How The Pandemic Has Upended The Lives Of Thailand’s Sex Workers

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Above: N., a sex worker at a bar in Pattaya, Thailand. The sex trade has offered good-paying jobs for many people from rural areas who were facing a life of tending rice paddies and digging up cassava roots.

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The relatively empty Patpong red-light district in Bangkok. In March and April, Thailand closed its borders and canceled commercial flights because of the global pandemic. The country’s tourism industry — which is entwined with the sex worker industry — collapsed.

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Working in the bars of the red-light district pays more than many office jobs or other service work that the women and men in Thailand’s sex industry would otherwise qualify for. Above: Women dance at a bar in the Patpong red-light district in Bangkok.

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Before the pandemic, international tourists were frequent visitors to the red-light district.

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An owner of a bar at the Patpong red-light district in Bangkok.

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Shoes line the stairway by the living quarters for sex workers at a bar in Pattaya.

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At a bar in Pattaya, a woman receives a traditional Thai blessing for good luck. The symbolic gesture of having her hands patted with cash at the start of her shift is meant to help bring money into her hands that night.

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Left: M., who asked that her full name not be used, is a dancer and sex worker in Pattaya. It earns her more money than from her previous office job. She chooses clothes from her wardrobe at her home. Right: her room.

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M., 37, used to work in an office, but she earned more as a topless dancer in one of Pattaya’s go-go bars, and by taking on sex work. Before the pandemic she was saving money to buy more farmland for her family and dreaming of her own rubber tree plantation.

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M. dances at a bar. With her income severely cut during the pandemic, she may have to move back to Isaan, the northeastern region where she grew up, and help her mother tend their small plot of rubber trees.

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M. gets ready at the bar where she works in a red-light district in Pattaya.

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A poses for a photo at her family farm in a northeastern province. Her first name consists of the single initial.

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A passes paan — a stimulant chew made of betel leaves and other ingredients — to her grandmother. Since moving back to her home village, A spends most of her time taking care of her.

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A helps a friend run her stand during a festival in her family’s village.

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Dogs roam at sunset outside A’s grandmother’s house in a rural village in the Isaan district. A says life in the countryside is not as much fun as in Phuket, the tourist island known for its nightlife where she lived and worked for most of the last eight years, but that living in her small village close to her family is its own kind of happiness.

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Dogs roam at sunset outside A’s grandmother’s house in a rural village in the Isaan district. A says life in the countryside is not as much fun as in Phuket, the tourist island known for its nightlife where she lived and worked for most of the last eight years, but that living in her small village close to her family is its own kind of happiness.

Allison Joyce for NPR

Additional reporting by Suchada Phoisaat in Bangkok and Pattaya; and Hathairat Phaholtap in Isan.

Aurora Almendral is an American journalist based in Southeast Asia with an interest in politics, climate change, migration and economics. Her work has been recognized with multiple awards, including from the Overseas Press Club of America and a regional Edward R. Murrow Award.

Allison Joyce is an American photojournalist with over a decade of experience working in the United States and internationally. She covers news and human rights stories throughout the region with a special focus on gender issues. In 2019 she was nominated for the Joop Swart Masterclass, and her work has been honored with multiple awards, including from POYI (Pictures of the Year International), South Asian Journalists Association and the NYPPA (New York Press Photographers Association).