; a hooker conjures up a picture of a slightly younger whore who is pulling men out of the crowds against there will; harlot; hustler, loose woman; take your pick!
However bad these words may sound, from England to America, Thailand, Macau, Singapore and Indonesia and around the other side of the world to Sydney, Australia and further a field to Brazil, Peru and beyond woman are plying their trade and in short, wherever there is a man, these woman will never be short of a prospective customer and the cash that they can unlock. In some countries this trade is illegal, in others legal but hidden and in some others illegal yet blatantly obvious and in the remainder nobody really cares! In many countries or places the trade is light-hearted and optional in others the woman are forced into it through slavery, requirements for cash or abuse by an angry and controlling pimp wearing a suit that went out of fashion in the sixties! In all cases the exchange of cash is enormous, the trade in sex humungous yet it receives scant attention across the globe as people from all walks-of-life turn a blind eye to something that is far too complex to face.
Some nations turn the proverbial blind eye to the fact that their female youth are ‘on the game’ as the proceeds from the trade brings in money to support the immediate family and increases the GDP of the country! For example; hundreds of thousands of Filipino travel overseas every year to work, many as maids, thousands as seafarers or in construction and many more are on the game. Filipino whores (girls) can be found as far a-field as Toronto and Dubai and in their thousands in places like Labuan in Malaysia and Hong Kong! These Filipinos are typically young, having initially signed up to start work as a house cleaner or maid; as advertised by a recruitment agency in their city back home. The girls are required to pay a fee to be hired, often up to a thousand or more US dollars, and upon giving this cash over, they then become indebted to the recruitment agency until this sum is paid back. When traveling to a foreign country they are still typically under the assumption that they will be a house cleaner, a dancer, a singer, etc. but upon arriving suddenly find out that they will have to spend quite a large part of their time on their backs servicing males, singing a song to a different tune! They have little choice except to continue so that they can pay back the debt, pay for a flight back home and probably pay the “boss" some more money to give them back their passports. They become service-girls to earn the money and in most cases they continue far past this point as the call of the hard cash that they are earning is stronger than a magnet to steel. They will continue in this trade for many years, sending money back by remittance to their immediate family who in-turn will never question or ask where the money comes from.
Certainly not all girls in the profession are forced into a bed, equally as many are there by choice to finance an education, a lifestyle or simply for the color of the money made (an amount not likely to be seen whilst working in other professions except bank robbery)! Many of them enjoy their work and take pleasure in the control they have over the man they are servicing! The idea though of a man simply giving across a certain amount of cash for a ‘quick dip of his wick’ is perhaps only one of thousands of different types of prostitution that exists. Idealistic prostitution goes further than the male simply buying sex, in many countries the girls require far more that that before they will go to bed and the whole ordeal is turned into a much longer and semi-romantic adventure! In this way the girl is for a time courted, wined and dined and allowed to feel like a lady; the sex only being entertained once the preliminaries of romance have been worked through; a day or two, a week or two later!
Over in Hamburg the large and imposing look-a-like-theatre called the Eros Center is filled to overflowing with massive, well-tanned and buxom girls! They are so perfectly formed and large that at no point in there career will the installed panic alarm in the rooms upstairs be required unless the male feels threatened - these girls are in full control of the action. They want hard cash before events aspire and all onward proceedings will be conducted in an orderly and business-like fashion; emotion will be at a minimum and once the transaction has been fulfilled the customer will hitch his trousers back-up from his ankles and depart without murmur!
Over in Vung Tau in Vietnam girls line bar stools like mannequins in storage! They wait for the sole customer to enter, they let him buy and drink and then they slide up with conversation and interest! “Where from you?", “you like beer, buy me drink?" and whilst these pleasantries are being worked through in varying forms the hand will creep onto the thigh to lightly rest with silent innuendo"! In a couple of bars the girls will have nearly ripped the prospective customer’s clothes off before they have even entered the premises but in many more cases sex is not on the menu! For the most part these girls are called ‘bar girls’ and they make money from drinks that the customer buys them and a monthly stipend from the bar (a percentage of every drink a customer buys for them is also part of their wages)! Depending on the girl and on the bar law, some of these girls will jump into bed with a man if they like him. Many though will either not entertain the idea or will wait until the romance grips, the idea of prince charming on his white stallion hits hard, and then they will sink slowly asunder! The latter girls will not want cash to be thrust at them, as this would break the colorful dream of galloping away over the horizon; they want mobile phones as a gift, to be wined and dined and eventually a passport with a visa and a prospective marriage certificate to be issued with their name on it.
Strangely enough the trade is illegal in Vietnam; the police often raid hotels and should they find a man and woman in bed together they better have a marriage certificate handy or money enough for a decent bribe to get out of going to the clink. To sleep with a girl in a hotel it is necessary to pay for another room; hotels make more money this way and the business is kept conveniently available yet somehow in their eyes above board! Many customers find it necessary to double up - two men with two girl’s book two rooms, the men book a room together and the girls book a room together but once behind closed doors they swap around to make the required couple. And hopefully the police will not choose that day to pay a visit!
Over in Thailand the King recently said “there is no prostitution in my country"! He has obviously not been around much or his advisors are feeding him false information! The bars in Thailand are perhaps the worst in Asia for blatant and open prostitution. Many girls have no hindrance to clambering underneath a bar table to service some drunken lout who although will never remember the end result will be more open with his wallet therein! Many bars resemble nightmarish orgies in full-swing with a variety of disgustingly obese and drunk businessmen spilling out of their chairs and with an equally as many girls (who mummy would certainly not want to meet) wearing anything from nothing to skirts that would strangle a squirrel, mostly sitting on the large flab of the sweating opposition, between their legs or trying to dance on the tables.! Not all places paint this rather ugly picture but generally speaking the trade is rife and the girls willing to go further than their international counterparts in more ways than one!
Thai girls are well known all over Asia for their presence in venues appropriate to the trade! Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket are filled to overflowing with skimpily clad girls on the make and dressed in anything from a nurse’s uniform to schoolgirls - thus sex-tours are formed from as far a field as Holland, England and Canada! Girls come to work with an assortment of whips and chains that are cracked and rattled to entice interested parties, who cross borders and spend hard earned money for a week of bed and drink! Thai girls also work internationally; rumor has it that many Thai wives escape the confines of home life for a weekend of repetitive sex in Singapore and some extra pocket money before returning home to the confines of an established life. Should one look at the bars in Orchard Towers in Singapore, often referred to as the ‘four floors of whores’ it is immediately noticeable that at least half of the hookers inside are from Thailand (boy or girl or ladyboy).
Ladyboy’ are increasingly appearing around the world with Thailand boasting more than their fare share of them for the international market. This term basically describes males who have either decided to become a woman for money, who feel that they after all woman, or because they are gay and feel rather more at home in a dress and high heels than denims and hiking boots! Once upon a time there were transvestites but with modern surgery practices it is now possible to turn a raucous and loud-mouthed male ape into a perfectly formed female human being so the word thus becomes obsolete! Orchard Towers in Singapore has bars filled to overflowing with lady boys, some of them would not be noticed (if they kept there mouths shut) amongst a group of sweaty construction workers in the shower room but others are more perfect than the girls they mimic! In fact many customers who are after a female companion have been non-the-wiser and in their drunken stupor have taken a lady boy back to their hotel/home only to be very surprised during the frolicking period when they come across a lump between the legs that should not be there! Others still will always presume that they slept with what was a rather delicate and perfectly formed girl who didn’t talk much – operations can do wonders if the money is paid!
There are many types of girls on the make from the blatant hanging around on street corners to the more devilish and opportunist approach. In Taiwan the market for young and nubile females (preferably straight off the shelf) is overwhelming, the over 60yrs old males being the largest grouping for this demand! I call this prostitution others may not but …… Old Chiang Kai-Shek’s soldiers still live off the state. There are hundreds and thousands of them in Taiwan who do not much else except grumble and drain the states coffers and they are often widowed, divorced or having never married are on the lookout for a foreign bride. No girl in Taiwan would entertain these old and crabbed derelicts so they scour the Internet, they call up the numbers freely issued on 24hour advertising programs on television and are introduced through matchmaking agencies that should be shut down for blatant misuse of the descriptions they offer. These girls ranging from 17 to 50 yrs old come from Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, China and other places to marry an old and often disabled old relic, some of whom are well into their eighties. They become live-in maids, ordered to clean and cook and act as nurse, sex-slave and general punch bag, all to receive a small amount of money that they can send to their families back home – or so they had hoped when selling their bodies in the first place. This importation of well over a hundred thousand foreign brides in the last few years has created a social problem that will last well beyond tomorrow and into the next century! These foreign brides are lacking in certain social skills, they become shuttered up in their houses as a result of speaking no Chinese and with the typical bullying and abusive attitudes of the husband, his family and friends they are without character, thought or social grace! Their children enter the world to become social outcasts at school, lacking without a fatherhood figure and a mother who can say no more than ‘heelo’ without shrinking inside herself with embarrassment!
The only worthy prostitute of them all was the recently articled Chinese girl who married a crabbed up and wheelchair bound ex-soldier only to see him die within the year. Not faltering in her approach she married another within days only to see him pass away not soon after! By the time her third husband had passed away she was the proud owner of three properties and with a mass of savings and the Taiwanese Governments assurance that she will receive her husband’s pensions for the rest of her life (some silly law that the Government forgot to alter when faced with the mass immigration of uneducated potential brides) she certainly won’t be a social problem.
A similar trade in flesh occurs in Morocco! If one should be on a ferry from Spain to Tangiers around mid-June they will see a certain type of customer passing through. They will typically be driving a well polished BMW or Mercedes, will most likely be wearing a business suit or Arab Dress and a permanent scowl to emphasize their importance in the world! In tow will be a high-heeled and blonde haried bimbo of English or Continental European origin tripping over her-self in an impossible effort to please. It is extremely harsh to state that this is prostitution; the wives though are obviously unhappy and living a life of marital disharmony! They married initially on promises of riches beyond there dreams only to find themselves one of five others and they become a shuttered and silent body designed purely for sex with the husband or whomever he chooses for her!
Whilst the girls in Asia are typically more open to abuse by drunken customers due to their size and fragility the same can not be said for European, South American or Russian streetwalkers! Here they can rule the roost! As the Soviet Union has opened up so has the flow of Eastern Woman abroad. Russian prostitutes can be found in Orchard Towers in Singapore, in Cyprus and as far a field as Rio-de-Janeiro! Over in Dubai were one would never have suspected that such an illegal trade exists amongst the boundaries of the Muslim faith, quite openly and for all who enter within thousands of girls from all areas of the world ply their trade, often in luxurious and expensive night clubs frequented by Muslims, Christians and unknowns alike. As with anywhere else in the worlds, as long as one has the money; the legs will open to suit.
Areas exist across the world were prostitutes are known to hang out. Famous names like Soho in London and Hamburg’s Reeperbahn are but two of the millions of Red Light districts that are officially or unofficially condoned by authorities to contain and keep tabs on what occurs within. Say to any taxi driver in Puerto Rico “take me to a place that has “jiggy jiggy" and within ten minutes you’ll be sitting in a bar with a girl in your lap! Say to any taxi driver in Ho Chi Minh, take me to place for Bam Bam" and within five minutes you will be forking out money to buy a girl a drink and one for the taxi-driver who automatically assumes that you will require his services again soon!
There has been some amazing statistics appearing concerned with how people surf the Internet for porn! In the UK it was suggested that nearly 70 percent of males access a pornographic website at least once a month! It has also been suggested that at least 50 percent of woman visit a pornographic website at least once a month. This figure is extremely high, considering the fact that nobody ever admits to logging on to breasts.com or hotwetandwild.com but these statistics only goes to prove that the population of the UK, like the rest of the world, is sex mad and sex starved. Nowhere near 70 percent of males pay for sex once a month and neither do 50 percent of females cash-in their bodies for sex but the potential must obviously there. Whilst visiting a pornographic website costs peanuts and can be conducted in private it is rather harder to head down to Soho or the nearest ‘massage parlor offering extras without the wife knowing, yet simply because these places exist and flourish the demand must be huge!
Prostitution is an enormous trade and one that is condoned by most authorities as they themselves have dipped their wick in places that there wives did not know about and hopefully never will! As long as businesspersons travel, as long as directors and executives are wined and dined by the opposition and as long as government officials are courted by their foreign counterpart with offers of a seductive escort for the night, prostitutes of all classes will be in demand! With such high rankers as judges, actors, entrepreneurs, sports heroes, lawyers, ambassadors and world leaders openly admitting that they have slept with a prostitute, a simple lifting of any carpet in any sitting room around the world would reveal quite a few amazing additions. As such the trade will continue unchecked and flourishing the world over as those in power have a drink too many, let their urges take over from common sense and were a show of dominance or a release of unbridled passion is felt necessary, something the wife would never entertain!
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Top-level comments on this article: (9 total)Have you ever been over to Hamburg, Germany before or any of the other places?
My first ever trip to sea was joining a ship in Hamburg! I was 17 years old and had never left home before, I did not know what a ship looked like nor for that matter what I was getting into. I joined the ship in the morning and that very same evening my esteemed officers took me ashore! I have never forgotten the Eros Center and 10 Mark Alley - nor for that matter the fact that I spent my whole trips allowance on that first night! I will say nothing further!
Great article, I loved reading it! Have traveled a lot and know that the information is true. Funny that it's only legal in the Netherlands. Here the girls pay tax, have insurance and can even build up a pension for the older day's! Unfortunately I know it will never come so fare in the rest of the world...
Well, quite interesting to read. I did a similar study on the Nigerian situaton a little over eight years ago. I think I will send it in for publication. I am quite impressed with reseach evidence and substantiations. Ken Ikenwa, MSc (Lagos,Nigeria).
Well written and enlightening article, I look forward to reading your other articles about the seafaring life.
you DON"T pay a hooker for sex;you pay her to LEAVE after sex!
Great article, I also have done some travelling and find this information spot on. No pun intended. There are alot of reasons why this industry flourishes everywhere in the world, but primarily it is because of the impoverish ravaged economies of most of these areas. I believe this is a decision that these woman make to improve there situation. I know that some woman are forced into it, but some choose for varying reasons. Right or wrong, anybody involved in this industry must live with themselves and live with the decisions they have made. Therfore I believe, "to each their own" !Great article and this reponse I think captures the right spirit. In richer countries, many girls choose to prostitute themselves purely for greed (or in some cases because they enjoy it) but in poorer countries there is often no other choice for many, if they've not been well educated or find themselves with relatives to support at a young age.
A good article on an important topic that is seldom covered - yet is as old as mankindThese people play an important function in society and life that is seldom given creditAt least they are making an honest living which can not be said of many people and funcionaires in life - including many government officials , especially our current politicians
Excellent article. Well written, very informative, and my god, I didn't know there were that many words in the English language :). Is it no wonder that the church and governments determined long ago, that if you can control a persons sexual encounters and experiences, that you could then control just about anything about them?
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