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"Hello My Big Big Honey!"
Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews

ISBN 0867194731


reviewed by:

TIME Magazine
Lonely Planet
Bangkok Post
Metro Magazine
Far Eastern Economic Review
London's News of the World Sunday Magazine
Ice Magazine, England
South China Morning Post
Edmonton Sun
Budapest Week
Bangkok Inside Out
Netsurfer Digest
Charged: Extreme Leisure
Spectator magazine
...etcetera / etcetera...
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TIME Magazine:

Sightings

Thailand -- Letters from The Heart

MANY PEOPLE ASSUME THAT MEN WHO patronize brothels view prostitutes as single-use, disposable sex objects. "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews may surprise those who subscribe to that assumption. In an intimate portrait of Patpong Road, Bangkok's red-light district for tourists and foreigners, two journalists based in the Thai capital have gathered letters written by 71 European (and American and other) men who fell in love with women, whose sexual services they had bought in places like the Peppermint Bistro and the Pussy Connection. Interspersed are interviews with 12 of the bar girl correspondents.

Does love conquer poverty, cultural barriers and the fear of AIDS? Sometimes, according to the authors. Though many of Bangkok's thousands of prostitutes turn to drugs, succumb to disease or commit suicide, a surprising number parlay their trysts into marriage and a ticket to the West. While waiting for their (Western) lovers to return for them, the women of Patpong Road receive air-mail letters containing money and messages such as "You are my only hope, the only person I can live and fight for," and "I am not the best man on earth, but then, if I had been a very good man, I would not have met you," and "Dear Darling, Money for December. Also for teeth. Love..."

-- TIME Magazine, International Edition

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Lonely Planet Guide to Thailand

and

Lonely Planet Guide to Bangkok

both recommended this book in their *Culture and Society* section, and added:

"Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews -- published in French as 'Bonjour ma Grande Grande Cherie!' -- by Richard Ehrlich and Dave Walker, delivers exactly what the title describes. This collection of letters between Thai bar workers and their farang -- foreigners of European descent -- clients and the verbatim question-and-answer interviews with the women, discloses more about the complex nature of these encounters than 10 academic treatises of similar size."

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Bangkok Post:

Love Letters to Thai Prostitutes

In case you're new to Thailand, or just can't read enough about one of the country's most famous institutions, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews provides a new angle on prostitution. It's a collection of love letters from foreign men to prostitutes and interviews with the women who receive these tributes. Unlike much other available literature, this small volume pretends to be neither analytical nor scientific. Says one of the authors: "This collection tries to keep the focus on why so many foreign men fall head over heels for Bangkok's bar girls."

Can true love blossom out of this type of business transaction? If one is to believe the array of love letters published in "Honey!" -- it can. Each of the authors gives his own explanation of what may be behind this spate of unlikely love stories, followed by a thorough analysis from Dr. Yos Santasombat of Thammasat University.

This book is broken down into a collection of letters, interspersed with interviews with selected prostitutes.

Also intriguing is the message that the collection of letters, as a whole, sends to the reader. What is clear here is that the arrangement between prostitutes and clients often transcends the original contract period.

Dr. Yos calls this "open-ended prostitution," when a relationship lasts for the week, month, or year that the foreigner requires companionship in Thailand, during which genuine affection may develop.

A number of themes run through the book: prostitution, love, family, cultural stereotypes, AIDS. The most prominent, however, and perhaps the most interesting, is money.

Dr. Yos asserts that what makes Thai prostitution unique, is that after the initial "business" arrangement is over, involvement with the farang often gradually changes. "A girl's stay with the man is usually conditioned upon his readiness to support her or to take care of her financially... Mutual or material dependence frequently engenders some sort of an emotional attachment on the part of the girl herself."

The authors highlight a number of other interesting issues, one of which is the changing nature of prostitution. An older prostitute discusses the change: "I have fun. I go for nothing. No need money for me. If I want, I love him... (now) different... Now they're very very young bar girl... Have work, get money for Thai husband... She not love, only money."

It is interesting that those prostitutes who are perceived as being genuinely concerned for their customers, and with the intention of finding a way out of their poverty, are looked on as "good girls," whereas those who see it only as a way of earning money are looked down on. The final chapter, an interview with a woman who helps prostitutes translate love letters, asserts that most carry on correspondence, with foreign men, out of a genuine affection.

"Honey!" is interesting and readable, surprising and engaging.

In the introductions, the authors explain that many men are unable to find girlfriends at home, or are captivated by Thai beauty, or want to raise the women out of poverty.

Picking up a copy of "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews is worthwhile, if only to expose the reader to a real and common phenomenon.

-- The Bangkok Post, Thailand

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Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer, by Chuck Thompson:

Thailand super-expats Richard Ehrlich and Dave Walker have many distinguished lines on their resumes, though none quite so noteworthy as "Hello My Big Big Honey!", their anthology of love letters written to Bangkok bar girls by men of all nationalities, who, once back in the lands of dowdy, nagging women, strip malls, and other nine-to-five drudgery, can't seem to get the exotic vacation trollops of Thailand out of their minds.

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The Observer, U.K.:

Richard S. Ehrlich is the Bangkok-based co-author and co-photographer, along with Dave Walker, of a book of investigative journalism entitled, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.

Nearly all of the girls have flocked to the cities and resorts to escape their own prison: an impoverished existence in Thailand's rural expanses, whereas a night's takings from the city bar could sustain a family for a month.

From Isan's desperately poor, rice farming villages, where hunger is the norm, the bars of Bangkok or Pattaya are a welcome escape.

For girls with little education, they provide an opportunity to shine, and have the honour of providing for their families by sending new-found riches back home.

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S. Tsow, columnist, The Nation newspaper, Bangkok, Thailand:

"Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews -- This classic study of the Bangkok bar scene has been extolled by anthropologists and sociologists throughout the world.

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Metro Magazine:

Specialist Books

"I think about shopping. Shopping for gold," reveals a bar girl about her thoughts while on the job. "Or I think nothing. I don't like. It's not fun." This collection of letters between bar girls and their customers/lovers has been a bestseller since 1992, and should be mandatory reading for any farang (male, female, hetero or otherwise). The openly mercenary bar girls get to the point, even if they write white lies for extra money. The naive, sometimes deliberately misleading farang write regularly, sending money or excuses, and are mostly very sad, declaring undying love for a woman they slept with twice in Pattaya, yet worrying about AIDS.

"I love you, but not for free" is the motto, but it's too simple to dismiss this stereotypical attitude as cold-hearted. In his introduction, Dr. Yos Santasombat -- Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Thammasat University -- explains how quickly the thin line between money-based arrangements and emotions can blur. Some of these women are prepared to become involved. A wonderful introduction to Thailand's chapter in the oldest story of humankind: how cross-cultural passion can up-end the lives of everybody involved.

-- Metro Magazine, Bangkok

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Far Eastern Economic Review Magazine:

Postal Affairs

"P.S. This letter is not bullshit darling, it is the truth," writes a farang (foreigner) to his Thai girlfriend.

Do people speak "the truth" in letters? Our first inclination is to say yes. Letters are personal and often express intimate thoughts and fantasies, a private reality behind a public facade. But our farang clearly has some doubts, or why would he need his "P.S."?

There are many kinds of letters. The love genre is one, and this book contains a sub-set of that genre, one plagued more than most by anxiety and suspicion. The letters invite you into a Freudian whirlpool of sexual fantasies and frustration, of damaged egos and haunting super-egos, of dreams of pure love and acts of cold calculation, and a milieu of cross-cultural mayhem.

The delirium is best expressed by a young Finn who tells his girlfriend he will return to Bangkok and get a job as a Tuk Tuk driver. He fails to realize that she is in the bars precisely to escape the fate of being married to a Tuk Tuk driver.

Love letters have been described as an attempt to achieve intimacy at a distance. This partly explains the intense declarations of love in these letters and their sexual explicitness. Sex, after all, was the main form of communication in Thailand for these correspondents. The women speak little English, and many of the men only broken English, yet this is the medium they continue to use in the letters.

The letters show an interesting reversal of roles between Thai women and farang men. In Thailand, the men could pick and choose. Back home, they cannot and the men become aware that the woman is still in a situation where she can. Thus the letters are full of declarations of faithfulness and sometimes desperation, and of intentions to take the women out of the bars. The motives are muddled, but no doubt the role reversal explains why many feel compelled to send money to the bar girls long after they have left the "City of Angels." They are attempts at control from a distance.

On the other hand, some men try to give moral lessons or instructions on the dangers of AIDS. The results of this remote counseling are evident in an interview with an AIDS-conscious woman concerning sex without a condom: "If I have no money, I think I will do." That's the bottom line.

-- Far Eastern Economic Review Magazine, Hong Kong

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London's News of the World Sunday Magazine:

What's Love Got to Do with It when Bangkok Bar Girls Offer "Hospitality"?

These intimate letters from a forthcoming book reveal the true feelings between Western men and their Eastern girls.

"Darling, I have bought a motorcycle for 225 pounds. I want to be a very rich man. When I am rich I will buy you a helicopter and a BMW. Darling, when I stayed with you I loved you -- but I don't know if you love me. Many times I think you only want me for my money. I remember you said to me 100 times, 'Buy me a television'."

BESOTTED OF OXFORD wrote, "Darling, my time in Bangkok was made so wonderful by meeting you. And although we met in odd circumstances, I had the best time I ever had abroad. Indeed, we had trouble with the language barrier, but our relationship was one of a far deeper meaning."

But passion can make men lose their grip on reality. "Hello, my mosquito. I must ask for your help. Can you tell me what I have to do if I were to come out to Bangkok to be a Tuk Tuk driver? I am serious because that is my biggest dream in the world." A Tuk Tuk is a three-wheeler taxi, and the reward for driving one through the most polluted streets in the world is less than three British pounds a day.

Love can also lead to loss.

"BELOVED, As I write this letter to you, my heart is so heavy with a very deep sadness. The decision I have made makes me so unbearably unhappy and sad.

"I can't send you any more money and believe me, it hurts when I say this. The reason is I have financial problems. I've given my ex-wife all my property with the divorce settlement, and I have to support my second son -- he can't get work at the moment.

"There is no way I am able to bring you and our daughter here to live with me."

And with those words, the love affair between a middle-aged British man and Thai bar girl ended. He lost money and his wife. She found someone else to finance her.

"Often there's no initial pressure for money," says Dr. Santasombat, a Thai associate professor of sociology and anthropology. "Then a Western man will be asked for a buffalo to help support her family."

"DARLING, I hope you received the money. I miss little things about you, like eating fried rice and you hitting me. It's nice to know there's somebody out there in the world that really cares about me. London is a big city. I do not like any girls as much as my little Thai girl."

These flings can leave a lasting impression on some men.

"Unattractive and quite lonely men go to Thailand looking for sex and often find love as well," says Dr. Santasombat.

CULTURE SHOCK confusion often results when East meets West in these circumstances. "The girl who came to see me at the Nana Hotel..." wrote one man, "I did not know she was a hermaphrodite. When somebody told me, I decided not to see him/her again. I'm coming back to Bangkok soon. Please answer me. Many kisses, your lover."

And mistakes can be hard to sort out. "I must give you an honest explanation of what was going on in my room last night. When you kissed me goodbye, I thought you were saying goodbye forever. I began to cry because I felt bad. I wanted to talk to someone, the only person was that other girl. So I phoned her to come to my room and comfort me. She slept on my bed, but I did not make love to her. I am to blame darling, not you."

"Men don't always realize the girls are, in the main, only seeking cash," says Dr. Santasombat, which can complicate things.

"Darling, why do you write to say you are expecting my baby in two months time? We only met two and a half months ago. I think about you, but I'm not happy."

Thai women seem passive, but are capable of fighting back.

The sweetness of her earlier letters turned sour when this Thai girl wrote to the lover who dumped her: "To you Pig Face, you flash. Not hero. How are you? I'm not broken heart. I don't care you. No want you. Thai lady not want you too. You not man. I am no problem and not care. You dead. Very bad man."

Wives back home are rarely understanding either. "Darling, I told my wife about you. Now I am all by myself."

And despite the AIDS scare, men can't resist the allure of girls.

-- London's News of the World Sunday Magazine

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Ice Magazine, England:

Bangkok Bar Girls: The Hookers, the Johns, the Bar Managers in Asia's Hottest City

"Hello My Big Big Honey!"

Bangkok's Patpong Road, the centre of sex tourism in the Far East, a jewelled street lined with bars where girls fire darts from their pussies and smoke cigarettes with both sets of lips, a neon-lit red light district where simple country girls swiftly become experienced hustlers, adding to the 250,000 Thais selling themselves daily.

Can true love really be found among the endless hustling, howling touts, prowling transvestites, VD clinics and head-pounding music?

Many Bangkok girls regard love as an occupational hazard, along with drug abuse, family rejection, unwanted pregnancy, theft, betrayal, AIDS and police harassment.

Health workers already speculate there is a 50-50 chance for a prostitute to become infected with HIV after working for six months.

Many of the girls have children and families to support and wind up on the strip taking speed to keep their weight down, pretending they are only waitresses to maintain family honour while being exposed to the luxury and mind-expanding ideas of the West through their clients.

Caught up in the dream, shy men who can't get dates at home spend an idyllic few days falling in love with some fragile beauty and promise them a new life.

But only 15-20 per cent will ever see their Oriental flower again, much less find happiness with them.

These are the stories of the bar girls, the mama-sans, the bar owners and the johns (the following are excerpts from "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews):



...A group of middle-aged Americans are watching a naked fire-eating bar girl finish her pyrotechnics.

"I wouldn't want to kiss her, or get a blowjob from her, after all that fire."

His American pal replies, "Well, it might disinfect whatever is in there."

He looks for a friend.

"Where's his squeeze?"

"I don't know. Maybe he bought her out."

"Maybe they're grunting in a short-time hotel."

"...This is Bangkok, whoredom with a heart," a sloshed, elderly British man interrupts.

"Where else can an old man go to be with a beautiful 20-year-old girl? Last night I was charitable. I supported a Bangkok orphan. Do they love it? Why not?" he adds, laughing. "I pay them enough."


The Lovers


"Dear Little Darling, It seems so long since I saw you last, and every day I want to take a plane to see you, but I have too much work in Belgium and I cannot come.

I am living here with my girlfriend, but I think of you all the time and I don't want her, I want you! I wanted to send some money to Bank but it is very difficult, so I put in this letter some money. I would like to send you more so you don't have to work much. I know you don't like to receive money from me but it is better from me than from someone else.

I am not the best man on Earth, but if I had been a very good man, I would not have met you! So I am very happy to know you and I hope you will wait for me.

I LOVE YOU VERY VERY MUCH AND CARE MORE ABOUT YOU THAN ANY OTHER GIRL -- TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF UNTIL I CAN TAKE CARE OF YOU."




"I have bought a motorcycle for 225 British pounds and am working hard. The money is OK but I want more money. I want to be a very rich man. This year I think I will start my own business. When I am rich I will buy you a helicopter and BMW car.

Darling, when we stayed together I loved you -- but I don't know if you love me. Many times I think you only want me for my money. I remember you say to me 100 times, 'Buy me television'. Even when you came with me to the airport you said to me many times 'Give me money.'"




"You didn't cry too long after we said goodbye. In fact I was trying very, very hard to keep my tears back, and after you left I was crying.

My family all like the photos of Thailand and all think you're very beautiful. The only ones I didn't show them were the ones at Pattaya (mind you, I showed my brother) with you sitting on my head on the beach, and on my cock on the bed!"




"Oh my only one, you know I only wish the best for you and I will always work the hardest to make it so, until my latest breath. Please do not be angry with me because it hurts me so bad I cannot tell. You are my only hope, the only person I can live and fight for. It is true, my love: if it was not for you, I would feel a very old and tired man, a useless person, and would eventually give up everything and let myself die. I have nobody else than you. Please, my love, do not forget me. Please forgive my sins, my clumsiness and my weakness. Please love me a little."


The Bar Girls


...'Noy' shares her two room flat with seven people including her mother and sister's family. She's 27.

"All letters be sweet. One German write, also he do send money. He very good. Other man forget about me because just like to make letter and after never heard about again.

I believe his letters about future. If I marry I want to stay Thailand because have too much to take care. My family. My mother, my son. The town of my boyfriend is not in the city and is very boring, like in the village.

I worked Patpong but I don't like. I don't like show people my body in go-go bar. When I dance, I have to be drunk first so I not shy to do it.

A lot of farang ask why because they never give mother money. But all Thai people, tradition when mother get old we have to give back. Two, three years she know my working. She can say nothing. How she can say? First she feel not good. She think why, why you have to go this way? Always man say to the girl, 'Love you,' but when he going back he forget."


'Ang' is 23, short, poised and tough-looking.


"I start work in Patpong four years ago. Flash Bar. I fall in love with farang, this second time. First time New Zealand man. He with me for one year. We break because he take me to school for learning haircut but he don't trust me.

If Thai boyfriend is good and take care of girl, Thailand not be full of prostitutes. But they have baby and not take care, not get married. Somebody not want marry girl second time if she not virgin.

If don't take smack, don't take a drink, don't have Thai boyfriend to look after, then make good money. I try to kill me second time, last year, because my boyfriend he go back Europe for nearly four months. Tell me about the place he living no telephone number. One day, I want to talk to him. I feel lonely. I call his mother to get his number. Then I call his apartment. A woman answer. She ask, 'Who are you?' I told the farang girl, 'Ask the boy, he know very well.' Boyfriend say how I know his telephone number? He say he call me back tomorrow. Next day he call me, we fight. He told me story. Lady from Denmark no find a place to live, sleep on his floor..."


A Bar Owner


...He is a 54-year-old American Vet. After working as a detective in the USA he moved back to Thailand and swore never to return.

"I've been through 700 to 800 girls in five years. I've had maybe 10 marriages...of those, maybe three successful relationships.

Customers in Bangkok are very demanding. Every time, you gotta come up with something new. This is the only bar in the world where you can buy pussy hair." (He displays a keychain attached to a nose-sized teardrop of clear plastic. Inside are scores of very short, black hairs.)

"To hire girls I went up country where I did intelligence work and I knew the village elders. My girls go back home and tell other girls what a great bar this is, flashing the gold, and bring other girls back. Most country girls have never given head. I pull up a chair and say, 'Sit down. I want you to watch this video. If you do what this girl does in this video, you'll make good money.'

Some customers want a girl passive, sweet, innocent. Some customers want a girl aggressive, who knows how to get him off. What they mostly ask is, 'Will she take it up the ass?'

My girls don't like Germans, say they stink. Americans and Canadians are fairly straight. If an Italian wants a girl, we ask for the money up front. Japanese pay well, but the girls complain that the Japs' dicks are small. Most of these girls like a big dick. And can take a big dick. She may weigh 35 kilos, and you can put your hands around her, but she likes them big.

When a guy goes back home with a Thai girl, she experiences culture shock. Her diet is changed, the weather is different. She's isolated and dependent on this one individual. How can he expect her to be like she was at home? Thai girls just take the guy onboard as a meal ticket. Some guys, I have to tell them, 'You can take the girl out of a bar, but you can't take the bar out of the girl. She loves your money. She's a bar girl.'


Bar Girl Tricks

Pussy darts and ping pong with bats


...On stage, girls use their vaginas to smoke cigarettes, which invariably repulses all who see it and is apparently gross to the girls as well. The naked performers stress they do it only for the extra money the act can earn from tourists, though not many people seem to want the show. Other inserts include a felt-tip pen in a squat above a piece of paper, so a girl can swing her hips and draw a happy face with a witty greeting.

Other gimmicks include 'pussy darts' -- a thick sewing needle, taped to protrude from a paper cone. After loading the dart inside herself, the girl squats backward on stage and positions her pelvis at a target -- usually a balloon. With a powerful pump of her thighs, she blasts the dart with such force and accuracy that it usually arcs across the bar and pops the balloon.

Some girls exert similar muscles to play toy horns in recognizable melodies. Or, if especially well-coordinated, 'Ping-Pong Without a Paddle.' Naked girls use their vaginas to catch and shoot -- back and forth -- ping-pong balls."

-- Ice Magazine, England

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The South China Sunday Morning Post:

Sex Across the East-West Divide

For many men, these dangerous Thai liaisons are no laughing matter. They become obsessed and cannot let go.

"Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews is a collective scream of longing, loneliness, despair and delusion.

"I can write about my heart, I can write about my soul, but I think it's not important for you. I cry when I think you with another man," says one.

Another: "Please do not be angry with me because it hurts me so bad. you are my only hope, the only person I can live and fight for."

Dr. Yos Santasombat, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology, has warned that thrill-seeking tourists are crossing a cultural minefield.

The concept of love, and what people do for love, is completely different for these working girls, he says. There is a very fuzzy line between money and love. Material dependence can mean some sort of emotional attachment on the part of the girl herself.

The problem of meaning can continue to bother him for many years to come: does she want him for his money or for himself?

-- The South China Sunday Morning Post, Hong Kong

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The Edmonton Sun:

Book Makes Honey

"Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews zooms to the top of Asian best-seller lists.

Poignant and humorous -- "I'd be your dog, just to be allowed to look up at you," or "May your love life be positive and your blood tests negative" -- has hit a nerve in Southeast Asia.

-- The Edmonton Sun, Canada

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Budapest Week:

All Over the Place

"Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews is a collection of love letters to bar girls in the Patpong area of Bangkok. "Hello My Big Big Honey!" includes interviews with the girls, and comments from an associate professor, as well as others in the know. This book is essential reading for anybody who wants to try and understand the attraction Asian women have to European men. Talking to one bar owner, out of 450 in Patong beach, I was amazed that over 30 of his girls have married and moved away from Thailand in the five years he has had the bar.

Returning to the icy reality of Central Europe was difficult...

-- Budapest Week, Hungary

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Bangkok Inside Out:

We won't waste your time discussing its [Patpong's] fascinating history, intriguing social undercurrents or the sad stories of the women who work here.

Enough writers have conducted comprehensive "research" on the place and produced an "interesting" body of work on the topic.

Our favorite is the timeless classic, "Hello My Big Big Honey!"

-- Bangkok Inside Out, by Daniel Ziv and Guy Sharett

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Jerry Stahl:

Romance, pathos, despair...all these and more human frailties are on parade in the incredible, weirdly moving, sometimes pathetic and utterly unputdownable collection of love letters from customers to Bangkok bar girls.

"Darling," writes one love-struck Brit to his wanton B-girl, "I went to see my doctor today, and he said I may have a very slight infection (non-specific urethritis)...I care for you very much and I do not want you to have problems with an infection of your vagina..."

At the core of this amazing document are the interviews with the bar girls themselves, whose attitudes toward their clients range from the rankist capitalist contempt to the most tender compassion.

Witness this sample from a 29-year-old veteran wearing bright white lingerie inside a Patpong bar. Question: Do you ever say to the men that you love them? Answer: "I say, 'Love! Love! Love! But not. I feel nothing. I say 'love,' but in my heart, nothing." ..."Hello My Big Big Honey!" is truly one of the strangest and most telling documents of our time.

-- Jerry Stahl's first book, the dope fiend memoir Permanent Midnight, was made into a movie starring Ben Stiller. His 1999 novel, Perv -- A Love Story is now available in paperback. His latest novel, Plain Clothes Naked (William Morrow), was recently released.

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Nancy Chandler's Tips on Traveling in Thailand:

For Those Intrigued by the Nightlife

Check out "Hello My Big Big Honey!"

An enlightening read proving many Thai women are much more intelligent than the foreign men who seek them out!

-- Nancy Chandler's Tips on Traveling in Thailand

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Motionsickness Magazine:

Rather than being titillating, the letters collected in "Hello My Big Big Honey!" break through the economic relationship to the often profound loneliness that motivates many of these men, and the belief that they may have purchased not just a meaningless night of sex but entered into a relationship, as well as the patience and stoicism of the women...

Perhaps surprisingly, the fantasies are not solely on the men's side.

Many bar girls admit to carrying a torch for one or more of their long-term clients, and hope for a marriage that would take them away from the job they have.

In fact, the interviews with Thai bar girls and bar owners suggest that up to one in ten does marry a former client -- a number large enough to keep others' hopes alive...

-- Motionsickness Magazine

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Netsurfer Digest:

This very funny and at times poignant book reveals the love pangs of farang "boyfriends" who write love letters to their beloved Thai bar girls.

Journalists Walker and Ehrlich interviewed the girls and got their hands on a cache of those love letters.

What they reveal is a complex interplay of ego, loneliness, lust, love, a loose grip on reality, and cold calculation on both sides of the correspondence.

This is a very intimate portrait of the Thai prostitution industry from an unlikely perspective, informative as well as entertaining, and a bestseller in Asia.

-- Netsurfer Digest

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Advice to guys who are in love already, or are coming here to look for it:

There is a lot of propaganda about Thai women, all aimed at getting you to feel comfy with the idea of paying for sex.

To balance that I would recommend you read a book called "Hello My Big Big Honey!" before you get here or after you return home from your lover and start to worry.

It is a quite cynical book in many ways, perhaps the opposite type of propaganda, but there is so much crap written about the scene that it is better to get a balance and this book helps you understand the other side of things better.

-- The Fab and Funky Guide to Phuket

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If prostitution is just a little bit more than you bargained for, but you're still looking for an interesting time, pick up a book called "Hello My Big Big Honey!" It offers a novel take on the go-go bar scene and the girls who populate it, along with a revealing compilation of love letters to Bangkok bar girls from their admirers -- with interviews by Dave Walker and Richard S. Ehrlich. It's sad and funny all at once, and it's definitely worth a glance.

-- Charged: Extreme Leisure

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This is a poignant and touching book that anyone who is considering a relationship with a Thai lady should read...It is called "Hello My Big Big Honey!" which contains letters between bar girls and their customers and also interviews and comments.

-- Pattaya4U.com

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That there is prostitution in Thailand is a fact. I want to mention one book about the subject, because it really is special. The title is "Hello My Big Big Honey!" and it consists of love letters written by former "clients" to Thai prostitutes as well as interviews with some of the girls. This give you an impression of men making themselves think they should "save" these girls. If you are looking for 'juicy stories,' don't buy this book. It is a sad reality that is shown to you.

-- http://www.hasekamp.net/books.htm

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This book contains a collection of various "love letters" between Thai bargirls and their "boyfriends" and also interviews with the bargirls.

The letters reveal the unique characteristics of prostitution in Thailand and the various fuzzy shades of Thai-farang relationships lying between pure love and paid service.

Though bargirls are not the most respectable people in Thailand, the money culture demonstrated in their letters does prevail in every level of Thai society.

-- Knapsack on My Back

www.knapsack.net

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Spectator:

Chasing the Dream Girls of Bangkok: "Hello My Big Big Honey!" is, all in all, a good read.

It's also a useful book, particularly for those parties curious about this neon-lit sex world of Thailand, as well as readers intent on eventually visiting this Southeast Asian capital of nocturnal lust. Not only through these love letters, but -- even more strikingly -- through poignant interviews with bar girls, bar owners, and other peripheral agents involved with the Bangkok sex scene, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" offers an engagingly insightful -- frequently far from 'black-and-white' -- look at the foreign men and the bar-room hookers with whom they've fallen in both love and lust...

The love letters in "Hello My Big Big Honey!" are similarly eclectic in terms of the composers' ages and nationalities. There are letters from foreign men (referred to in Thai as 'farang') who are young and old (from early 20s to late 60s), living in New Zealand, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Korea, Australia, and America. And what I found immensely satisfying about these letters was the genuine sensitivity that the farang frequently expressed towards Bangkok bar hookers. The guys show concern about the ladies possibly contracting AIDS. Anger towards tricks who might force the ladies into having sex without using a condom. Worry about these bar girls' families, to whom the latter typically show great devotion...

for the most part, the gents are a well-meaning lot, successfully challenging the stereotype of the sleazy john But whom exactly is it that these guys are going so goo-goo gah-gah over? A photo caption in Hello My Big Big Honey perfectly captures the magnetism of the typical Thai prostitute: They emit 'a lure of hilarity, raunch and innocence.' And not necessarily in that order...

I can definitely see why some guys would have a hard time forgetting these vixens. And, indeed, I can see why they'd begin writing them letters to stay in touch, before their inevitable or indeterminate return to the Land of Smiles...

"Hello My Big Big Honey!" is quite funny, too, despite its heavy subject matter. Many of the farang [foreign men], the hookers, and bar owners really open up."

"Hello My Big Big Honey!" is truly helpful and frequently entertaining...

-- Spectator magazine, Berkeley, California

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Subject: big honey on the hangover guide.

I bought myself your book in Hua Hin in the bookshop in march this year.

Great letters, great interviews!

Congratulations for your success back home in the states.

You guys get something like 2000 page views a month on the guide,

www.snapoo.com/out/th/1_13606.html


Maybe we can have a drink someday in BKK. I travel with my wife she's a french/senegalese artist and also in love with thailand.

I feel tired, need thai food, no fruits here, mai ahan taleh.


chock dee

knut

a short answer makes the small elefant happy :-))

THE GLOBAL HANGOVER GUIDE

the best bars worldwide

www.snapoo.com


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"Hello My Big Big Honey!" is also on the recommended reading lists of:

International Wife Finders: Ladies from Asia and Pacifica

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"Hello My Big Big Honey!"

Bist du dabei dich zu verlieben? Willst du eine Thai-Lady heiraten? Dann bist du nicht mehr zu retten! Vielleicht aber doch, wenn du dieses Buch aufmerksam liest.

Die Autoren haben Briefe gesammelt, die Maenner verschiedener Nationalitaeten Thailaenderinnen geschrieben haben, deine Kumpel sozusagen. Diese Briefe werden ergaenzt durch Interviews, die eine langjaehrige Uebersetzerin mit den Adressantinnen gefuehrt hat.

... ein Freudianisches Sprudelbecken sexueller Phantasien und Frustrationen...

-- Far Eastern Economic Review

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to read a long, in-depth book review, click on:

Roving Insight Magazine, book review by Marc Richard and Loreen Neville

(this link is not active yet)

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Liefdesbrieven Aan Bangkokse Barmeisjes penthouse comix magazine, netherlands (in dutch)

(this link is not active yet)




The new, expanded 252-page American edition, incuding 25 color photos of

"Hello My Big Big Honey!"

Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews

ISBN 0867194731


can be ordered through any local bookshop or Internet bookseller, including Amazon.com for delivery worldwide.






click *here*

for your free 20-page excerpt and six photographs from

the non-fiction book of documentary journalism titled:


"Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews


http://www.oocities.org/nonfictionbook/hellomybigbighoneyfree.html




readers' comments

you love the book? you hate the book? read some random rants, raves and incoming letters to the authors about "hello my big big honey!" here [click anywhere here to enter the free interactive *readers' comments* zone] www.oocities.org/nonfictionbook/interactive.html




A light-hearted look at
how we researched "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews

(this article originally appeared in the
Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand's *Dateline* magazine.)