Old Memory

I was sitting in the car today just before coming into work and I had a memory flashback. Last year in Klong Toey Slum I was walking around and photographing in a congested slum shack area. I saw a young boy practising his writing with a small white board and pen, he was sitting on the floor of his slum shack in the doorway. I sat down beside him and looked at his letters and started to talk to him. His mother was next to him, a young girl, quite pretty who seemed a bit stand offish, a bit unfriendly. I stayed a few minutes and talked to the boy, I even took the white board and showed him some English letters as well as writing a bit of Thai for him so he could understand the connection.

There was no outright anger by the boys mother but sort of a resentment, a feeling I did not get with others I met at Klong Toey. At the time I was wondering why? I had a theory back then and it flashed back today, Many of the beautiful women of Klong Toey work in a Western bar area of Bangkok called Soi Cowboy. The Soi Cowboy area is filled with Western sex tourists. My theory is this girl worked in that area and had built up a resentment towards farang men during that time. Cowboy is filled with ugliness, I have seen that same sort of  anti farang male resentment in other sex tourism areas of Thailand. All Western (farang) males can often be painted with the same brush by the workers.

Today I was thinking, would it not be a good idea to do a photo story on the life of someone who works Soi Cowboy and also lives in Klong Toey? The contrasts of that type of life, poverty and the love of family alongside the sleaziness of Cowboy. Most Western sex tourists have no idea of the true reality of the girls who work the bars of cowboy. To make photographs that show the contrasts of that life might make for some powerful work.