Lindsay, Stacy, and I were on Patong Beach’s Bangla Road in Phuket. Our first night in the town, and we plunged headfirst into the chaos of the bar scene. There are over 200 bars on Bangla Road, with an average of six girls working each bar. That makes over 1200 girls working on any given night. And they work every night.
The first girl that we met, Ang*, opened up to Lindsay as soon as she sat down across the table. “I’m having a hard time because my father just died.” There’s an opening line you don’t hear every day. Stacy and I sat at the bar praying and sipping ginger ales while Lindsay chatted with Ang behind us. At an appropriate moment, we took the stools on either side of our teammate. Ang, who was from Bangkok, spoke good English, but laughed at herself whenever she couldn’t explain something to us. “I’m not very smart,” she would say with a smile.
We found out that Ang’s birthday is April 23rd. She’s having her golden birthday this year, turning 23 on the 23rd. We have every intention of going back to see her that day.
“How long have you been working here?” Lindsay asked.
“Four months.”
“Do you like your job?”
“Not really.”
The thing that sticks out the most to me when I think about Ang is that she was the only girl we saw that whole night who wasn’t wearing any makeup. The girl sitting at the other end of the table from us, in contrast, could probably chisel her face off in the morning when she went home. You could feel something different in Ang just from that decision she made when she came to work. She wasn’t hiding behind anything, she wasn’t pretending to like her job, and she wasn’t being anything other than a twenty-two-year-old with very few options for earning money. And even then, “earning money” isn’t exactly what she does when she goes to work.
“We all live together for free in a room owned by the bar,” she told us. “And they feed us well. But I only make money when customers buy me drinks. I don’t have a salary.”
Ang has the means to exist. But she doesn’t have a way to really live. She confided in us, “American ladies, they don’t like Thai ladies. They see us here working, and they think things about us.”
She leaned in closer to us, like she had a secret. “You’re the first people to really talk to me and ask me questions about my life.”
We walked away promising to come back and see her on her birthday. We’re hoping to bring a cupcake with us. Everyone should have friends with them on their birthday.
*Names have been changed.
