Cleo Odzer, a young American anthropologist, spent three years studying Bangkoks red-light district, Patpong, an area of a few blocks teeming with bars and explicit sex shows. Patpong is now world famous for its available and extremely attractive young women and men, who cater mainly to farangs (foreigners), most of them men but some women, who come from Europe, Australia, America, and Japan.
Odzer got to know the bar girls, the bar boys, and their varied entourages. She gained their confidence, interviewed them at length, lived among them, and accompanied some of them home to visit their familieswhom they often supportedin the isolated countryside, where they were idolized. She also got to know their customers, usually men who had traveled for thousands of miles to immerse themselves in the sensual world of Patpongsome of them falling in love with, even marrying, their newfound Thai companions. At times, these liaisons, complicated by language and cultural barriers, are truly hilarious, but they can also be poignant, touching on the tragic. Odzer concludes that some of the Patpong people, far from being downtrodden and exploited, reveal themselves to be quick, intelligent, and highly entrepreneurial. With a warm and personal point of view, Patpong Sisters shows how this Bangkok economy of sex works.
