THE first warning sign came in the form of a voluptuous 70-year-old European man. I think it said, “Pattaya — Alert — Do Not Go There, Ever”.

He was dressed in a brown cap, thongs and snakeskin-print shirt with a 30-something Thai wife, on a minibus passing through south Bangkok’s brand-new, skyscraper-laden fringe. He leaned over to me, smiling, to announce: “I am from Holland! Have you heard of zat country?” “Holland? Of course, I’ve heard of it,” I reply. “It is also known as de Netherlands,” he continues. “I know that. Everybody knows that.” “Oh, how do you know Holland? You must have learned about Holland in school,” he says. “I learn about Australia in school you know” “I have a headache,” I say. We are both on the bus to a place where those same words are rarely, if ever uttered to reject a man. We are off to a place “like a cowboy town in the Wild West a hundred years ago,” according to a local police officer and, “paedophile paradise,” according to several human rights groups. We are on the bus to a place where you can get kissed, spanked, lap-danced, get a few hours with one or more of 27,000 prostitutes or, you could even find a wife. That place is Pattaya Beach, Thailand. Pattaya has the world’s largest red light district and is considered Planet Earth’s unofficial sex capital. I’m about to spend a week there. Care to join me? KANGAROO KORNER Pattaya central looks a bit like a very naughty Noosa or a rather horny Hervey Bay. Rather than retired couples, hundreds of — usually extremely overweight — older white western men walk around with young Thai girlfriends. There’s lots of white men here — about 100,000 of us, or one to every three Thai’s. There’s also white sand, luxury white condos, teeth whitening dentists everywhere, make-up adverts promising to whiten Thai girls skin, and Thai money-boys wearing that same face-whitening foundation — as they squeak “massage sir?” while making open-mouth, blow job gestures to every male who walks past. I am walking down an alley, and as I do I note the shops: McDonald’s, Dollhouse A Go Go, Just for Fun, Lucky Finger Massage, Angelwitch, Ladyboys R US, 7-11, Starbucks, The Classroom, 7-11 (again) Sabai Massage, Adidas, Sue’s Place (now repeat that thirty times, slightly alter the names and that’s Pattaya for you). Two minutes’ walk down the alley, and I’m in a bar called Kangaroo Korner. I could be in here to do an investigative piece on what-your-dad-was-probably-like-in-the-early-to-mid-1980s, but I’m actually in KK to ask Australian male tourists whether Pattaya is harming anybody. Rod Stewart’s 1984 World Tour DVD plays loudly on the TVs, a large corporate banner for Ansett Australia hangs on the wall, as well as a sign that says, “No Arabs sit down here.” Recognised as non-Arabic, nearly everyone inside tilts a glass at me as I walk in. Today’s first interview is with a blue-eyed, white-haired, Melbourne slaughterman. “I prefer Thai women ... I’ve been burned too many times by women back home,” he says. “But let’s face it, these women aren’t really interested, are they? Don’t they just want money?” I ask. “I know it’s just about the money for them, I am not looking for love,” the slaughterman says, rolling his eyes at me. “Mate,” the slaughterman says, “You are overthinking things, — just enjoy yourself, relax, and have another drink with me”. The next day I head to Pattaya Beach’s primal, uncontrolled, multi-fluorescent heart: its two-kilometre long Walking Street filled with wall to wall Go Go Bars and massage parlours. Stopping at one bar I borrow a lighter from a 50-year-old Coffs Harbour man. Spluttering out his words, the man explains he met his first Thai wife here 12 years ago. They had two children together — who now live in Australia — and he divorced her three weeks ago. Now he says, he’s engaged to a 23-year-old Thai woman he met here 10 days earlier. “Thai women they are subservient. Don’t get me wrong I don’t like them being as subservient as they are ... but they cook and clean, they really look after you. I do like that … but now I’ve got this girl, we met 10 days ago, I can already tell it’s going to work. But y’know my wife and children hate me, even my friends think I am an arsehole. “The way I look at it, I only have 20 years left of living, I want to be able to enjoy my life.” I wonder if Pattaya isn’t strictly about finding women. There’s no doubt some men are coming here to find a local, busy, friendly (albeit in a regressive White Australia kind of way) working-class pub, which can be hard to find in many parts of Urban Australia — especially on a weekday afternoon. Similarly, some have speculated that conservative western men who feel disenfranchised by post-1970s social and economic changes, particularly feminist rights movements, come to places like Thailand regain a sense of lost privilege and their adolescence. PATTAYA’S DARK HEART It’s 11 o’clock on night three. I am looking for blokes to interview and any open evidence of Pattaya’s undeniable paedophilia, sex slavery and forced labour problems. So I head to a little side alley known as The Diamond. I’ve been told it’s the edgiest street in town. I’m inside the notorious “Windmill” venue. The Thai women are on the stage dressed in little tartan — well, not really skirts — half-skirts which cover, well they don’t really cover. Let’s say they have a bit of fabric that’s about five centimetres long tied around their hips. None are wearing underwear or bras and all are wearing high heels. The white men sit around the stage, laughing, guzzling beer: hitting and poking them with bar-supplied, beer-branded, polystyrene-foam sticks. And okay, I know sex work is essentially about acting, but I can’t deny the party atmosphere, and everyone SEEMS to be having fun. A naked young woman is staring at me with her unblinking glass eye as she casually masturbates in the venue’s public shower. I cut our extremely uncomfortable conversation, (my 110% homosexuality doesn’t help here) short to ask an Australian man at the bar whether he thinks Pattaya is doing anybody any harm. “Sure, lots of Western guys are here for different reasons ... Also, if we get a jealous Thai ex-lover, or if a woman here is connected to a gang, or tries to kill you for your money — of course, that’s why you should never get too involved. This place is just about stress relief, especially if you are a divorcee like me.” “And the women here? Is it good for them?” I ask “It works for them mate, trust me, they get a lot of money out of this” Night four, and my search to find some more Australian men to talk to with is interrupted by a Thai sex worker I see who has been reduced to begging for money tonight. I guess no man would want a woman with a fresh, black bruise (with a bloody abrasion in the middle) taking up a quarter of her face. Her English is poor. She shows she has been punched, but won’t say by whom. Tears stream from the puffy eye. I suggest she tell the police, she shakes her head and looks away, and cries more. “Good guys go to heaven, bad guys go to Pattaya” is one of the most popular T-shirt slogans in town. I also wonder how many here are quietly clinging to their belief in reincarnation. BOYZ TOWN 10pm, night five, Boyz Town, Pattaya. There is a shift change at Cupid-Boy-Doll bar; the new money-boys (male prostitutes) begin the night by praying and lighting incense in front of a small Buddha statue behind the bar. Each offers their Lord cigarettes or Vodka shots, in the hope tonight will bring them good luck. A 73-year-old, single, Brisbane man might do be trick. He explains to me at the bar how he favours otherwise heterosexual money-boys who give hand-jobs only. “Does it bother you there’s no chance of them being aroused?” I ask. “Don’t you want your partner into the sex like you are?” “They have something I want, I have something they want — money, it’s as simple as that — it’s just a transaction” he explains. As the man drinks his reasoning changes, suggesting that people like him better in Thailand because they “understand him better here.” “If I go into a gay bar in Australia nobody talks to me, here they like me. They are attracted to older men in Thailand, and they like my humour more here”. INTO THE ABYSS It’s my second last day in Pattaya, and up until today I have been lonely, sad and disappointed. Today I feel some strange new rhythm — Pattaya’s pulse — and I’m overwhelmingly, uncontrollably horny. I head back over to Boyz Town — surely all these guys aren’t money-boys? A 22-year-old with smooth skin, braces, a full six pack — who spoke very good English ��� walked in and sat down next to me. Soon enough he was in my hotel. Only when we finished the deed did he turned to me and say “can I have my money now?” I gave him $12 and told him that’s all I had. I told him I didn’t realise he was a money-boy. He says “this is Pattaya what did you expect?” He sulks over the small fee and leaves. It’s my final day in Pattaya, thank Buddha for that. I’m not just near-broke — every mirror in town seems to show nothing but my wrinkles and receding hairline. Paying for sex makes me feel less sleazy, than desperate, unattractive and in decay. Local Thai agencies are reporting a high number of homeless western men in Pattaya seeking charity help after their love affairs go wrong. I am not surprised. If I was not wearing 70-cent thongs, honestly, I would sell my shoes just so somebody would touch me again.