Sex Sells in Sin City

By LAWI WENG / MONG LA, SPECIAL REGION 4

Nowhere in culturally conservative Myanmar is it easier to find sex than in Mong La, a town on the country’s border with China with a reputation for the illicit. Dozens of prostitutes line two bridges in the center of town, scantily clad and freely distributing business cards that offer their bodies to passersby.

Potential customers pull up beside the women, and negotiations begin. Typically, these conversations take place in Chinese, the language used by most residents here. If a price is agreed to, it’s off to a room at one of a growing number of hotels in Mong La, part of an autonomous enclave in eastern Shan State known as Special Region 4.

While the sex industry exists in almost every part of the world, it is difficult to imagine a more open and flourishing trade than you will find here.

Along with the illegal gambling and animal trafficking that are also rampant here, Mong La’s sex industry primarily serves demand from China—which is also the source of many of the women selling their bodies here.

While China is frequently the destination for Myanmar victims of human trafficking, here in Mong La some Chinese sex workers have fallen prey to trafficking in the other direction. A 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province provided a major source of sex workers, according to an ethnic Shan woman who deals gold in Mong La. Much like Cyclone Nargis forced many Myanmar people into the sex trade, the devastation wrought by the Sichuan quake left women there vulnerable to exploitation.

Lured by promises of jobs in Mong La, many women have been trafficked across the porous border by Chinese businessmen.

“For a month, they did not put those girls to work. They let them stay at beauty salons, beautified them … and finally they agreed to work as sex workers,” the Shan woman said.

Just as they tolerate a steady stream of illegal Chinese entrants daily, local authorities appear unconcerned that these women, here without visas, are selling sex.

“They sell sex in public, but there is no problem for them. There is no action taken. They are free even though they are illegally staying here,” said U Min Thu, a Mong La resident.

A representative for the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), which governs Special Region 4, declined The Irrawaddy’s interview request.

Business cards offering photos and phone numbers are also slipped underneath hotel room doors. Some hotels are said to take money from women or their pimps to display photos of sex workers, and a phone number to call, in rooms where hoteliers elsewhere might hang a perfunctory scenic painting.

While most of the prostitutes are Chinese, the town does have at least one brothel offering Myanmar women. More discreetly than the women on the bridges, a dozen or so local women wait for customers inside a shop advertising “cold drinks” on a sign outside. They too find themselves servicing a largely Chinese clientele, and communication can be difficult—even negotiating a price sometimes ends in frustrated failure—but the trade is lucrative, one woman told The Irrawaddy.

Most of the women said that they came from Yangon, where the sex business is more discreet—and far less lucrative. Ma Khine, who only recently arrived from Myanmar’s biggest city, said that women in her industry could earn between 2,500 yuan (US$407) and 4,000 yuan per month in Mong La.

“I just arrived here two months ago,” she said, offering no comment on what she thought of the place. Perhaps she felt no need to; after all, Mong La’s appeal to women in her profession speaks for itself: “We can earn more money here than in Yangon.”