How the girls live – page 3

Three `years ago I stayed with a freelancer for a few weeks instead of a hotel. We basically played boyfriend-girlfriend for the duration of my 3-week holiday. I bought her some new clothes and she got her hair colored while I was there. She wanted photos of both, so I took out my camera and took nearly a roll of film inside her apartment.

I still have those pictures. While the camera is focused on her in all these photos, you can get a sense of what the apartment was like.

A nice sofa. This was a real leather sofa, and very comfortable. I used to sit down and never want to get up again.

She had a nice, decent sized refrigerator with the ubiquitous plush dolls on top.

And a very large home entertainment area that separated her living room and bedroom. Because the apartment had this for separation instead of a wall, it had a light, airy feel about it. You can see she had a nice TV and large stereo system. If you look closely you’ll see more toys and plush dolls everywhere.

A queen-sized bed and more plush dolls.

You don’t see much of the room here, but you can see that she had built-in wardrobes, large windows for the bedroom, and even more plush dolls.

You can see from the photos that the apartment was roomy — about 55 square meters I think — and it had a small but useful balcony and a nice farang-friendly bathroom.

This girl was a working freelancer, but I stayed in her room for three weeks. She woke up every morning between 7 and 8 a.m. and cleaned the apartment thoroughly, washing dishes, sweeping, making the bed and taking out the rubbish. She cooked lunch and dinner for me every day, and she was a talented and enthusiastic cook. You can probably see enough of her room to tell that she took a lot of pride in herself and the place she lived, and that she lived quite comfortably.

I asked her how much she paid in rent, and it was around 8,400 baht per month (2005).

A farang friend was looking for an apartment recently and I took him to the same building. We saw a room that was similar to this one in size, but in much poorer condition, and the manager quoted us 9,000 per month.

So, De La Munte and the rest of you… it’s not all dreary news for the girls. Some of them live quite nicely.

Most of them live in pretty crap conditions, but when I think back to my university days and the dormitory and small apartments I lived in, I’m not sure I lived any better when I was 20 years old.

The standard for most bar girls is for two girls to share a room of about 25 square meters, sleeping in the same bed together. This may sound terrible, but one thing to understand is that Thai people usually hate living alone. They may not love sharing a bed but it’s not really the torture that it might be for two westerners living in close quarters.

They usually have a decent TV, and often a DVD player. They will usually have an MP3 player, so they may or may not use a stereo. They may have a small ‘boom box’ for playing CDs. They may or may not have a small bar-fridge. They will have a fan, a squat toilet and a small balcony for cooking and washing & drying clothes by hand. There will be little else. This will usually cost each girl between 1,500 and 2,000 per month.

But, as you can see from the photos, my friend is renting a nice room on her own for less than 3,000 per month, and the freelancer in 2005 had a roomy and well appointed 1-bedroom apartment for less than 9,000 per month.

The way they actually live is often dependent on how important the comfort is to them in relation to other things like money for the family, school fees, etc.

I’m going to try to find some girls to let me take photos of some more humble homes. I’ll aim to get shots of the third floor of a Soi Cowboy go go bar and maybe some of the smaller and dingier places. That may take some time, but if I succeed, you’ll be the first to know.