I am ashamed, though, in reading the collection of essays in Queer Bangkok, to realise how ignorant I have been up till now of almost every aspect of sex, sexuality and gender in the country. But what you are reading is, after all, a Fridae column, so I shall remain unashamed of confining my introductory remarks about Thailand to the area of sex. There is, of course, very much more to Thailand than I describe many come to Thailand for the other extraordinarily beautiful things that are found there. I apologise immediately to any Thai readers and other lovers of the country if I offend by offering this crude approximation of the attractions of the country. Almost everyone, even if they can’t afford to, dreams of going to Thailand to get laid. All this has served to reinforce the association of Thailand with sexual paradise. People come to Bangkok now from everywhere in the Pacific Rim. The economic boom times that have (inconsistently) enriched the East since then have long-ago widened the source of sex-tourists that came initially from Europe and America to include Asian countries like Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. At its height in the sixties, the Vietnam War brought American servicemen to Thailand by the hundreds of thousand to help found its commercial sex industry. Bangkok and sex are two words that have been entwined in the popular imagination since the Victorians ‘discovered’ Siam.
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