Exotic-clubbers and sex-obsessed perverts

In the last post I said I would write about another category of people, who travel to exotic places just to have as much fun as possible. Before I start I must admit that I don't know too much about them, so it is not a deep and scientifically profound study. I was never one of them and don't know anyone from this group well. I just met them several times on my way, and made some observations.

I think that there should be another distinction made before I go further into describing my experience. It seems that there are two major groups of fun lovers - depending how they define "fun". Those who travel for drinking/music/dance/drugs and sex, and those who travel just or mainly for sex. The first group is made of more-or-less normal young people, who sadly are often of not the highest moral/cultural standards. The second group seems to be made of people who have unsatisfied sexual needs and have to go to places like Thailand and use their money to satisfy them. Either because they are too old/ugly/fat/inept/name-it to find an attractive sexual partner, or what is much worse because they are too perverted to risk making their sick fantasies come true at home, in fear of being cursed by the society and going to jail. It is not difficult - or should I rather say - it is difficult not to, spot a fat old westerner with a very young boy or girl cuddled to his chest at a beach in Phuket or Pattaya. That category deserves much more serious studies and is related to such atrocious crimes as sexual exploitation of children. My intention for this post was to write about lets call them "exotic-clubbers", not the perverts. There is a lot of good quality material regarding the others on the Internet, and that deserves to be treated with much deeper and knowledgeable insight than I could ever claim to provide.

So lets focus on "exotic-clubbers". What do I know about them? Not much to be frank, I just had a doubtful pleasure of sharing a 4-bed dorm with them recently. They can be met in any major city in Asia. In Thailand they gather in Bangkok. In China their promised land is Shanghai. And that is where I had my sad experience.

I made a very bad choice regarding the hostel I was staying in (a blind choice, to be fair). The localization was great - 10 minutes walk to the Bund, about the same to the East Nanjing Rd metro station. But that also determined the kind of people who stayed there - as that meant also 10 minutes walk to the best places for prostitutes and other noble means of entertainment. This and the fact that this appalling hostel is regarded as the best in town by the newest edition of the Lonely Planet guidebook, a Holy Bible and the Oracle for the western travellers. I should admit though that most of the people there were normal. Some of them were really great, like the group of young medicine graduates from Poland travelling around rural areas of China for 6 weeks, that I met accidentally at the Bund, before it turned out we were staying in the same place. Maybe it was just my bad luck that the ones in my room were different.

Before you move to the next post, that will follow shortly, to read about my experience, please make sure you are over 21 (you may check your ID to make sure) and mentally prepared for some drastic scenes.