BANGKOK — Lek, tiny which have a lot of time black locks and you will a bashful laugh, try an ‘Ooang Nua’ — an excellent Thai term meaning ‘little girl in the North’ — whose work in an effective brothel try feeding their unique household members back home.
Lek, fifteen, is the most a huge selection of ‘Ooang Nua’ recruited on a yearly basis out-of the new agriculture communities out of impoverished northern Thailand so you can stock the new brothels away from Bangkok.
Favored due to their white complexions, young girls such as for instance Lek, in the state away from Chiang Mai, often find by themselves located in special ‘teahouses’ one serve more mature Chinese dudes who believe consorting having young girls commonly fix its own youth and you will vitality.
‘The urban area man stumbled on our very own community and everyone are therefore delighted,’ Lek said. ‘The Sjekk ut innlegget her guy confronted with our village headman additionally the next thing We know I found myself on the an air-conditioned bus bound to possess Bangkok.’
‘My parents gotten step three,000 baht ($130) for my situation. That is sufficient to provide them and you may my personal five brothers and sisters for some time.’
She said she and two most other town girls whom grabbed the fresh new coach in order to Bangkok did not know very well what was in shop having them on the big city.
‘Of course mother and father knew I might become employed in a good teahouse during the Bangkok,’ she said. ‘But exactly what else you certainly will they are doing? They had no cash at all to have dining.’
When she arrived in the metropolis, Lek along with her ‘sisters’ from the community got mats in order to sleep in a-room having several almost every other girls ranging inside years out-of fifteen so you’re able to twenty two. Dinners and unexpected scientific inspections and had been provided, she told you.
Even after more half a year on brothel, she’s maybe not ventured beyond your strengthening, found in the center regarding Bangkok’s teeming Chinatown region.
‘We commonly permitted to go external,’ she told you. ‘One away from my sisters tried to hightail it single however, they trapped their particular and overcome her. We never ever attempted.’
Lek’s work-day starts at the noon and you will closes regarding ten p.yards., seven days a week. Much of their own date try invested sitting on a workbench within the a great dingy prepared space studying comic instructions and you will speaking with brand new other girls.
People go into the teahouse by way of a maze regarding straight back roads, towards the an open-heavens Chinese cafe and up one or two aircraft from rickety stairways. They browse brand new line of girls on counter, all of just who wears a designated badge.
The purchase price is 60 baht ($2.60) for example hours in the a little cubicle armed with a bed mattress and a container out-of Chinese teas simmering for the a great hotplate.
Lek remains a village girl when you look at the outlook, that have a robust feeling of family members respect and a distinctively Buddhist sense of resignation
‘Usually We sleep with five or six dudes each and every day,’ Lek told you. ‘Most is actually Chinese while the rest are Thai.’
Lek said the guy out of Bangkok paid back the brand new categories of for every of girls a lump sum payment, according to appeal of the latest girl and the bargaining skills of one’s village headman
Lek’s casual ‘contract’ on agent just who employed their particular is off indefinite stage. But such as the most other girls, she actually is conscious their particular worthy of to your teahouse decreases due to the fact she increases old.
Their mind is concerned about brand new Thai New-year escape regarding Songkhran, well-known within the April, whenever she said she’ll be allowed to check out their own village in the north.
‘I have not got a good boyfriend,’ she told you. ‘I don’t believe regarding it. Immediately the I want is to find my family within Songkhran. I really don’t desire to take into account the coming.’
