Patpong Sisters

The author, a young American anthropologist, spent three years studying Bangkok's red-light district, Patpong, an area of a few blocks teeming with bars and explicit sex shows. In this book, she concludes that some of the Patpong people, far from being downtrodden and exploited, reveal themselves to be intelligent, and highly entrepreneurial.

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“Engrossing.”—Publishers Weekly

“Candid, intrepid, and perceptive.”—Booklist

Selection of Book-of-the-Month Club

Cleo Odzer, a young American anthropologist, spent three years studying Bangkok’s red-light district. Her work reveals the working of the sex trade, the lives of the women, men, boys, and girls forced to sell themselves in the hope of financial business, and the profiteers who exploit them for profit.

Patpong, in the heart of Bangkok, teems with bars and sex shows, catering mainly to farangs - foreigners. Odzer spent three years studying the area. Gaining the confidence of the bar girls and bar boys, she interviewed them at length, lived among them, accompanied several back to their families in remote villages.

She also got to know their customers, those in for a night or in forever (many fell in love and stayed on in Patpong). From Odzer's account emerges a far different picture from the cliched image of the prostitute. Many of the Patpong girls, smart and enterprising, use their profession for self-liberation and to support their impoverished families back home. Warm and personal,

Patpong Sisters reveals the truth about the $4 billion Bangkok economy of sex.