Thailand’s Lady Boys or Katoys, One Opinion

Lady boys or as they are known in Thailand Katoys are a subject that everyone seems to have an opinion about. There doesn’t seem to be any fence sitting when it comes to these trans-gender Thai beauties/freaks.

Today's subject is ladyboys; the reason I have ladyboys in my head is that I noticed from the stats that around half the searches that hit the website included the word 'ladyboy'. That is not to say that half the visitors here are looking for ladyboy content; not everyone lands here through a search engine.

Now I have no strong opinion on sexuality or gender engineering. For me, there are either blokes or women and swapping sides is not really possible but that is just my view. Anybody who sees these things differently is perfectly entitled to their own view.

My experience of katoey's is not good, mostly covered in the article 'Bangkok Ladyboys', which was written back in 2001 but is still very relevant: I tend to avoid contact with katoey's these days but, given the stats on the website, I have come to wonder why?

I guess personally, I like to understand things, I like a neat and organised thought process; in my life men are men, therefore, and women are women; anyone that has a foot in both camps has me scratching my head and, ultimately, if I can't understand something then I guess I kind of exclude it from my life or avoid it.

To be fair to myself here, it must be pointed out that this is not about sexuality; I have a very good friend who is gay and have no problem with it, he is an intelligent, warm human being who I have known for many years and is my friend: not my gay friend, my friend:

I think the reason that ladyboy's are excluded from my life is that I genuinely don't understand where they are coming from, what statement they are trying to make. Are they blokes that want to be women?

Maybe they are gay blokes just playing to a market of gay blokes that want to pretend they are not gay? It is also entirely plausible that I have absolutely no idea who is involved in the whole katoey scene and they are all heterosexual, unsure, don't care or even that it is not about sexuality (though I would take some convincing of that)

Really, to say that they are not trying to make any kind of statement is just nonsense; having breast implants and wearing mini skirts is such a strong lifestyle commitment that you have to be trying to say something, so why am I not getting the message?

And why Thailand? Homosexuality is prevalent throughout the world, gender reassignment is very rare and yet there are an awful lot of katoey's around Bangkok and Phuket that I know of. Has the katoey world come to Thailand or has Thailand given katoey's to the world?

Blokes dressing up as women is nothing new, though it is regarded as a behind closed doors pastime for us crusty English people; something best left to bank managers and politicians.

To my mind Thailand has so many attractive women that started life as women it beggars belief that heterosexual guys would find katoey's attractive, so who is going there? Clearly somebody, I have seen the amount of searches done on the subject.

I have not lost a deal of sleep over this issue; it seems to me like a lifestyle more than anything else; like being a hippy, personal choice which I am all in favour of: quite possibly with the added bonus of a lot of money to be earned.

Generally, when I am curious about something and wish to do a little research on a subject, I would use an internet search to gather information. As this would involve searching the words 'Bangkok and Ladyboys', which is what got me started on the subject, maybe I will choose to remain ignorant.

Taking a Thai Girl Back to Your Own Country (2)

That big risk of taking a Thai girlfriend back to you home town can get even bigger when you have married your lovely Thai bride, it can be a very tricky situation indeed.

When we were in Thailand, my new wife and I, we spent a little time with her Mum and the family. We would soon leave for England and did not know when we would be back.
Her mum lived, still lives, four hours out of Bangkok at the end of a dusty old road.

The construction of her house involves lots of wood and corrugated tin, more holes in the walls than they have windows to put in them and no inside toilet.
I don't relate this as a good or bad thing, many people in Thailand live like this. It is relevant though, relevant in a big way to what happened when we got home to the U.K.

The wheels came off our relationship pretty quickly, the story appears elsewhere (Monkey See Monkey Do) and I won't repeat it here.

I have read a lot of stories on various websites and, while most of them tell tales of relationships with girls, not many seem to deal with how girls settle and we never, I never, get any inkling of what makes them tick. Women generally are a mystery to me, Thai women are a mystery in a foreign language which I cannot speak so have no hope of understanding.

I look at the whole episode in a reasonably detached way now: I got out of my marriage fairly well intact mentally and financially. I am not bitter or angry and, though there was some hostility initially, we are friends now and she stays at my house whenever she is in town.

The relationship itself was doomed from the start; not that I knew it then, but it is fairly clear now. I think there are two fundamental reasons why you are up against it bringing Thai girls to England: maybe bringing any foreign girls back here.

Firstly; they don't integrate, they gravitate towards their own. What this means in practice is that your house, and life, will be invaded by Thai women who will go through your cupboards like a swarm of locusts, run your heating all day, play cards all night and leave the place smelling like an ashtray whether you smoke or not.
There will also be lots of conversations from which you will be excluded and you will always pick up the bill, how familiar does that sound?

Secondly; I think that we, as a society, are too conservative to accept mixed race relationships so you will always be the odd couple. You will still be invited to all the usual social functions but more as a conversational sideshow than as guests.
None of your wife's friends will be English; none of your friend's wives will help. What this leads to if you want your marriage to work is isolation; you better be in love because you will spend an awful lot of time together.

Of course, all this means that you gain an excellent insight into the way their minds work, which I pass on in stunned amazement. When I wrote the original piece I pointed out that I did not meet her in a bar but that I don't really see that as an issue.

That bit at least was correct; it makes no odds where you meet them, they will be petulant to a staggering degree, dismissive to the point of arrogance and so short sighted that you will only believe it when you see it first hand.

I got a lot of e-mails from the first piece and the one that really stuck in my mind said, pretty much word for word, that: 'of course it did not work; in terms of emotional development it is adults and children, it can never work'. I thought this a touch arrogant at first but I now see it very differently.

We were looking for a new house; she dismissed semi-detached houses as 'stupid' and made it clear that she would settle for detached; I bought a semi anyway. I wanted an en-suite, this was 'stupid' too, nothing seemed to be good enough. From a girl that grew up in rural Thailand, see paragraph 2, this was a little hard to swallow.

Never once did she stand still and consider how much things cost here; she just stamped her foot and told me what she wanted. She also hit me for money to send home to her mum, and that was not going to happen. You get the picture now, I think.

Well she left, and soon found out how much things cost and just how tough it is to earn enough to get by here. To be fair, she has never come back and asked for money and has stood on her own feet so far. She got in touch in April to tell me that she will be going back to Thailand for a month; she missed her mum and her friends, the food and the weather; she was very excited.

She stayed with me the night before she left. I had helped her get a bank account and credit card, she seemed to have saved some money and I thought that she was getting herself set to buy some land near her Mum, what a nice idea and something of an achievement.

Well, she got back yesterday and guess what she bought while she was in Thailand? Bearing in mind that a plot of land can be had for a hundred thousand baht, a sum which could also transform her Mums home? What would be the obvious purchase?
Well, what she bought was, and I still struggle to believe it, new tits! She has gone and had breast implants! Unreal.

I met an Australian guy in Chiang Mai once, he had the idea that the girls over there had 'no concept of recent history' and I think that is true; what you did for them yesterday counts for nothing. More than this, they have no thoughts for the future either.

Thai women, in my opinion, live in the moment and look neither forwards nor backwards. I think the comments in the e-mail I received in November were incisive; it can never work, we are far too different.