Customer Reviews

Patpong Sisters: An American Woman's View of the Bangkok Sex World

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

The title of this book is utterly misleading. Ms. Odzer goes to Thailand to study women in the sex trade, but she quickly reveals that she is revolted by the work they do and that she is squeamish about stepping into the sex clubs in which they work. Instead, she spends the rest of the book going on about an affair she had with a married Thai man. How angry she is at his wife. How unfairly life is treating her. And on and on. It is boring, not even remotely informative. As a reader, I felt as used as the Thai people with whom Ms. Odzer interacted, and I felt no sympathy or empathy for the author or her actions...

Ms. Odzer's book cannot be characterized as a serious study of the sex trade in Thailand. Although it contains numerous anecdotes from the 10 or so prostitutes who she befriended during her two year romp around the bars of Patpong, it lacks any serious in depth analysis or reliable conclusions. The conclusions she draws regarding the manipulative nature of the prostitutes and the exploitive arrogance of the farang customers is obvious from one evening of casual observation of Patpong and does not provide any further insight. The purpose of Ms. Odzer's lengthy "research" seems to be her obsessive pursuit of her much younger, deceitful, dishonest pimp "boyfriend." It is nothing short of astonishingly appalling that this so-called scientist engaged in repeated acts of unprotected sex with a man who not only lied to her, took money from her, and was responsible for the complete destruction of her home, but also admittedly had regular sexual intercourse with prostitutes in a well-known AIDS infection area. Her conclusion that she would not "worry over Jek's (the boyfriend's) motives, Doom (his wife) and AIDS" after he sufferred from a mysterious and inexplicable high fever lest she "drive (herself) crazy" is indescribably self-destructive and irresponsible. I came away from this book questioning the author's sanity.

if you want a book dealing specifically with prostitution in thailand, how it is done, and what the prostitutes do, and how they live, this book is not informative enough. this book is a description of the time the author spent in bangkok. more often than not, she does not interviewing prostitutes, and she does not bring you into the lives of these slums. she sees the whole prostitution business in a way that is rather naive. rather, as said before, she spends a lot of time talking about her thai boyfriend and other non-relevant things. she does give some important insight on thai prostitution and the white men involved, but it is very little. read this book like you would a novel. i wouldn't recommend you purchase it for research.

This has got to be the worst book ever writen. I lived in Bangkok for 3 1/2 years and know a few of the people that were interviewed in this book. I also am married to a Thai so I take offense to some of the inferences she makes. Don't for one minute feel sorry for the author - falling in love, geting her heart broken,feeling blown off by some of the characters in the book. She used these people just like they used her. She needed to write a book so she exploited them and whatever happened to her she deserved. For the reader JBERNS - I bet after you live in Thailand for more than 3 months, you probably will have a different opinion of this book

First things first: no one could or would read this book without a prior fascination with Thailand. Which is to say it's awful. But what impressed me most was that such a sloppy, amateurish, ego-ridden, childish and effortless piece of work can get you a PhD, at least in the soft sciences. Maybe "Dr." Odzer ain't so dumb after all...

As a Thai-American, it's appalling to be unable to find good research material on this subject. The issue is a lot more complicated than presented. Thais have a wide range of opinion based upon class, etc. It's a very proud and beautiful country, in which many aspects are more reasonable than the US. To concentrate on such a sensitive topic without strong objectivity is just plain wrong. I would like to see more detail about the actual women, children, legal processes, "farang" men, and so forth, not some silly woman's sexcapades. Perhaps I'll have to do my own research...

Having worked with female sex workers in Southeast Asia for 3 years, I found Odzer's book completely ethnocentric and unbelievable. The women I work with do not feel like the heroes Cleo portrays in Patpong Sisters. That the author is not told of her friends sorrow and shame at entering the sex industry, or any of the hardships within the industry, makes me question how close she really got to her "friends." Her reluctance to work with EMPOWER, a grassroots sex worker's organization, her love affair with a pimp, and her judgmental account of trips to villages in Northern Thailand show both bad judgment and cultural insensitivity. Her tone is ethnocentric and haughty, I can hardly believe she is an accomplished anthropologist. If she was really concerned about women's empowerment, she would have used her $70,000 not only on her year-long beach party but also in working for the empowerment of sex workers. My experience says not to take Odzer's account at face value, it just doesn't match up with my own interviews of women working as prostitutes in SE Asia.

Ms. Odzer seems to stumble through Thailand for 3 years, utilizing neither method nor common sense in gathering information on Patpong prostitution.

The premise of the book is good, but it seems to be more like travelogue of a person with US$70K in debt, trying to figure out how to finish her degree. Her efforts at researching Patpong seem to have neither a clear method or any system, and she seems to be continually victimised. The statistics she provides are all from other sources, and it seems she wrote her dissertation from sources in the University library. In addition, she constantly refers to Thai men as "Thai boys" and Caucasian men as "Male Farangs", which leads me to believe she acted the same way they did - using the huge economic disparity to buy companionship and at the same time bury her own foibles. By the end of the book I felt absolutely no empathy for Ms. Odzer, and that she had no clue about the true state of prostitution in Thailand - let alone the profession in general.

What a wasted research opportunity.

Academic funding (and I presume a decent supervisor), an extended period for study in the Kingdom and... what interested me the most... a woman's perspective on a subject usually "sensationalised" by parachute journalists or men that have arguably lived in Bangkok too long. It could have been so good.

This is definitely not ground breaking social anthropology of the Paul Harrison calibre. Rather it comes across as reminisces from an extended vacation cum study trip.

If you are looking for an in depth analysis of the Pong, or the intricacies and the drivers behind the sex industry, you are not going to get it here. Leave it on the book shop shelf next to the trash novels written by men attempting to gain closure on their experiences of the Thai bar scene.

"Pat Pong Sisters." Tosh. It's more like "My Girlie Mates I Met In Pat Pong. And a Fair Bit About the Local Bloke I Fancied."

Odzer is active on the web, so her book is apt to come to the attention of people interested in the topic of international prostitution and the state of women in emerging Asian nations. After reading Odzer's book it is easy to imagine that she used her research status simply to enter and enjoy the Thai paradise for pleasure seeking Westerners, both male and female. Her intellectual capabilities, while adaptable enough to get the U.S. taxpayers to fund her $70,000 for her "research", are based on a fundamental dishonesty shown in her "clever" deception of her "subjects" and the Thai government about her purposes there. Her postition that prostitution and the sex trade is "liberating" for the poor people and children drawn into this "industry" shows a moral and intellectual bankruptcy and the sort of rationalization that can be expected of privilaged Westerners who wish to preserve their commercial use of third world people. Indeed, as Odzer says, prostitutes in Thailand are "soliders", but the war and its spoils are not theirs, only the casulties. For a more objective, less romanticized and personalized view of this world , I recommend "Let the Good Times Roll" by Sturdevant and Stoltzfus which focuses on prostitution around the U.S. military bases in the Philippines, Korea and Japan. The authors address questions like "what happens to over-the-hill prostitutes?" which Odzer conveniently failed to include. Leave Odzer to peddle her commercial effort to sex tourists and pedophiles who want to hear that their patronage is good, beneficial and liberating to the poor of third world nations.