Who Smells Bad in Southeast Asia?

I don't mean those who have bad breath because they have just smoked a cigarette and had four cups of coffee, or those who have bad breath because they don't brush their teeth and have gum disease-which would include an awful lot of Indonesians, and a not inconsiderable number of other Southeast Asians, and plenty of foreigners who spend time in Asia. Nor am I referring to those foreigners and others who just don't like showering frequently and have no qualms about drinking all day in an outdoor bar and sweating like a pig and then going on a hooker hunt at sundown without showering. I've got something else in mind.

What I've got in mind are those foreigners who have come to Southeast Asia for mongering and tend to behave badly. And this gets me into the realm of what I have seen and heard, and what plenty of mongers have seen and heard and may even been party to.

In recent years it seems that there has been quite an increase in the scummy skinhead and heavily tattooed Brit boys going to Pattaya for the purpose of drinking hard and fucking with equal vigor. These are the guys that you invariably see on Walking Street throwing a punch at one another and then tussling on the ground when Manchester United or some other team scores or is scored upon and someone at the bar begins pissing purple tulips because his team is now behind or about to lose.

These are the guys that a number of the hookers will point to as using them as a drilling exercise, and then making them sore for several days. Which gets some of the hookers thinking anew about why older men, even those who are fat and ugly and bald, are a better bet for the night. They'll settle for one shag, or one blow job, and then go to sleep and not think about sex again until morning.

Then there are all those individual cases-American, German, Aussie, English, the ratbags and such who just love to abuse women physically, and often do so in public. (Who knows what they do behind closed doors?) A spectacle that, I am sure, has made more than one sane monger or observer want to kick the living shit out of the Big Boy physically abusing the hooker half his size. I recall vividly one instance in which I was in Nero's in Angeles City and about ten feet to my right was a young and very large American-about six three and well over two hundred pounds-and for no good reason that I could discern he brusquely grabbed the girl sitting in front of him under her two breasts and lifted her high off the ground. She screamed and made an ugly face and he laughed. And then he did it again. At about the time she screamed and flailed and begged him to stop a second time I got the urge to stand up and kick the guy squarely in the balls. I would have done so had I thought I had a reasonable shot of scoring with my foot; and I probably would have made the attempt anyway had he done it one more time to the girl and I'd had one more drink in me.

There are examples that everyone has at hand who has spent any time at all in these monger environments in the Philippines and Thailand. Examples, I am sure, that are more disgusting than those I have heard about or personally seen. But what brings me to this little essay is a phenomenon that caught my attention on a spring 2008 visit to Angeles City, one I had seen but just had not paid much attention to previously, for the reason, I suspect, that it was neither so glaringly evident nor widespread. What I am referring to is what many mongers, and not just in the Philippines, have referred to as "the Korean Invasion."

Okay, so today there are more Japanese and Malaysians and Koreans and Chinese in the Philippines and in Thailand for the explicit purpose of mongering than there were half a dozen years ago. And there will no doubt be more in the future as a proportion of all mongers. But, it would seem, based on what I have seen and heard, the Koreans are a bit different at finding ways to stand out. They are more aggressive, they are nastier with the girls, and they are pointedly disliked by some (many?) of them, and they are avoided if possible.

When I've seen them they are often running in small packs of three and four and five, and when they get inside a go-go venue they often tend to be loud and want their way. If there are a couple of seats to your left or right, and they need an extra seat or chair, they're not at all bashful about telling you to move. And they don't want no for an answer. In a striking instance in a go-go bar in Angeles City, four of them got up onto a stage and literally pushed the go-go dancers aside so they could put on their own little dance show. They obviously cared not a whit how the girls felt about it, or if the other mongers who were there to see the girls had the slightest interest in watching some young overweight Koreans wiggle their asses and swing their arms and beg for attention from one and all.

I still might not have paid that much attention to the Koreans or singled them out in my mind were it not for the fact that I found myself one night chatting at length with a twenty-two year old Filipina hooker who was full of charm and good looks and obviously had no trouble on any given night getting a couple of good-tipping short-timers. I don't recall how we got talking about the Koreans or singling them out-I think she brought them up. The gist of her complaint was that she hated to go with them, and she avoided them as much as possible, because, as she put it, they are "sadists." Which, when I asked her to explained what she meant, she said that they not only enjoy showily spanking and physically abusing the girls in public but that they frequently want anal intercourse. Very few Filipina hookers are willing to engage in anal intercourse, and in fact will often offer the comment that they have a "cherry ass" and that fact is not going to change. From what I learned, what adds another dimension to the problem is that while one might assume that Koreans are not much different than the Japanese with their proverbial three- or four-inch pencil penises, this is often not the case. Many Koreans, apparently, are endowed not much different than English or Australian or American men-a good six or seven inches and with notable girth, this latter feature often seen by hookers, rightly or wrongly, as something they do not want to deal with. And particularly, and with good reason, if the man is insisting on anal intercourse. Three inches in length and a couple of inches in girth is one thing in anal intercourse; twice these dimensions or more in the case of girth and a small girl with or without a cherry anus and some experience is going to be hurt. Ass fucking is more than a small pain, and it is an unwelcome feeling that can easily last for a week.

I had some doubts about this claim about the Korean interest in anal intercourse after hearing it for the first time; though I did not have doubts about other claims about their aggressiveness and even brutish behavior with the girls in public because I've seen enough examples with my own eyes. So I asked around. I asked other Angeles City hookers about Koreans and whether or not they had any "special" interests. The interest in anal intercourse came up several times, an interest, incidentally, that I had not previously heard attributed to any particular ethnic or age group.

I don't, in fact, know how widespread this Korean monger interest in anal intercourse is. Nor would I want to speculate on how often an insistent and aggressive Korean behind a locked hotel room door pushes himself onto a small Filipina and crosses the line between consensual sex and rape. (Yes, rape is very much a possibility among hookers, and it probably occurs more than anyone might guess.) What is disturbing in general, as it always is, is poor treatment of women and the easy with which hookers can be physically abused. Hookers quite obviously are human beings who should be treated as all people should be treated, with respect.

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Oh yes, the title of this essay comes from a Filipina hooker who talked at length with me about Korean mongers. She began what she had to say by saying: I don't like Koreans because they smell bad.