If you have ever spent any amount of time in Thailand then odds are that at one point or another you have come across a ladyboy. The name is explanatory in itself, but for those of you who still live in your Westernized bubble, a ladyboy is a male to female transgender person or an effeminate gay male. The ladyboys in Thailand look so perfectly feminine that it is often hard to tell the difference between a Thai lady and a ladyboy. Playing the at-first-glance game "Is She a Lady or Ladyboy" is much like at-first-glance game "Is He Gay or European," where the differences are slight and the guesser is usually wrong.
Before coming to Southeast Asia I had heard funny stories of straight men being fooled into going home with ladyboys; typical men overlooking subtle hints such as big feet, broad shoulders and unusually deep voices and instead diverting their eyes straight to attractive facial features, perfect make-up, teeny waists and surgically enhanced breasts. It was only when I sat down at my first Thai Bar in Koh Chang back in December that I really began to understand how hard it is to tell the difference.
Lucky for me I got into a conversation with a man at that same bar who offered me his knowledge and expertise on the subject. He was your typical fifty-something chain-smoking divorced man with an ordinary name who came to Thailand looking to start a new life. He had been living in Thailand for the last five years or so and was on vacation in Koh Chang with his (much?) younger Thai girlfriend.
(Side note: If I were to tell you this story in person he would have an English-ey slash Borat-ish sounding accent because that is how all my accents end up sounding, even though I'm pretty sure he was Swedish...Dutch?)
"There are a few key things that give a ladyboy away." As he spoke, his Marlboro Light dangled expertly on his bottom lip in such a way that would give only the veteran smokers away. I remember this detail only because I can't remember what he looked like due to the cloud of smoke that permanently enveloped his face.
He then proceeded to point out a tall beautiful woman dancing on the bar next to us. She was one of those girls who make the rest of us look bad and whom I secretly hated.
"She is ladyboy, I know. First she has perfect hair and way too much make-up." Which is a wonder because in the heat I had managed to sweat off any trace of make-up I had on and my hair had that wet dog look. Did she have her sweat glands removed when she got those DD implants? Witchcraft.
"Second, she is wearing a chunky necklace to hide her adams apple."
"Third, she still has the male gene floating around there somewhere so she can't dance."
So in my journal I wrote, Ladyboy: a lot of make up, big necklace, bad dancer. Right... These tips turned out to be no help at all to me because I have been back to Thailand four times since then and I still can't tell the difference. Not that it matters because I think that is the point, and bottom line, lady or ladyboy she is still beautiful.
On my last trip to Thailand, my best friend Chris and I traveled to Phuket, where ladyboy's rule the night. On one of our many epic nights out, we began our evening at a 5-star restaurant on the beach and then all of a sudden we were sitting in the VIP seats at Simon Cabaret, a famous drag-queen show in Thailand. We were seated in between a loud Russian gay couple and a couple of Japanese business men. Perfect. Needless to say it was one of the strangest experiences of our lives because in a normal drag show you can actually tell that they are queens but in this show... hard to tell.
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| Chris with Ms. Showgirl and Ms. GaGa (both ladyboys.) |
