Long's Story

I photographed Long today again, this time in her room and I learned more about her life. She picked me up on her motorbike in the afternoon before the bars opened and drove me through the streets back to her apartment. The room rented for about $90 CAD a month was small and relatively clean, basically a room with a bed and small washroom and balcony. There was no fridge no air conditioning in the room, it was painted pink and on one wall there were 6 photos of some of her favorite male customers. Long has been working the bars for about 3 years but remains happy and upbeat about her fate. I learned more of her history today, did not understand everything as she only spoke Thai to me, but I got the main points.

- was married to a policeman and had a son with him, he died after drinking and driving a motorcycle. The son is now 7 and lives with Long' mother up oountry. Every month Long sends money to her mother and son.

- Longs father was a teacher he died from excessive drinking.

- Long came to Bangkok to work at a gas station but did not make enough money to support her mother and child, so when a friend asked her if she was interested in working in a bar with farang she accepted.

- She was almost 3 months pregnant with a Japanese customers baby (he was 65 Long was 25 at the time) when the Japanese man had a heart attack on the airplane and died after arriving in Thailand, Long had an abortion (7000 baht) after his death, and then prayed to Lord Buddha for forgiveness.

- She recently met a Farang male customer who promised to marry her, guy named Kevin from Australia (saw his photos and emails translated from English to Thai, Long cannot read English). Kevin has not called or written her for 7 months, Long told me she cried a lot. Emails were filled with sweet talk to her about love and such, and at the same time was talking about about the other women he had been with in Thailand when he was with her. The emails were basically a bunch of lies, example:

" I am not a butterfly, I only had 3 women when I was in Thailand, I liked you the best, I miss laying next to your warm sexy body. Love Kevin XXXXXXXX "

Butterfly= a man who sleeps with many ladies

Guess this Kevin guy spent 10 days in Thailand and 1 night with Long.

I volunteered to send an email to this fellow with Longs phone number etc. to try and reestablish contact.

Kevin sort of looked like a biker, big tough with a bald head and goatee style beard about 250 pounds and tall. Long is a small girl well under 5 feet and 38 kilos.

One interesting part of her room was that her bed was covered with stuffed toy dolls/animals. At one point in our talk she showed me how she hugged the dolls and how each had a name that corresponded with the name of the man who had given it to her.

I always wanted to try to make a documentary film about the life of a person in the bar scene, maybe at some future date I can try to do it with Long. I wish I had a video camera to record our talk today.