the third sex

In the early days of ladyboy photography, a decade or so ago, there were very few websites where the pictures could be posted. There were also very few ladyboy bars in Bangkok, and so the photographers, myself included, tended to get most of their models from the same sources. The best-looking girls would therefore appear on two or three sites, and they became famous.

One of the best known, and one of my own personal favourites, was Yo. She worked in the Crack House and was only just 18 when I met her. I was the first photographer to take her picture, and I took several sets of her over the next year or so. She was a gorgeous little slip of a girl, quiet and shy, and with a delicate face and smooth coffee-brown skin. I was quite besotted with her.

Yo had one physical peculiarity, and I of course noticed it the first time I photographed her. When she went down on her elbows and knees so that I could photograph her bottom, there was a very deep dimple at the top of the crease between her cheeks. It was so deep that it was more like a hole, and you couldn’t see a base to it. This dimple was only visible when Yo’s bum cheeks were spread: when she was standing up or lying down there was no indication it was there.

When I was sitting at the screen going through that first set of Yo pictures I was puzzled by this strange little defect on an otherwise flawless body, and I was also unsure what to do about it on the pictures I had. To my mind, in the photographs it looked ugly. So I went painstakingly through the bum shots with Photoshop and cloned it out.

But other photographers followed me and they weren’t quite so squeamish. Yo’s dimple began to show up on the sites, and so in subsequent shoots I left it in. But I never did know what it was. I didn’t ask Yo. Somehow it would have seemed rude.

Over the Christmas holiday season I looked out a couple of pictures of Yo to illustrate one of the items on this blog, and the memory came back to me. Having some time on my hands I did a quick internet search, and I came up with the answer as to what this odd bottomless little dimple actually was.

It is called a pilonidal dimple, or sometimes a sacral dimple, as it is located above the sacrum, the bone at the end of the spine, at the very top of the crease between the buttocks. Pilonidal dimples are present at birth in about two percent of babies, apparently, and are usually harmless. Most are in fact just a dimple, a slight abnormality in the skin formation, although a few indicate there might be a problem with the spine or spinal chord.

Often it really is a shallow dimple, the very deep ones being relatively uncommon. But the holes are blind, only running through to the spinal canal in instances where there is a more serious defect.

So Yo was a rare case. And in all the years of photographing naked ladyboys I have only ever seen one other pilonidal dimple, and that was a very shallow one.

An unrelated fact about Yo, which I mention only because I have been thinking back to those times with great affection, is that she was hung like a horse. Despite her slight build she had a gorgeously long cock. She didn’t take hormones and she never had a problem shooting a load, although it was invariably the same: a single small splodge of cum that would land on the lower left-hand side of her belly, with a little more left dribbling over the pink glans.

The Crack House closed and Yo went somewhere else. I gradually lost track of her, and when I met up with her again after a few years she had had so much cosmetic surgery done to her face that I almost didn’t recognise her. I was shocked. And her lovely flat little boyish chest was now pumped up with a silicon job. I took a final set of her about five years ago, and then I lost contact with her again. I don’t know where she is now, but I certainly hope she is well and happy.

Sargent Shameless has recently unleashed himself upon Pattaya, and left a trail of sore ladyboy bottoms in his wake. Pausing for breath on his return, he penned me his thoughts on the scene there.

A couple of months ago I wrote about the changing go-go bar scene in Bangkok and my main point was that while the numbers and quality of women in the girlie bars are visibly declining from 10 years ago, the opposite holds truth for ladyboys, who are more plentiful and beautiful than ever and may well be the future of the Thai sex industry.

I would now like to share also my updated view on the Pattaya scene. I was there end-2010 and, like in Bangkok, there are more ladyboys than ever. I counted at least 12 all-ladyboy bars (Soi 6 alone has five!) while 10 years ago I knew of only two: Hi! Boss, which I considered Thailand’s top ladyboy bar in terms of raw talent, is now all but defunct with three sorry looking ladyboys hanging around the premises…and Limmatquai–Pattaya’s original all-ladyboy bar off Walking street–which has closed down!

Speaking of Walking Street, it could now aptly be renamed “Ladyboy Street.” Late one night, I counted over 50 ladyboys of all shapes and sizes, including a skinny Russian one that I detected amidst his lady-for-sale compatriots, and scores of cruising freelancing ladyboys can also be seen on Beach Road (the Captain says: The Sargent may be an old hand but you can’t be too careful with street pickups who may rob you in your sleep or worse…).

Also, so many of the beer bars now have several ladyboys mixed in with their lady staff. These ladyboys tend to be the sweeter type, who are afraid to be around rough ladyboys in all-ladyboy environments even if it means far less revenue for them. I have had great luck with such ladyboys.

I also saw a few ladyboys amidst the female staff plying their trade outside Pattaya’s ubiquitous massage parlours. Which means that you no longer have to be in the know (like me!) to know where to get a professional massage (with optional sex) performed by a ladyboy.

Even in nearby Jomtien, better known for the gay action, I spotted far more ladyboys, not to mention feminised boys, than I remembered from previous visits.

In line with this expanding ladyboy trend, Pattaya also has more boy go-go bars, and other sorts of venues for gay activity, than ever. While 10 years ago Boyz Town was a self-contained gay enclave, the action now has spread to the two nearby Pattayaland sois, displacing all but a couple of the girlie bars in the process. In fact, the infamous Penthouse Hotel is now completely surrounded by gay action and it has opened its own ladyboy go-go bar; it should not be long before the in-house kittens are all of the three-legged variety. There is even a new gay go-go bar on Walking Street with the boys hanging outside in their white underwear for the Russian tourists to gawk…

What about the girl scene? Good question! There are still more girlie bars and beer joints than anyone could even begin to count. I noticed however that some of the girl bars that I patronised 10 years ago because of the choice and quality of their staff have gone downhill, or even closed. On the other hand, I visited new bars with gorgeous girls dancing, although not all were available for private sessions (a new for Thailand!). New, huge outdoor beer plazas have opened all over town, which makes me wonder if others have closed and the ladies moved or if they represent a net addition to Pattaya’s pussy count. Motorbiking around Pattaya I also spot many well staffed bars and go-gos in the inner, residential sois that used not to offer such sinful commerce.

In sum: Pattaya, unlike Bangkok, does not show signs of worsening prospects for action with girls, and, like Bangkok, it has more and sexier ladyboys than ever.

A member of the main site emailed me a few days ago, saying that a large number of models I photograph have foreskins that have not retracted even though they have an erection. Did I find, he asked, that in general the Thai penis has a tight foreskin?

It was a good question, and I know there are a lot of people out there who find this subject fascinating.

When I’m taking photographs and the model’s pants come down for the first time, a substantial number of them immediately have an erection. It’s an automatic response when exposing your cock for sexual action. More often than not, I find the foreskin does not roll back on its own. Sometimes the model will do it herself, but very often I take hold of her cock and see if I can ease it back myself.

I do this very, very gently. The last thing I want to do is to hurt anybody. And it does seem to me that, in general, the Thai cock does have a tight foreskin. Maybe it’s not too tight: just tight enough to prevent automatic retraction. Often however the skin simply cannot retract, and the glans peeps out with varying degrees of prominence.

Experts in this field aver that in general East Asian penises have tight foreskins, a condition known as phimosis, where the foreskin opening is too narrow to retract when erect. Any expertise I can claim to have on penises is related to the Thai version, and all I can say, having seen well over 1,000 ladyboy cocks up close and intimate, observing them in all their natural states from flaccid to erect to ejaculating to subsiding, is that probably there is no thing as an “average” Thai penis.


I would say that most of those I see have a small to medium-size glans and a fairly tight foreskin. There are more fully retractable foreskins than non-retractable, but the number of non-retractables is substantial.
I have seen a few cases where the condition is so pronounced that the glans is entirely non-visible, the foreskin forming a bobble even when the cock is fully erect, with the glans a visible bulge beneath the skin. In some instances the opening is angled away from the line of the penis by 45 degrees, giving an odd periscope effect. Interesting though this is, it is not to my mind attractive. If I owned one of those myself, I would certainly have opted for a snip.

Circumcision is almost never practiced in Thailand, except amongst the Moslem community, which forms about three or four percent of the total population. When I see a circumcised cock, it is enough of a rarity to make me pause for a close look, to see how expertly the job was done and to admire the novelty. So for those who have a degree of phimosis, it does not appear to be an issue.

I do not see cocks that appear to be suffering any hardship from having a non-retractable foreskin. No signs of puffiness or redness, no signs of discomfort or pain when the model is masturbating. No difficulty in reaching an orgasm, if one discounts the effect of hormones. Very few problems in the hygiene field, too. If someone does have difficulty (or can’t be bothered) in keeping clean, this becomes very apparent during the course of wanking, as little particles of smegma will get squeezed up from under the foreskin. But this very seldom happens.

So I can only assume that foreskin tightness is simply an accepted fact. Presumably Thai parents are the same as any other parents in watching out for the health of their offspring, and that a decision to circumcise would be taken by them during the childhood or adolescent stage, when a tight foreskin becomes apparent, rather than by the owner of the penis during early adulthood.

In ending, I would like to point out that when we say “Thai”, we are in fact talking about more than 30 different ethnic groupings. The largest are the Tai, usually regarded as the true Siamese and who originated from the southern Chinese region, the ethnic Chinese, and the Lao. There is also a large assimilation of Mon, Shan and Khmer, and there is the cocktail of influences from the South including Malay, Indian and Burmese. This has ensured a wide variety of cock shapes, sizes and colours, which helps to make this subject a fascinating one.