At that point part of me wants to say that they’re all the same, that they are all just hookers hooking, and that the best way to see if a bargirl is lying is to check if her lips are moving. Rule number one in the private-eye game: If a bargirl’s lips are moving, she’s lying. Rule number two: If a bargirl’s lips aren’t moving, she’s preparing her next lie. But I don’t tell the client that, of course. I tell them how much I charge and I give them the number of my bank account and then once the money’s been transferred I go through the motions.
Do marriages between bargirls and expats ever work? I’ve known of a few, but success stories are as rare as hen’s teeth. I don’t understand why anyone thinks they are going to meet the love of their life in what is effectively a brothel. The girls are selling sex, not love. They rarely, if ever, confuse the two, but lots of guys don’t seem to understand that there is a difference. Still, if everyone knew the score there’d be a lot less work for the likes of me, so I’m not complaining.
Anyway, when Damien called me from Australia, there was nothing he told me that I hadn’t heard before. He’d just got back to Melbourne from yet another holiday in the Land of Smiles and he needed help on two fronts. He had a regular Thai girlfriend, a former pole dancer of course, and he wanted help getting her a visa so that she could visit him in Australia, and he wanted to check that she was on the straight and narrow. In my experience, the only thing straight and narrow about a bargirl is the pole they dance around, but I bit my tongue and had a long chat with him.
First thing I told him was that I couldn’t do anything to speed up his visa application. I’m not saying there aren’t ways and means of greasing things at the Australian Embassy, but I don’t have those sort of contacts and even if I did I’d use them very sparingly because bribing embassy officials is a quick way to end up behind bars.
The Australian Embassy, and the British and United States embassies for that matter, take their time issuing visas, especially to young girls with no steady job, no pay slips, no land or money in the bank. A visa could take as much as six months before it was approved, and that was always good for business because during those six months the boyfriend would be fretting in his country while the girl was sitting in Thailand having to ask him for more and more to support herself, and her family. A lot of bargirls are simply rejected for visas. Hardly surprising when a lot of them turn up for their embassy interview wearing a low cut top, tight jeans, and sporting a tattoo of a scorpion on their shoulder.
Damien didn’t try to pull the wool over my eyes. He was in his mid forties and Ann was twenty-two. That always sets alarm bells ringing for me. A twenty-year age gap is huge even when you’re dealing with a couple from the same culture. But when the guy is effectively a sex tourist and the girl is a hooker half his age, well, it’s hardly a match made in heaven, is it? Anyway, he told me that Ann had been a star dancer at Hollywood Strip but that he had helped set her up with her own business, selling clothes on the street around the corner from Nana Plaza. He’d gone upcountry and met her family in Saraburi and had agreed to pay a small sin sot. Ann had been to the embassy for a preliminary interview but they hadn’t been satisfied with the evidence she’d provided. According to Damien she was finding the hours long and the work hard and that she wasn’t making much of a return on the business. She’d told Damien that he’d have to start sending her money or she’d go back to the Hollywood Strip. It was the usual scenario for a farang far from Thailand, caught between a rock and a hard place. If he didn’t send money, the girl would doubt his intentions. If he did send her cash, he’d start to wonder if she was just after his money.
I told Damien that I could definitely run a check on her, and that would at least put his mind at rest. Plus, if I didn’t find anything, that boded well for her visa eventually coming through. He wired me a retainer and emailed me her details and a couple of photographs and I got down to business. Ann was a looker, long hair, long legs, curvy figure, very kissable lips. I was sure she’d have made a small fortune dancing and hooking in Nana Plaza.
I ran the basic checks. She’d never been married and she didn’t have any children. She was living alone in a small studio flat in Soi 22, the same place she’d had when she was dancing. Ann’s stall was on the corner of Sukhumvit and Soi 7. She only had her pitch from 9pm onwards and had to wait for the daytime vendors to pack up and go before she could set up shop. Thai laws says that you cannot sell on the public footpath, and to make that point Wednesdays are generally declared ‘no sell’ days but during the rest of the week the day vendors basically pay the local cops for the right to set up shop. Once the day vendor leaves, another vendor can take his place, providing a small fee is paid. That’s the arrangement Ann had, and I reckoned she had a good spot with lots of passing traffic. She was selling cheap T-shirts and sundresses and I found myself a seat in an airconditioned bar in Soi 7 from where I could keep an eye on her.
Sales were slow on the three nights I watched her. She worked from 9pm until 3am and I reckoned she was doing well if she took in 1,000 baht a night, which would be less than she’d have been paid for an hour’s short-time when she was hooking. The 1,000 baht was turnover, of course. Her profit would be between 300 and 400 baht. Fairly decent money for a Thai, about the same as a schoolteacher or office worker would get, but a fraction of what a pole-dancer would pull in. I saw her chatting to a couple of Thai guys who were selling an assortment of flick knives, samurai swords and knuckle-dusters but there didn’t seem to be anything untoward going on and she always went home alone. On the first day I put on a baseball cap and sunglasses and walked by her pitch, bought a T-shirt from her and flirted with her in my very best Thai. I made her laugh but she wouldn’t give me her phone number and wouldn’t agree to see me for a drink.
I phoned Damien and told him that Ann was being a good girl and that he had nothing to worry about on that score. He asked me to approach her and tell her that I was a friend of his and that I would help her with her visa application. We agreed a fee and the next day I went to see her. I read through all the correspondence from the embassy and it was clear that they weren’t convinced that she had gone legit, so I decided to beef up her application. I took her to Bo-Bey market where she bought her stock and I collected some receipts and took photographs of her at work. I went with her to her bank and got copies of her statements showing that Damien was sending her money and that she was putting cash in herself. I got her to give me photographs that had been taken when Damien had met her family. I figured we had a pretty good package, and we sent that in to the embassy. A month later Damien phoned me to say that the embassy had turned her down and that Ann had taken it badly.
I went around to her place in Soi 22 and found her in tears. She’d ‘forgotten’ to tell Damien that she’d made a previous application for a tourist visa with another Australian guy acting as a sponsor. That’s a definite red flag so far as the embassy is concerned. It suggests that the girl isn’t particular about who gets her into the country.
Ann wasn’t just upset, she was as mad as hell. In true Thai style she said that Australia and everyone in it could go screw themselves. Frankly, as a New Zealander myself, I could sympathise with the sentiment. Anyway, she’d go back to work in Hollywood Strip and find herself a man from a country that would allow her to visit. And that was that. She finished with Damien, sold her business and went back to hooking, and over the next few months I saw her several times leaving Nana Plaza on the arm of one overweight German or another. I gather that Damien flew back to beg her to reconsider but that she refused point blank. He’d had his chance and he’d blown it. He kept calling me asking if I could help, but there was nothing I could do. I felt sorry for him, and for her. I think he loved her, and she was certainly prepared to give up the bar scene and work hard at a real job so that she could be with him. If it hadn’t been for the embassy playing hardball, I really think they might have made it work.