The Lost Girls

by Jennifer Baggett

  As I wheeled for the door, Carter reached out to grab me, to pull me back. My expression must have been enough to convince him to drop my hand. “I’m sorry, Amanda. Maybe I should have told you, but…don’t go like this. Let me explain.”

  Carter was still talking as I flew downstairs. Slamming the door to my room, I started shoving clothes into my pack and informed Jen that we had to get the hell out of Shangri-la.

  By the time I’d disclosed the final detail to Beth and our plane had touched down on the shimmering asphalt runway, I’d decided that I just wanted to put the whole thing behind me. Considering I was in an entirely new country, with a thousand miles between Luang Prabang, Carter, and me, it seemed almost possible to do. I tried to look forward to our winter vacation.

  Months earlier, Jen, Beth, and I had decided to spend the Christmas and New Year’s holidays in the Thai islands. The same friends who had raved about Luang Prabang had vehemently recommended that we skip the resort destination of Phuket, saying that its natural beauty had already been choked out by crass commercialism, but we’d decided to check it out for ourselves.

  During the forty-five-minute drive from the airport, I could see that the area had been fully colonized by multinational corporations, the original thatched huts replaced by more profitable businesses. The narrow streets were flanked by sprawling superresorts—JW Marriott; Sheraton; Novotel; Banyan Tree; Hilton—each one fortified by massive concrete walls. As formidable as these barriers appeared, even they hadn’t been strong enough to hold back the deadliest and most unexpected of invaders.

  Our driver, Ying, told us that the 2004 tsunami (which had claimed more than 4,000 lives in Thailand and more than 230,000 in the region) had done some serious damage to the resorts in Phuket, particularly those on the western and southern parts of the island.

  As we gazed out at the Andaman Sea throwing diamonds of light in front of us and nary a petal out of place across the well-pruned landscapes, it seemed almost impossible that a twenty-foot wall of seawater had hurtled ashore like an unstoppable freight train, obliterating everything in its path. I remembered watching in horror the video clips, the endless loop of CNN coverage showing people clinging to street signs as the deluge surged and sucked around them, the hysterical parents desperate to find their missing children, the villages that had been leveled or washed out to sea. Virtually every country bordering the Indian Ocean had been touched—and in some cases decimated—by the force of the strongest undersea earthquake recorded in modern history. How had the people here salvaged what was left, started their lives again, when some had so little to start with?

  “Very terrible. Many, many Thai lose family, lose job.” Ying shook his head. “But everything in Phuket built fast-fast, make good again. Need farangs come here, buy hotel, use taxi, eat in restaurant, visit girlie bar. They come back, we start over.”

  As we pulled through the grand porte cochere at the Chedi, a place that could have been ripped straight from the pages of the glossy travel magazines I so loved, the driver jumped out to assist us with our bags. I handed him the fare, plus 50 extra baht as a tip, and he thanked me profusely, saying that just by being here, and by coming to Phuket and spending our money, my friends and I were helping the local people. Ascending the steps of the luxury hotel we’d chosen to splurge on for Beth’s arrival and accepting a tropical welcome drink offered by a young Thai woman, I hoped that—at least in some small way—he was right.

  From where we sat on the veranda of our bungalow, a tree house perched high above a sliver of beach shaded by coconut groves, it was tough to see why so many people had warned us to steer clear of Phuket. True, it wasn’t exactly an undiscovered paradise, but that hardly seemed enough to inspire the rancor of the ranks. What exactly was it, then, that had turned people off?

  Even the most cursory of Google searches would have answered my question, but I’d been spending every spare moment trying to finish my article on “Healing Secrets from Around the World.” While Jen and Beth sat by the pool, sipping pastel drinks adorned with hibiscus buds and fruit slices, I logged onto the Wi-Fi in the open-air lobby and slogged through the piece as quickly as I could. Somehow, the idea of being a glamorous international reporter, dashing off to foreign lands and filing stories from halfway around the globe, hadn’t exactly panned out as I’d hoped. My editor didn’t seem to understand that I wasn’t sitting in front of a desk all day, with a phone and a high-speed connection at my disposal. She’d been making greater demands with each revision (“Do you think that you could go back to Laos and get better shots of the nun you interviewed? She looked kind of, you know, mean in her photo. Oh, and could you track down a different Kenyan traditional healer, someone we can call to fact-check the story? Great—thanks!”). More important, my heart was no longer in the game.

  I was sitting there with rivulets of sweat pouring from under my arms, down my back, and beneath my knees instead of hanging out with the friend who’d schlepped halfway around the planet to see us. I found myself wishing I could jump into a time machine and delete the pitch I’d sent in Kenya. What had I been thinking? I sent off the latest (and hopefully final) draft of my article just as the sun was going down.

  It wasn’t until later that night, when Jen, Beth, and I hopped into a shuttle bus to explore the legendary nightlife in nearby Patong (a scene that our hotel manager cryptically described as “all shiny and glittery, with lots of the blinky-blinky lights and sounds and constant activity”) that we finally learned about Phuket’s alter ego: it was an unapologetic, in-your-face, X-rated amusement park of prostitution.

  While initially the restaurants, coffeehouses, souvenir shops, T-shirt stalls, and DVD stands along Beach Road appeared moderately legit (Starbucks, Häagen-Dazs, and McDonald’s have all set up camp here too), things made a lascivious turn once we veered onto the pedestrian thoroughfare of Bangla. The wide arcade was heavy with foot traffic, and night had been blasted into fluorescent-tinted day by neon marquees, hanging lanterns, scarlet stage lights, and an enormous sign welcoming visitors to Patong in green, red, and amber Christmas lights.

  In doorways and out on the street, Thai women costumed in bandeau tops, microscopic hot pants, schoolgirl kilts, and half-buttoned white shirts used singsong baby voices to call out to potential customers: paunchy, sunburned Europeans, nervous-looking college boys clutching cans of Singha beer, wide-eyed young couples, Japanese businessmen, and old men who looked like forgotten war veterans. Inside the dozens of beer halls, go-go bars, and dance clubs lining Bangla and the smaller side streets, girls pirouetted, ground their hips, giggled, and did their best to act provocative. Some danced with their arms and legs hooked around poles, while others worked the seamier, darker corners of the floor. Several appeared to be having fun, hamming it up for guys taking video, while others didn’t do much to hide their boredom.

  Back on the street, gorgeous half-dressed transvestites, also known as lady boys, or katoeys, catwalked through the red-light district. Even as I watched, a lady boy in an enormous tulle prom dress approached a group of guys, all wearing matching Same Same but Different T-shirts, and requested that they take a group photo together. Clearly, the guys didn’t grasp that the lady was really a dude, because when she turned around and lifted her crinolines they all freaked out—the moment captured forever on someone’s digital camera.

  As disconcerting as that revelation had been (at least for the straight men involved), I didn’t find it nearly as hard to witness as some of the “love connections” being made all around us. Very young girls, some of whom didn’t appear much older than fifteen or sixteen, were draped around or pressed up against much older men, guys who could have been three or four times their age. For the most part, the partners in these May–December affairs looked totally in their element. The girl—or girls—flirted and giggled; the old men looked ecstatic, as if they couldn’t quite believe they’d stumbled into a real live version of their pornographic fantasies.

  We’d later lea
rn that Patong is actually one of three renowned spots in Thailand (the other two being Bangkok and Pattaya) where international tourists can engage the services of prostitutes without fear that they’ll be judged or arrested. Dozens, if not hundreds, of Web sites explain exactly where to hook up with a Thai “girlfriend,” how much you should expect to pay for “short-time” and “long-time” sexual services, and how to avoid being drugged or duped by a girl looking to take a farang, or Westerner, for all he’s worth. Apparently, according to the sites, these devious young women are master manipulators who see their clients as walking ATMs. Be careful, the sites warn, because a girl will say or do just about anything to extract more cash from your wallet: manufacture tears, pretend her mother is dying of a terminal illness, or promise to stop working in the bars if you wire her money every month. Of course, she tells the same story to every other client she manages to get an e-mail address from.

  Based on the overt nature of the sex trade in Patong, one might assume that prostitution is legal, but it’s been outlawed since the 1960s. But though selling your body, or purchasing someone else’s, is technically a crime here, the local police turn a blind eye when the people involved are above the age of consent: That’s fifteen years old if you’re a “normal” Thai girl and eighteen if you’re a sex worker. Sure, this might seem a little contradictory, but considering the huge amounts of cash the industry rakes in every year (one report puts that number at $4.3 billion a year, 3 percent of the Thai economy), no one’s trifling with minor details.

  Despite the general seediness of Bangla and its side streets, Jen, Beth, and I didn’t feel unsafe there. Other than the occasional lady boy shrieking at us in passing or a Muay Thai boxing tout trying to get us to watch a match, no one paid us a whit of attention. There were far too many pretty faces and too much unchecked flesh for us to warrant more than a passing glance. Still, walking these streets, with their over-the-top carnival atmosphere and false laughter ringing out in stereo sound, made me feel uneasy.

  Eventually I asked if we could stop and sit in one of the better-lit beer bars to figure out what to do next. The three of us had been walking around Bangla for only about an hour, but already I’d seen enough. Sitting there sipping her beer, Beth was completely quiet. I realized that this was the first time she’d really witnessed anything like this. Unfortunately, Jen and I had seen it before.

  We’d gotten our first crash course in the pervasiveness of prostitution in Diani Beach, Kenya, right after we’d finished our volunteer program at Pathfinder. My friends and I had spent our first night in town at the guidebook-sanctioned Forty Thieves bar, trying to figure out why two local girls at the next table were hanging out with two unattractive balding Germans, one of whom had an obnoxious laugh and a mole the size of a bottle cap.

  “Well, they might already know each other,” Holly had said, giving them the benefit of the doubt. “Those women could be their girlfriends.”

  “C’mon,” said Irene in a low voice. “No way. They’re hookers.”

  We’d tried not to stare as the girls stood up and left with the men, only to return an hour later to strike up a conversation with another set of males at the bar. As the night had worn on, we’d witnessed similar transactions taking place all around us. Though the bar didn’t rent rooms—drinks, cigarettes, and entrees such as the aptly named Bang-Bang Chicken were the only items on the official menu—Forty Thieves clearly doubled as a brothel.

  Scandalized, we’d paid our check, with Irene venting on the matatu ride home about how horrible and disgusting men could be—how dare they exploit these women?

  But it wasn’t until the next day, when we saw several European women soliciting the services of Diani’s ubiquitous “beach boys,” that we were all stunned into silence. On the stretch of pristine sand, blue-haired ladies with flesh bursting out of their skirted bathing suits walked arm in arm with sinewy locals sporting baby dreads and six-pack abs. By the pool, twenty-something blond girls with cornrows and sunburned scalps accepted tanning oil applications from bare-chested Kenyans with bright smiles and a way with words in six different languages. We even ran into the famed octogenarian sex kitten who accepted sexual favors from several different beach boys, then tried to pay them with English toffees instead of cash. Sex sold in Diani Beach—and apparently, both the men and the women were buying.

  As shocked as I had been by the whole scene, I was more baffled by the idea of arranging a “sexcation.” Why would a foreigner fly to another continent—especially one where HIV had already claimed the lives of millions—for a few ill-gotten and risky orgasms?

  Apparently, experts at the United Nations were just as baffled. Rachel, a twenty-five-year-old Kenyan we’d met at dinner one night, confided that she’d volunteered for the United Nations when it had been conducting a study on sex tourism in the area. Her role had been to infiltrate clubs and bars along the coast and learn the “ins and outs” of the business: What were the average rates for the various services? How did the men and women get started in the industry? In what ways did they try to protect themselves from disease?

  Through Rachel’s covert ops, she learned that many of the female prostitutes were from very poor villages and had entered the business as an extreme stopgap measure to feed their children after their husbands had left them or had passed away. The money they could make in a few nights as a prostitute would be more than they’d earn in a month back home, if they could even get work. Some men also found it easier to scratch out a living by working the beach, rather than by traveling around to look for jobs as a laborer.

  According to Rachel, the sex workers were well aware of HIV and were much more diligent about using condoms than the average Kenyan. They were paid precious little for their services (“The Germans say that for the price of touching a boob back at home they can get the whole body here in Diani”) and conducted their business out in the open rather than in some sleazy back room. But though the women required volume sales to stay afloat, men were often hired for an entire week to give the “relationship” time to develop. Sometimes they wouldn’t even be required to have sex, as their clients were often more interested in companionship. They were also generally paid more for their services than their female counterparts. At the time, this disparity seemed unfair, and my compassion went out to the women. I tried to imagine how desperate a Kenyan girl would have to feel in order to compromise her body, to sell it off as her last precious commodity. I’d thought of Naomi and the struggle she’d face to become an educated Kenyan woman rather than a victim of circumstance.

  Now, as I clutched a sticky pint glass in Phuket and stared out at three young girls performing a striptease on a stage in the street, I no longer felt flooded with compassion or empathy. I just felt a clench of sadness, a curdle of disgust. Not toward any of the women, precisely—I figured the ones in Patong probably came from circumstances similar to those in Diani Beach—but in general, at the entire spectacle of it all. Thailand is called “the land of smiles,” but even from here, I felt as though the ones plastered on the faces of the women were false, clownish in their excessiveness.

  I also wondered: Was this the place that Carter had come to the week just before meeting me?

  It was still well before midnight on the first night of Beth’s vacation, but when I suggested leaving, no one put up a fuss. We caught a cab and left the blinky-blinky lights of Patong in the rearview mirror. I slumped down in the polyester seat and reminded myself, as I’d had to do many times during the trip, not to make snap judgments about what I’d seen. It was merely a postcard view of a situation, a one-dimensional reality that I couldn’t begin to understand in a single visit.

  That was part of the trouble with traveling from place to place so quickly. You hardly had time to get acquainted with the layout of your guesthouse, let alone the tangled inner workings of an entirely different culture, before you had to leave again.

  Still, while I was willing to acknowledge my wide-eyed Western naiveté, I
was fairly certain of one thing: places like Diani Beach, Patong, and countless others could not exist if the Johns (and the Carters) of the world didn’t fuel the demand that kept them alive and thriving.

  The following day, Jen, Beth, and I sequestered ourselves within the pristinely tended sanctuary of the Chedi Phuket, planting ourselves on terry-draped deck chairs and ordering drinks that we (or at least Jen and I) couldn’t really afford. I knew my friends and I were insulating ourselves from the world beyond the walls, pretending that the garish, neon-lit, bass-pumping spectacle in Patong existed in some parallel universe, not fifteen miles down the beach. For my part, I was attempting to forget that it had, in some small and scary way, touched my life.

  Looking past the onyx-tiled pool, through the precisely spaced white canvas umbrellas to the curve of confectioner’s sugar sand, and out at an ocean that graduated from turquoise to cornflower to lapis like ombré silk, I realized that were it not for the musicality of Thai voices in the background, my friends and I could have been anywhere else in the world. And just for a second, that’s exactly where I wanted to be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Holly

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS/CAMBODIA

  DECEMBER–JANUARY

  I stood frozen on the sidewalk, mesmerized by how the concrete was studded with ice like diamonds and bordered by fir trees dressed in Christmas lights. On the streets, traffic adhered to perfect order: cars heading in the same direction all stayed in one lane rather than swerving into the opposite to avoid wandering cows or wayward rickshaws.