Prostitutes in Kathmandu

[Lars]

The Swedish national radio is usually quite serious and accurate in its
reporting. Today however they have been going on in the news about how
sex tourists lately have been flocking to Nepal partly because there is a lot
of prostitution going on in Kathmandu. They say there are more than a
hundred such bars in Kathmandu.

I have never seen anything such, and had hoped I never would.

What is your experience in this sad matter?

[Spaceman347]

On my last visit, walking around Thamel at night on my own and I had a tout approach me; "hashish? girls?" I just shook my head and kept walking

[julia]

Erggh, it obviously goes on, but hopefully not to that degree, that would be very sad.

[Escher]

On a few occasions when I have gone for night out in less touristy places in Kathmandu - away from Thamel and the like, with Nepali friends later at night - it has been obvious that things were going on. Once we went to a dancing bar which was very tame by western standards. The girls dancing were showing no bare flesh and were covered from neck to ankle and dancing in a bollywood, non-provocative fashion but it wasn't traditional Nepali dancing. It was full up with fat, loaded Nepali business men and you could sense what the place was a front for. I didn't like the place at all but it left me with the sense that there was plenty of that stuff going on amongst a certain ilk of seedy Kathmandu-ites.

[RRainey]

It is a problem. I am planning on raising money for http://www.himalayan-foundation.org/live/project/education instead of the usual fund raiser I do at the end of the year. I was talking to a rep of the foundation and its a big problem. I also asked about Nepal and She said it is a growing indusrty.

Look under Rural education health services trust on my link.

RR

[nepaliheart]

To all nepal lovers,

I can see that prostitution is happening in thamel area too ..I have tried walking into a massage parlour to look for decent massage ..So I saw a group of girls sitting in the parlour waiting for their clients ..From my point of view, I dun think that they are professionally trained and their dressing is not too right ....I came out of the place without a massage but later spoke to some nepalese guys, they told me that sometimes they are being offered 'extra' services ....And to make matters worst, there are many chinese in thamel area as well ..These chinese are mainly businessmen (not from the big cities) with chinese girls behaving too 'intimately' in the public places ...

Let's hope our beloved place will not be so badly polluted ...

[7days]

Apologies for not replying to posts for a long time.Regards to all admin esp. Yakshaver.

I am a local resident of thamel and as mentioned prostitution here in kathmandu , mainly in thamel and at the bus stations have flourished.The dance bars.massage parlours and guest house and etc all have their own contacts.They hire call girls for such activity and i have also seen that they drug girls so that them become an addict and make them work extra hours.

It is an easy method of earning money.Also the positive side is that 100 and more people have got employment opportunity from this business.

The local authorities know crystal clear about this issue but they are just concerned to earn more commisions that they get from such places.

I hope we all will someday eradicate this kind of business for a better place to live.

[Per]

There has always been prostitution in Nepal. Indeed, it has been common among women of certain castes. Mostly they have been catering to Indians and locals. Some Indians, especially truck drivers, have the attitudes of sex tourists. Not much of it that has been visible to foreigners. The only place where it has been really obvious, except possibly to blind people, has been Mugling.

In traditional codes westerners are pretty low. Official policy, if there was any, was to discourage contacts between foreign men and local women. Sex tourism was totally out of the question. All this may have changed with the collapse of traditional values.

Still I doubt that the nepalese goverment will ever tolerate sex tourism from the west, that Kathmandu will ever be filled with the kind of total losers that populate Pattaya and certain other spots in South East Asia.

[yakshaver]

Interesting stuff. One conversation I had with a Thamel tout was quite funny, but you had to be there... I have reported it on this site in the past, so it may be boring...
The English language skills of the guy were not good, which lead to the funny part.
It went something like this, with the crescendo in the items offered, paralleled with a softening of the voice volume:

- Tiger Balm sir?
- No thank you.
- Khukuri knife sir?
- No thank you.
- Hash sir?
- No.
- Girls sir?
When it came to this, his pronunciation was sounding more like "calls sir?", so I said:
- Sorry?
- Calls sir?
- What?
- Calls sir?
- I don't understand...
- Calls, you know (he said making an annoyed lurid gesture meant for stupid people who don't get it) calls, calls....
As I got it I started laughing reasonably loudly, more at my own slow-wittedness than anything else. As he was trying to be discrete I guess, this made him unconfortable, so he laughed briefly just to humour me, then left in a hurry.

But this was the only incident of this kind. I agree with Per, KTM is a long way from becoming some sex travel destination, thankfully. Like and third world country, it is not imune to this, and I am sure there has been some proliferation of certaing types of bars. However it is not intrusive, like in Shanghai, for example. Not even in Thamel. That was the only time I got approached and it was about 7 years ago. Maybe they look at my white hair, and mistake me for some serious person. Fools!

[Lars]

I agree with Per, KTM is a long way from becoming some sex travel destination, thankfully.
Like any third world country, it is not immune to this, and I am sure there
has been some proliferation of certain types of bars.
I think it is very unfortunate when media blows occasional incidences up like
this. There is a real risk that it will become self fulfilling.

Johns will go there looking, someone will ask "Hey John, what are you
looking for?"

[a1jbg]

Lars, please do not discriminate against Johns, especially old Johns!

Regards

John

[Michael Sunkist]

KTM in the 70's you couldn't even buy porn let alone hookers. Alcohol was not available unless you went to the slum district of Thamel and hit the chang shops. Thamel today is like Disneyland here in America. Unfortunately many Nepali women get enticed to go to India to work and get forced into prostitution and when they come back to Nepal they continue their new job skills. Ahhh, for the good ol' days, when the Monkey Temple and Bodna were Tibetan refugee camps, Durbar and Pashapati was free to wander any time of day and hash smoking on the stupas was the norm with no hassle from the police. Happy trails

[yakshaver]

KTM in the 70's you couldn't even buy porn let alone hookers. Alcohol was not available unless you went to the slum district of Thamel and hit the chang shops. Thamel today is like Disneyland here in America. Unfortunately many Nepali women get enticed to go to India to work and get forced into prostitution and when they come back to Nepal they continue their new job skills. Ahhh, for the good ol' days, when the Monkey Temple and Bodna were Tibetan refugee camps, Durbar and Pashapati was free to wander any time of day and hash smoking on the stupas was the norm with no hassle from the police. Happy trails

Oh Michael, reading your post makes me feel so nostalgic... I am about to break into some cheezy song like Summer of 69, or Fernando...

People going to Nepal for the first time (and I had seven with me from 5 countries and three continents 3 months ago) love Kathmandu, Thamel and Nepal in general, for what it is and for what they see now. I had the oportunity to observe Nepal anew through their eyes. They absolutely loved it. So when my cynicism and nostalgia creep up at the commercialization of Thamel, the number of touts and beggars on the stairs to Swayambu, etc, I get to talk to some first timer, and some of those "good ol'days" thoughs leave me, for a fresher and more optimistic view.

[Michael Sunkist]

Ha Yakshaver, it's good to hear from someone who remembers the good ol' days, when the pigs would wander out of pig alley to clean up all the crap from people shitting in the streets. Very few cars, one could walk the streets easily. You could stay in Nepal for 11 months before they booted you out to hang somewhere else in Asia so you could come back with a fresh visa for another 11 months. I had a house at the base of Swayambu across from the military base for $50.00 a month (4 bedrooms) and a garden of ganja to pass the time away with all the Tibetan refugees who lived at the top of the hill. Nepal today is still neat in the hills. You all can keep KTM, I stay there long enough to get arrangements together. Just out of curiousity, do you know what happened to the Panorama Hotel? They used to have one of the few TV's in Durbar, and the lobby would fill with locals to watch this strange occurance. I look for it every time I come to KTM but have been unable to refind it. Ahhh, the fond memories of that place. Happy trails

[narba]

it is realy sad news to heard that there are alot of prosittutes hanging around thamel massage centre.

[jackfriday]

Extra massage services ? Well .Long as they dont let it get out of hand(no pun intended)

[Suginami]

KTM is a city and as such it has a bit of everything. No surprises there.

[andrees]

KTM in the 70's . Happy trails
Do you have any Photos from this time?
Andrées

[Per]

KTM in the 70's you couldn't even buy porn let alone hookers. Alcohol was not available unless you went to the slum district of Thamel and hit the chang shops.

That is not correct. There were quite a few hookers around town. As for alcohol it was utterly available, not least because the Newars are a drinking people, which is expressed in many ways not least ritually and in the worship of Ganesh the God of fermentation among other things. Virtually all Newars drink ayela and thon, rakshi and chang in Nepalese, and very few women do not have the skill to distill ayela or brew thon. In fact many go to worship Ganesh a certain day every year so they can make good alcohol.


Ahhh, for the good ol' days, when the Monkey Temple and Bodna were Tibetan refugee camps,

I suppose the Monkey Temple refers to Swayambhunath, the self existent one. I am afraid it was not a Tibetan temple nor is it dedicated to monkeys. It is mainly a Newari shrine devoted to Swayambhu. The priests were and still are Vajracharya.

There is also a small temple run by Lamas according to the Tibetan tradition, but you can hardly refer to it as a refuge camp. Some of the Tibetan looking people you see in tents nearby are actually Nepalese tibetan speakers that come down for the winter. Boudhanath though was a center for Tibetan refugees.