Bangkok Girl (Thailand's Night Life Documentary)

Bangkok Girl
Documentary

"Farang"... meaning "stranger" or "Western tourist" is one of the first words that children in Bangkok learn. In this tourist heaven what makes the headlines is not the exquisite Thailand countryside... but the sex trade, and the "Farang" who come to exploit it. An estimated 800,000 girls and women work the night scene in Thailand. This is a story of one...

Bangkok is Thailand's modern bustling capital. Day and night, six million souls are on the move. The guidebooks call it "the land of 15 million smiles", something that attracts almost 12 million tourists every year. They say that if you can't find it in Bangkok then it doesn't exist. There almost everything is up for grabs and the reason is pretty simple - lack of jobs and poverty.

In Bangkok a typical day's pay is $8, and in the north $2. It's no wonder young girls from up country head for the bright lights and the opportunity to work. Sex sells, it always has. It blossomed during the Vietnam War and now it thrives. The first time when Jordan traveled through Thailand he was in awe of this paradise and its welcoming people, but somehow in that brief glimpse it never occurred to him to look beyond the smiles.

But when he came back wanting to film this unfamiliar world, he met Pla - a 19-year-old who worked in one of Bangkok's countless bars. Pla was willing to reach out and share her world with him and in the process changed him and touched his life in a way he never expected. This is that story.

Sex tourism prostitutes in Bangkok normally work in any of the pimp bars, but on the streets it's mostly underage girls and HIV positive women still applying their trade. As a westerner on the streets of Bangkok you get constant hustle. Not just hookers, shopkeepers and taxes, but everything.