The Night Market

I returned to the hotel dripping with sweat to find Debbie feeling better, and after a dip in the hotel pool and a long nap we set out for the Night Market in our neighborhood. It did not approach the Saturday Market in scale, but we did purchase a couple of things: a Pierre Cardin belt for four dollars and a pirated DVD of the new Simpson’s movie for three dollars. So much for my resolve. I would have bought a shirt as well if they’d had it in my size, and I’ve asked the girl who ran the stall to see if she can find me one and have it on hand when I get back on Friday. But the deeper we wandered into the Night Market the civility I had appreciated at the Saturday Market gave way, and vendors began calling out, “You like?” “I got legs you size!” “Watches, sir!?” “DVD sex for you?” And that’s when we began to notice that the storefronts opposite the stalls had names like Honey Club and Pretty Pussy, and hawkers began to flash cards at us listing the various sexual acts available inside while here and there the girls themselves stood outside the clubs in schoolgirl outfits while inside, as we glimpsed through the doorways, their sisters paraded up and down a stage in their underwear.
Then we noticed that the Europeans in the Night Market now consisted mostly of men, some accompanied by rather disabused Thai women, and while all that is to be deplored, the American men, I realized, were about my age, and some looked to be vets of the Viet Nam war that not only created this trade in the first place, but so damaged their own sexuality that they return here to relive their formative assignations with yet another generation of poor, exploited Indochinese girls. And so that war of forty years ago ripples on.