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Friday December 21, 2007

Thai prostitutes desperate to find Western husbands spend half their income on interpreters, it has been revealed.

Film crews followed Fon, a bar worker, and Yek, a karaoke singer, on their plight to find foreign men to whisk them away from a life of poverty and provide for their children.

For foreign men searching for petite Thai wives the Nana Plaza red light district of Bangkok is full of Eastern promise, but for the women who work there life couldn’t be less glamorous.

By night Fon, a 21-year-old single mum, sells her body to tourists but by day she hands her wages over to a cunning businesswoman.

Pompeli, one of the only women in the area with a computer and good grasp of English, charges the girls to send and reply to e-mails from potential husbands.”I used to condemn these girls,” she said. “I didn’t want anything to do with them. After all it’s prostitution.

“Any girl who gets a foreign husband comes home and builds a big house.

Other women want to copy them. “They want a new life. They have no education so their best hope is to find a foreign husband to support them.”

After searching the Internet during the day Fon heads to the Godiva Bar for an all-night shift desperately hoping to catch the eye of a foreigner.

On the way she passes some of the biggest houses in the Province of Isaan. “The big houses are owned by women who married foreigners,” she says.

Fon gave birth to four-year-old son Kaptan at the age of 17. She believes finding a Western man to marry will help people oversee her teenage mistake. “Mamasan looks after us,” says Fon.

Mamasan, owner of the Godiva Bar, charges men to take her employees to their hotel rooms for the night.

For her negotiating a fee is purely business, but for the girls she employs it’s a chance at a better life.She said: “Some girls do this job to get a foreign boyfriend thinking it’ll change their life but it’s different for me. I’m used to it. It’s a job.

“You get a lot of weirdos on the net. The point about working in a bar is that at least you meet the customer face to face.”

The girls at the Godiva bar work as a team to pull in male customers and are paid for every drink they persuade foreign men to buy them.

Mamasan makes sure the girls reach their quota of beverages, known as lady drinks. “Normally if the bar is busy, the ladies will get around five drinks a night,” she said.

“Salary is about $100 a month but that includes going with a man five times and 60 drinks.”

Like Fon, karaoke singer Lek, 32, is desperate to find a foreign husband to provide for her and her two young children. She has been posting photographs of herself on the Internet in the hope of finding a foreign love, but is having little success.

She said: “I have a decent house but I need money to cover daily expenses. Their father won’t help out so I’ve decided that I’ve got to find a foreign husband. “The men here, if they’re poor, they’re really poor. These days you needlots of money. My mind’s made up. I need a foreigner.”

Unable to speak fluent English Lek also relies on Pompeli to communicate with foreign men, a favour that is costing her almost half her income.

When Lek first posted her photograph on the Internet she received 11 responses from Swedish, French and British men, but since then she has had little success. “When I open the e-mails I feel hopeful,” she said.

Pompeli says: “For some it takes five or six years to get the best looking richest man. It all depends on destiny.”Some girls find a foreigner in just three months. They fall in love and get married in three months.”

Pompeli reassures Lek she will find love if she is patient. “Love is like a shadow. Chase it and it runs away. Stand still and it’ll always be with you,” she says.

But at 32, Lek has no time to waste and is, like hundreds of other women in her position, attracted to the bright lights of Bangkok’s Nana Plaza red light district.

Worried she isn’t flirtatious enough to attract male tourists she confides in an experienced bar worker who tells her “all you need to know is the word for beer.”

At her interview Lek’s new boss reassured her further. She says: “As for looks we don’t expect much, you’d pass.”

Fon manages to find herself a potential husband in Mark, a 36-year-old builder from Birmingham, England, who walked into the Godiva Bar while on holiday.

Mark proposed to her just two weeks after landing back in the UK. She said: “I don’t think 36 is too old. For a foreigner, that’s not too old. I’ve seen couples where the British man is 70 and the woman is 30.”

Fon speaks to Mark on the phone and webcam every day but has been forced to stay in Thailand since her visa application failed.

Mark has been paying Mamasan a holding fee to make sure his intended doesn’t go with other customers, but that means Fon surviving on just $100 a month.

Each day she prays for good fortune but for now she has little choice but to keep working for lady drinks.

She said: “My son doesn’t have a father. Whoever becomes his father must love him. My dream is to give my son a better life than I had.

“My son knows I’m his mother but he doesn’t call me mum. He calls my mother mum because she looks after him. “If anyone asks him who his mum is he’ll point to the nearest pretty woman.”

Fon’s mum is unable to accept the career her daughter has chosen.

Fon said: “I’m a rebel. Mum can’t really accept me because she has a respectable job. I only tell her good news.”

A Western husband is a status symbol to the Thai girls so much so that Bangkok hosts an annual foreign husband contest.

This year’s winner was Barry from Essex, England. He faced competition from German and Dutch men but won the cup after proving he knew most customs in the local area.

The girls were filmed for Channel 4 show Girlfriends for Sale.