Undercover in Poipet

What could an old man like me be doing in a karaoke room with two young Khmer men and four young Khmer women in their early to late 20's? Helping a friend by going under cover. My mission: to see if the karaoke ladies are actually technically sex workers or more bluntly, prostitutes, by posing as a 'regular' costumer, whatever that means. The friend is doing research on the effects of 'empowerment' on sexual behavior, specifically the reduction of risk in contracting HIV.
Where's Poipet? It's more than 400 kilometers west northwest of Phnom Penh and is the border town with Aranyathrapet on the Thai side and used to be a base of the Khmer Rouge that mined it before retreating. It is bustling with economic activity, linked in part to cross-border trade and the influx of tourists from prosperous Thailand, who flock to a special entertainment zone of hotel-casinos, modest duty-free shops, and restaurants. The workers in the zones are Khmers and the patrons are generally Thai, and ordinary Khmers are not allowed in.
Was the mission a flimsy excuse for voyeurism and worse? Not exactly, but you be the judge. My friend's study requires a sample of sex workers---direct and indirect---who have and haven't benefitted from anti-HIV programs. The problem is with the so-called indirect sex workers because one can never be sure that there may indeed be legitimate karaoke joints as there are in Manila. And very likely, these joints occupy a gray area. In addition, the friend was trying to determine how many of the 'peer leaders'---sex workers recruited into an anti-HIV program in the past, remained in the area. But that was the job of her assistant.
Lulled into a reverie and thinking how the Khmer woman in the music video looked like former Philippine tourism secretary Gemma Cruz, cavorting with a fully clothed old-fashioned Khmer whose idea of romance was staring into a woman's eyes and occasionally touching her face while strolling in the paddies, I suddenly felt the 25-year-old girl squeezing my left thigh and stroking the hair on the lower leg. I didn't really freeze, but then she started massaging my head and back and arms and telling the research assistant my legs were comparable in size to her arms, with a laugh. I was all skin and bones, she said, and the fact that the assistant tried to soothe my ego by telling me repeatedly that I had a resemblance to Manny Pacquiao didn't help my ego one bit. Then she leaned to rest her head on my left shoulder.
In the meantime, Phine the tall and dashing driver was James bonding with the 22-year-old and singing a love song. His phone rang and when he came back inside his demeanor had become somber. (It was only the morning after that I learned his wife had been taken to hospital for labor. She gave birth to their first child, a girl, at six in the morning.)
How not to break my cover? I said I had to go out for a cigaret and didn't want to inflict any secondary smoke on anyone. But the prettiest, the 29-year-old went out to insist that I should just smoke inside. At this point I felt I was already between a rock and a soft place, between being called a snob or a prude, for I am neither. Perhaps better to be thought of as gay?
The ladies were disappointed when we left shortly after ten, for we obviously weren't the type of customers they are accustomed to.
Mission accomplished. And one inescapable conclusion is that the sex workers here have much more dignity than the political prostitutes in the Philippines. Since she has not hacked being an economist and president, perhaps Gloria Macapagal Arroyo should consider a change in career as a karaoke girl in Poipet, but only after serving her time in jail.