Cambodia Barworld Studies: Sextourist Romance
It’s amusing sometimes to hear the newbie sexpat go on about the virtues of Oriental girls, with their stereotypical traits of quietness, submissiveness, and tolerance of infidelity. They come here, they say, to find the perfect girl. But they end up with slappers whose idea of a laugh is sticking pool cues up fat sextourist bumholes.
These men have the odds stacked against them. Peruse sextourist websites and you’ll see countless examples of their cultural hamfistedness. It’s not uncommon to read preposterous (at least in the context of non-dysfunctional middle-class Khmer marriages) statements like, ‘Khmer girls expect you to slap them around. That’s how you show your affection here. If you don’t do it, they’ll worry you don’t love them.’
It’s not surprising they don’t end up with the lovely Oriental girls they conjure up on the Internet. Take your pick of tattoos, piercings, gambling addictions, ya ma habits, histories of venereal disease, motodop boyfriends, ex-husbands, current husbands, kids. There’s bound to be a few. These men end up with the roughest bargirls you’ve ever seen, the type that wouldn’t be out of place in an all night bar at four o’clock in the morning, though the tourist dollar persuades even these battle scarred old tuskers to behave like sweet schoolgirls for the seven days Johnny Sextourist is in town.
Only someone more or less permanently drunk, coming off of eight months of complete abstinence in the Wasteland, and consuming bottles of viagra every day could gush about an old slapper the way the sextourists does. Smitten, he takes photos of his love, but he doesn’t post them on the Internet along with the photos of the girls he’s banged and recommend his cyber pals take for a ride. No, he keeps these portraits private as inspiration for the glowing panegyrics he writes about her tíght bumhole and how she never asks him for money because she loves his Adonis body and donkey cock. With the help of email and Western Union, a transcontinental romance blooms.
What it is, exactly, that the sextourist romancer is seeking eludes me. So many openly admit they’re married, even showing the girls photos of their kids, as though it will endear them to the slappers by showing them that they’re big warm-hearted teddy bear men. What they seek, I can only guess, is some sort of connection.
Back after a short holiday, their ‘punting lifestyle’ once again cramped into the anally retentive asexuality of the Wasteland, they’re not satisfied dreaming of Oriental hookers, or looking through their photo album of Oriental hookers, or wanking to soft porn ‘trip reports’ written by other desperate sex tourists. They need something more personal, more direct, and more tangible. What they need is a little romance with a hooker, sustained with a bit of cash through the Western Union, and that one email per week written by some old AIDS ridden hooker who writes all the bargirl emails in Phnom Penh for a commission.