My Name Lon. You Like Me?

More about the book

This book is the story of a young woman who worked for years as a Thai bar girl (i.e., a prostitute) servicing Western sex tourists, beginning at the age of 14. Lon talks about the pressure from her family, especially her mother, to send increasingly larger sums of money home to her family in the rural north of Thailand. This, in turn, causes her to take on increasing more unpleasant Western customers, who are willing to pay premium prices for sex partners they can treat roughly and abusively.The book offers a rare insight into the Thai prostitution industry and explains where these girls come from (generally poor rural areas), and why they get into this business. This is NOT a book about a woman forced into sexual slavery against her will. Lon comes off as a complainer, blaming everyone else--her mother, her brother, her customers--for poor decisions she made in the quest for more money. In the end, she marries a Westerner and moves to Sweden, where she takes on a job as a stripper! So while it's tough to feel any real sympathy for Lon, the insights into the Thai prostitution industry are fascinating.