The Tiger Temple

This was my original post

I have no issues at all with how Thailand is portrayed in this film. It is the incredible story of a truly astonishing monk called Acharn Phoosit and the tiger sanctuary he established near Kanchanaburi (River Kwai area).

Watch the film here: Tiger Temple
Check out their website here: Web site

I was aware that some people believed there was a darker side but I saw no evidence.

Today I saw this article written by someone who claims to have been a volunteer there. I have to include the link for the sake of balance. It's here

I have to admit that I was surprised both by the chicken diet and the absence of older tigers. Thinking again about my effusive response to the original video.

A weird selection of videos on the Thai sex industry

This film offers a slightly surreal experience, as it switches tack completely after about four minutes and viewers may wonder if the director experienced some sort of Damascene conversion during filming. It took me a second or to to realise that tis is three completely different films offering different perspectives on the Thai sex industry.

The first is a balanced portrayal of an industry that reflects the economic inequalities which are at the heart of the sex trade. Whilst there are rich people and poor people, sex will be a tradeable commodity. The film acknowledges that the answer is not to seek the abolition of the sex industry as that would cause as many problems as it solves. It also offers a voice to those women who are not ashamed of being sex workers. Once again, the amazing Empower Foundation makes an appearance here.

The remaining two films adopt a different stance. We are invited to believe that the entire Thai economy hinges on the sex industry, that one in four Thai women are prostitutes, that one third of all sex workers are children, that the vast majority are HIV positive and that the Thai government is complicit in exploiting its women because they support a tourist industry which advertises a country which is hospitable. This, we are told, is code for "come to Thailand and have sex with children."

These films are ignorant, racist, bigoted nonsense.  An American voice tells us that Thailand is a country where women are taken to brothels where they sell sex. The implication being that this does not happen in the USA.

The first film is balanced, sensible and informative, well worth a look. The others, not so much.

Click here

Jesus and the sex industry in Thailand

This is a series of three films made by a Christian charity which spent three months in Thailand. There is quite a bit to admire in the work they do, they appear to have offered their time to help local charities focused on vulnerable children and on helping girls who are working in bars but would like the chance to change their lives. Credit has to be given for that,

There is, however, something quite disturbing about the films. The first one is mainly about the workers themselves, we are told at great length what wonderful, loving, Christian people they are. There is something almost needy about it. If they are spreading the word of the Lord, the film should be about what they achieve not about who they are.

The second film features the "work" they do in the bars of Thailand. I applaud their efforts to offer an alternative to girls who have chosen a different life, their approach by which they go to the bars to drum up custom is just ludicrous. One worker smiles smugly as she says how she finds it easy to get the girls to admit that they don't like their job and really should be doing something else. She believes it is important that the girls do not find a way of coping with their lives but recognise the awful thing they are doing. For many Thai women an offer of a place on a baking course is not the answer, they can only earn the money they need by working in the bars. Poking them in the chest and saying they should get a decent job is surely the opposite of Christian. Another worker proudly explains how their presence in a bar made another customer, probably seeking sex, to leave. He rejoices in the fact that the man broke a step on the way out. "We went back a couple of days later to repair the step to prove we do what we say we will do." Hardly transformational stuff. It all comes across as patronising to say the least. They make no real difference to the lives of the girls they harangue but claim to have brought Jesus into their lives.

The participants in this movie show little real understanding of Thai culture and no respect for the Buddhist upbringing of their targets. For them, there is no hope for non-believers. The way to help sex workers is to offer them a viable long term alternative to what they do, but respect their decision to sell their bodies if that is the choice they have made.

These people are on a mission, at the end of the film one is in no doubt how pleased they are with themselves but they cannot point to a single tangible achievement apart from some shots of them posing with an array of smiling Thais. Make up your own mind:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Pattaya Girls

This is an intriguing film, irritatingly divided into four separate segments.

Essentially it tells the story of Laurie an English ex-pat, his wife Toi and some of the girls who work in their Pattaya bar. The participants tell their own stories, so there is little room for a narrator to swing the story one way or another. Highly recommended for anyone who knows the Thai bar scene but particularly for those people who might be thinking of opening a bar over there.
 

Part 1 

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Thailand - the documentary that never was

I braced myself for a long session as YouTube was telling me that this film was over three hours long. It started promisingly enough with a few unconnected clips of the Thai bar scene, a fairly standard approach to introducing a documentary like this. Unfortunately that is all this film is from start to finish. If you like looking at bar scene footage, you may like it, I got bored after fifteen minutes and flipped forward to see if the approach changed. Not for me but some may like this approach. As they say in Thailand - Up to you.

The link is here: Thailand

Pattaya - another point of view

The word Pattaya is synonymous with sleaze and the Thai sex industry, just Google it if you are in any doubt. This is an almost heroic film as it tries to consign Pattaya's reputation to myth. We are told that it's all a terrible misunderstanding.

Some of the interviews are a little dull, some quite hard to follow and others quite astonishing. When asked if Pattaya is dangerous, one man tells us that the pavements are a bit dodgy.  Still there is some nice footage of the city, its beach and its inhabitants. You can watch it here: Pattaya City of Smiles

Bangkok Girl

This is an intriguing and very moving film, the credit for which goes entirely to Pla; the Bangkok bar girl whose story it purports to tell. You can watch it here Bangkok Girl

Pla speaks directly to the camera and whilst generally making light of her predicament, she comes across as lost and vulnerable. Then she flashes a million volt smile and it is impossible to stop your heart going out to her. At 19 she claims to have worked in bars for nearly a third of her life although, she says, she does not have sex with customers.There are a few twists in the tale and I won't reveal them here. Suffice to say that this is worth watching for the insight Pla gives to the life of a bar girl.

The film maker's narration is generally well meaning but he falls into the usual trap of quoting boiler plate Bangkok mythology as though it is fact. Virtually all girls who offer sex on the streets are either underage or HIV positive, we are told. There is no basis for such a claim. The annual turnover of the Thai sex industry is quoted with precision alongside the assertion that most of it goes to the mafia and as police bribes. There is no acknowledgement that this can only be a wild guess. Unless of course the mafia has started making submissions to the Thai office of national statistics and the police are putting bribes on their tax returns.

There are plenty of shots of western men with Thai girls and the narrator explains that he has pixelated them to hide identities. I can only hope that none of the men mind being featured because every one of them could easily be identified. The one guy who should have sought to hide his identity was clearly very happy to be on camera. Claiming to be a Bangkok based schoolteacher, he was a gift to a film maker seeking to portray bar goers as vile, drunken scum. 

So few marks for narration or for the performance of the aforementioned moron in the purple shirt, but watch this for Pla and be utterly beguiled.