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 MISS BANGKOK

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 MISS
BANGKOK
Memoirs of a Thai Prostitute

by Bua Boonmee
with Nicola Pierce
In the interest of privacy, some people have been given pseudonyms. Any
resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

PUBLISHED BY MAVERICK HOUSE PUBLISHERS.

Maverick House, Office 19, Dunboyne Business Park, Dunboyne,
Co. Meath, Ireland.
Maverick House Asia, Level 41, United Centre, 323 Silom Road, Bangrak,
Bangkok 10500, Thailand.

info@maverickhouse.com
http://www.maverickhouse.com

ISBN: 978-1-905379-43-9

Copyright for text © 2007 Bua Boonmee.

Interviews conducted and translated by Pornchai Sereemongkonpol.
Copyright for typesetting, editing, layout, design © Maverick House.

54321

The paper used in this book comes from wood pulp of managed forests.
For every tree felled, at least one tree is planted, thereby renewing
natural resources.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means without written permission from the publisher, except
by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a
review written for insertion in a newspaper, magazine or broadcast.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is dedicated to my children.
 ACK NOWL E D G M E NTS

I WOULD LIKE to thank my children, my mother

and my sister, for giving their love when I
needed it most.
Thanks to my friends, especially Roj, Priew,
Parn, and Off, for helping to make my job more
bearable.
My thanks also to Nicola Pierce and Pornchai
Sereemongkonpol for their great work in helping
me to tell my story, and to Jean, Gert, Jessica,
and Bridgette at Maverick House Publishers.
 PROLOGU E

SOMETIMES I FEEL like a turtle that is being

grilled over hot charcoal. I am slowly dying. No
matter what I do, no matter how much I try to
escape, I cannot. I am powerless to change my
destiny.
I wonder was I born to be unfortunate; is
this life my destiny? I pray to Buddha that this
not be the case. My life seems to be that of a
country girl who has spent her days escaping
from a tiger, only to be eaten by a crocodile.
Mine is an ever-worsening tale with no end in
sight.
You see, I am a prostitute, though farangs
prefer to call women like me ‘bar girls’. I believe
the term is more acceptable to westerners’ ears.
But to a girl like me, it is all the same.
My job means nothing to me anymore. I
have long since given up any hope of happiness.

9
I exist for the pleasure of others. You might say
the only certainty in my life is uncertainty.
I couldn’t tell you how many men have
bought me, not that it matters. I prefer not to
remember them.
In Thailand, we do not talk about such
private matters. It is not customary to talk of
things that should be forgotten. It is also of little
concern to a girl of my standing. The only thing
that matters is the baht that I am paid.
Though I suspect that mine is not the worst
existence in the world, I must confess I wouldn’t
know if it was. I know of little else.
You can buy me for 2,000 baht. In return, I
will do almost anything that is asked of me, but
I won’t kiss customers—some things are just too
intimate to do with a stranger. Kissing is for a
wife or girlfriend; sex is for Thai girls like me.

10
 CH AP T ER 1

IF WE WERE to meet, you might comment

on how I look slightly different to other Thai
women. You might say that my face is round,
like a full moon in the sky. This is a trait I
inherited from my father, who was born in
Ubon Ratchathani, the second biggest province
in Isan, the northeast region of Thailand.
Bordering Laos and Cambodia, Ubon
Ratchathani was the location for an American
airbase during the Vietnam War. This may or
may not have had something to do with my
father becoming a soldier in his teens. By the
time I came along, he was a sergeant major,
responsible for the instruction of new recruits.
My father was a restless young man, or so he
would later describe himself. When I was a little
girl, he used to set me on a krae (a low table of
bamboo) and tell me about how he had ended up

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 MISS BANGKOK

in the province Nakhon Ratchasima, commonly

called Khorat, where he was entranced by a
beautiful young girl who worked at one of the
stalls in the marketplace.
I have a black and white photograph of this
girl, my mother, which was taken shortly after
they met. Her oval face is framed by her shiny,
black hair, which is parted in the centre and
drawn up into a perfect bun on the top of her
head.
She is wearing a sleeveless, V-necked,
polka-dot dress, and is smiling sweetly at the
photographer—in a way that only lovers do.
She used to boast to me about all the men that
flirted with her. She was proud of her beauty,
particularly since she had to quit school in third
grade because her family were poor farmers.
Sadly, they saw no reason why a woman should
be educated, only to be married off to a man
and be dependent on him for the rest of her
life.
I do not know what year they met, or what
year they married. Little details like that have
never interested me. All I know is that my
brother Nop was born in 1973, I was born in
1974, and my sister Nang in 1975. Apparently
we lived in rented accommodation for the first
two years of my life. It was a tiny house of which
I have absolutely no recollection, although I do

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 MISS BANGKOK

remember my mother pointing it out to me one

day. She tried in vain to jolt my memory about
the room in which I slept and where my brother
and I had played and fought together.
‘Don’t you remember that room, where you
slept in a hammock as a baby?’ she asked.
She also pointed out a tamarind tree, which
she said I used to cling to when I was learning
to walk, but I stared at it disinterestedly; it was
a stranger’s house to me, with its simple two-
storey style and wooden fence.
‘Sorry, mae. I don’t remember it at all,’ I
replied, and she seemed a little disappointed.
After the arrival of the children, the rent got
too expensive for my parents and we moved
into accommodation in Khorat provided by the
army. We lived there with other soldiers and
their families. I think mae must have missed
the little house, though she never admitted it;
it represented more than simply being the first
place she lived in after she married. It reminded
her of a young couple in love and excited about
their shared future. At least, that is what I like to
believe, considering how the future unfolded.
The wooden town house that became my
home was provided by the Thai government
for its military. Accordingly, there was nothing
distinguishing about it. It was one of hundreds

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 MISS BANGKOK

that were built in small rows around the airbase

where my father was stationed.
Each row consisted of ten columns for ten
families, and each dwelling was a copy of its
neighbour; two storeys with a small kitchen and
bathroom at the rear and a bedroom/living area
just inside the front door. Upstairs, there was
another small bedroom and a tiny area in which
to meditate and worship.
My father was the only one who used this
room, and only on wan phra, or what you might
call holy days. It had a little altar where a small
Buddha sat, flanked by two vases of flowers.
Even now, I can still remember the heavy
perfume of the incense sticks he burned as an
offering to Buddha. The combined smoke of
the incense and candles swirled as my father,
kneeling in front of Buddha, chanted in a
language unintelligible to me. I walked on my
knees and sat quietly behind him in a position
called wai—head bowed and hands pressed
together—hoping that goodness would protect
me. I remember that room as being filled with
serenity.
Although we were poor, I didn’t have an
unhappy childhood. We grew up surrounded
by tanks and military aircraft, which were of no
concern to us children, though I have pleasant

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 MISS BANGKOK

memories of watching planes taking off every

morning.
The army base was a place where everyone
knew everyone else. The women knew each
other, the children knew each other; you could
say that even the dogs were familiar with each
other’s tails.
Today, what I remember, perhaps more than
anything else, is the colour of the earth. It was a
reddish brown, and when you rode at full speed
on a bicycle, the dirt would swirl up and taint
your socks. It was contrasted by the surrounding
greenery and deep-blue sky.
There were lots of trees and acres upon acres
of green Bermuda grass. The summers were
always extremely hot, and I can remember that
the trees gave us shelter from the sun when it
reached its highest point in the sky. A little bit
away in the distance was a big, white wall that
encircled the camp, shutting out the rest of the
world. I am now a mother, and I realise the
camp was perfect for children, who were unable
to escape and always happiest when a parent
was within shouting distance. The army base
was our world. I had no inclination to leave
it and explore what lay beyond its walls. You
could say that I wasn’t a very adventurous child,
because I dared not leave the confines. Was this
my first mistake—to ignore the bigger picture

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 MISS BANGKOK

and be content with what was immediately in

front of me?

ONE OF MY earliest memories is that of my

mother getting me ready for my first day of
school. I remember sitting on her lap as she
gently braided my hair. I loved my mother, but
if I had to choose which parent I was closest to
as a child, I would have to say my father.
Por used to let me accompany him when he
cycled to the market and also when he went
fishing. The two of us would sneak into a paddy
field where he’d dangle a bamboo stick that had a
furiously wriggling worm or a small toad hooked
to the end of it. He found it more productive
to leave the stick unmanned for about thirty