Closing Time Soi Cowboy

Closing Time Soi Cowboy, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

The only customer’s a friend, the last song is from the northeast part of Thailand called Isan.  It’s a tale of endless hard work on dirt-poor farms, the sons and daughters all lost to Bangkok to learn the ways of the City.

Pat

Pat, water color on paper, 18x24 inch

Pat used to work as a dancer, now she works serving drinks.  Her kids are ten and twelve, living with her mother in Udon.  She visits them once a year for a week, taking the bus for eight hours each way.  Her life has been exhausting, more than most middle-class women from Europe or North America could imagine or endure.  At eighteen, she was beautiful and could catch a man with just her smile.  Now, she’s wearing out, with many years still to go.

Lai

Lai, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

Lai came to Bangkok from Ubon near the border with Cambodia when she was eighteen.  She was recruited to work at a Soi Cowboy bar after she won a local beauty contest.  Her monthly salary is eight thousand Baht but so many men want her, she sometimes makes as much as forty thousand Baht a month.  In two years, she’s had hundreds of men, a few of them more than once.  So many men, she’s lost track of who they are and how they look.  Already, she has built a new house for her family back in Ubon and bought a pickup truck for her father and brother.