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"Be warned: the new government is out to stop sex tourism"


Chanchao

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CT made this point:

BKK doesn't have as much girls than just walking street + the beer bars there are about 600% more prostitutes in Pattaya then in BKK (hearsay, no proof).

 

He is right. I cannot imagine Pattaya surviving without an active nightlife. Simply looking at the place proves this.

 

One thing we also need to understand about Thailand is that the officialdom is not united. Even during the height of Purachaiâ??s new social order crackdown, it didnâ??t have a sustained effect on Pattaya. The MiB from Bangkok would come down and raid a few places and this would get everyoneâ??s attention. But the MiB could not stay in Pattaya forever, and when they returned to Bangkok, things in Pattaya returned to normal.

 

To a lesser extent, we see this in Bangkok. Simply compare NEP with Soi Cowboy. Totally different rules apply. The authorities donâ??t act consistently across all of Thailand, or even all of Bangkok, because they cannot do so.

 

Even if we accept, simply for the sake of argument, that the p4p that caters to the foreigners is not important to the entire Thai economy (it is more important than many think), it is important to certain constituencies. Those constituencies are powerful. It is the economic importance of p4p to those constituencies that really counts.

 

Even with Thailandâ??s most powerful government (the last one), a sustained uniform crackdown proved to be impossible to implement in practice across the entire country. What happened then and what happened more recently is pretty compelling evidence that the central authorities have limited power vis-a-vis Thailand's many constituencies.

 

There is also a more fundamental issue. It is generally recognized that a law that is uniformly disregarded and ignored is a bad law. Such laws fuel corruption and undermine respect for law generally, and this undermines a countryâ??s institutions and the legitimacy of its officials. Thailand should, but probably wonâ??t, take a more realistic approach to the issue. I donâ??t see that happening in the near future.

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