Thailand. Photo: Unsplash.com
At the turn of the year, Hymy.fi republishes the most read and most interesting articles of the year. During the year, articles on hymy.fi have been read approximately 30 million times. This story was first published on August 7, 2024.
Kovin is very different in the world. Hymy.fi met a Thai woman who has owned a karaoke bar in Thailand. According to him, it is quite common in Thailand that the title “karaoke bar” is the same as a girl’s bar.
A few years ago Bamboo40, owned a bar. Ownership in Thailand can mean, according to him, that there is a rented commercial space where a bar is kept. The bar is named a karaoke bar because you can sing karaoke there.
One person can rent a commercial space and start running a restaurant for a monthly rent of around 350 euros. There is little need for other staff.
– In addition to myself, I had one actual employee. We got food, drinks, various games in the restaurant and of course the opportunity to sing karaoke.
According to Achara, he has seen a lot.
– Once, a girl from the countryside came to the bar, a woman who had just turned 18. He asked to go to the bar “to work”, Achara tells smile.fi.
Getting to work in a bar does not mean the same as it does here in Western countries. There, the restaurateur accepts – or does not accept – people who aspire to work, and their job description is to entertain customers. They don’t get paid.
The girls who got to work in the bar are also not entrepreneurs, in the true sense of the word, they don’t have a company to run the business, like elsewhere. They mainly entertain phalanges – a term for Western, white-skinned tourists – who come to sing karaoke, or otherwise just hang out at the bar.
– The general custom in Thailand is that if a girl decides to go with a phalange, the phalange must pay 300 baht to the barkeeper.
The amount of money in question corresponds to 7.70 euros.
– After that, it is up to the woman to decide what she will do with the phalanx. It does not belong to the restaurateur. But since a woman can do business on her own this way, it is a common agreement that the woman pays the 300 baht amount when she leaves with the customer, Achara says.
– Once a girl came to the bar, just 18 years old, she asked to go to work. I told him are you crazy? You’ve just come of age and want to entertain the phalanxes. He said he had traveled from the northern countryside and wanted to earn money for his sick mother. I refused to hire him. Then the woman asked, crying, that she wanted to be a prostitute.
Source: hymy.fi
