Everyone knows what goes on in seedy sois (alleyways) of Bangkok.
That includes the Thai police, who are usually more than happy to take some hush money (called “tea money” colloquially) in order to look the other way and let the massive economic engine of depravity roll on unabated.
Oftentimes, they’re more directly involved in the trade at the intersection of illicit drug use and wanton sex parties. (Once, while I was still green to Thailand, I was at a bar, which was also a brothel, drinking with a long-time German expat when a uniformed cop walked in — judging by the ornaments on his shirt, a high-ranking one. I asked the German if maybe we should leave to avoid trouble. “Don’t worry about him,” the German replied. “He owns the place.”)
Related: Converted Pagan Headhunters and the Shining City on a Hill
In some of the most intrepid Gonzo-style journalism I have ever practiced, as recounted in my memoir, I got a front row seat to a cadre of working ladyboy prostitutes in a loosely organized kind of syndicate, seeing clients and smoking a lot of crystal methamphetamine — colloquially called “ya ice” in Thailand — in between gigs. Their activities were so public that it’s impossible to believe the cops aren’t privy to it.
Alas, vice makes the economic wheels go ‘round in the Land of Smiles, so why kill the golden goose, especially when you can pad your meager cop salary with bribes?
Related: My Gold-Standard Expat Memoir: Back and Better Than Ever With the Second Edition
Sometimes, though, in order to maintain the pretense that their primary mission is to maintain law and order rather than skim off the top of the black market activities that have made the city so infamous, they’ve got to stage a raid and a photo shoot on a sacrificial lamb, as it were, then leak it all to the media.Usually, my strong suspicion is that the real crime of the targets of these raids isn’t the prostitution and drug stuff — it’s that they didn’t pay the blackmail fare.
Which is probably what happened here.
Via Bangkok Post (emphasis added):
Forty-four men, many wearing only underwear and testing positive for illicit substances, were arrested during a raid on an illegal drug party early Saturday in Bangkok’s Wang Thonglang district.
The operation, led by the Metropolitan Police Bureau, took place around 1.30am at a three-storey building on Soi Ramkhamhaeng 21. The premises reportedly hosted a private party targeting LGBTQ clients, with reports of drug use and suspicious activity.
Police ordered activity to cease immediately upon entry. They found crystal methamphetamine, or ice, injection equipment and drug paraphernalia on site.
The ground floor featured a lounge with sofas and karaoke, while colourful underwear was displayed behind the front counter. The upper floors had about 40 rooms for private use.
Of course, there are open-air gay brothels all over the city, which are by no means inconspicuous. My girlfriend’s apartment in Soi Suan Phlu was right down the way from a gay bathhouse, from which clearly homosexual men emerged day and night.
In related news, NGOs representing the alphabet people are now demanding that the Red Cross accept rainbow blood even if it is statistically far likelier to be tainted with HIV, other pathogens, narcotics, and God knows what else.
Via Bangkok Post (emphasis added):
LGBTQ+ advocates have urged the Thai Red Cross's National Blood Centre to revise its blood donation application form following an Administrative Court ruling which upheld the ban on LGBTQ+ blood donations as non-discriminatory for public safety…
Kittinun Daramadhaj, president of the Rainbow Sky Association of Thailand and member of the Committee on Consideration of Unfair Gender Discrimination, told the Bangkok Post the court misunderstood the distinction between screening under the blood donation application form and laboratory blood testing…
The previous form required only male-assigned-at-birth donors to declare anal sex, perpetuating stereotypes about men who have sex with men (MSM) while overlooking similar risks among heterosexuals engaging in anal sex.
I did a little research and discovered, as I suspected, that this NGO, the Rainbow Sky Association, is bankrolled by the United Nations. Virtually all of the tranny activism in Thailand, as it is elsewhere, is funded by international Western NGOs with weird social engineering agendas that have nothing to do with their stated purpose of promoting “human rights,” whatever that means.
Regular Thais — at least the ones who haven’t been “educated” in the West — generally avoid any kind of social justice activism; it’s just not in their nature. The vast majority of ladyboys that you meet in Thailand actually don’t have anything remotely approaching the massive chip on their shoulders that stateside rainbow people exude; they don’t, for instance, insist on reading transgender propaganda books to children in schools; they’re just trying to live their lives.
