the third sex

A lady friend (yes,  a real one!) who hails from Buri Ram was telling me at the weekend how youngsters in her home province are becoming drawn into the ladyboy lifestyle. She says she knows of nippers of six or seven years old who are trying on girls’ clothing, and of those a couple of years older who are putting on makeup and wiggling around like proper little madames. By the time they are in their teens they are already veterans.

Why, why, why, I asked, repeating the question I have posed countless times. Why are so many Thai youngsters so eager to change their sex?

My friend pulled a face. “I don’t know,” she said.

Is it something in the water supply? A genetic fault running through the Thai nation? The Thai equivalent to becoming a footballer or rock star, and leaving your impoverished background behind you? 

What happens to them when they leave school, I asked. Do they come to Bangkok and attempt to work in the cabaret or the bars? For it has to be born in mind that Buri Ram, which is in the northeast and adjoining the Cambodia border, is one of the most impoverished provinces in Thailand.

“No,” she said. “A lot of them stay in Buri Ram. Get jobs as waitress or in beauty salon or department store. Many want man to look after them.”

I thought that one over. Buri Ram is an agricultural province, a region where the living is sometimes hard, and although you can never quantify these things I would not have thought it an obvious place to have a large gay population. The people there are of course mainly Thai but there is a significant population of Khmer descent, and a lot of mixed blood. In fact my friend herself is part Khmer. Not the kind of people you would imagine who are given to liberal viewpoints or decadent ways of living. This is country where every able pair of hands is needed, and where the male side of the family is regarded very much in the traditional peasant way.

So why are all these husky young farmhands and potential farmhands giving up their very traditional way of life to start putting on makeup and sashaying around in their sisters’ dresses long before they have even reached puberty?


“No work in Buri Ram,” said my friend. “Only hard work on farm, or easy work in restaurant or beauty salon. Young boy not want to be like father, work hard, drink too much, fight, never have any money. So become ladyboy instead.”

We in the West are familiar with teenage rebellion. In the East it is far less common. But although we grew our hair long in the 60s, and dressed in odd ways, and tried in as many ways as we could to upset our parents and the established order, we never did get around to changing our sex. In Thailand, it is a rebellion. You can even compare it to the rise of the Red Shirt movement. A rebellion against the established order. But what a strange one it is.

I was standing over a ladyboy yesterday afternoon, with my camera, watching her have  a really good, hard wank.  Try as she might, she couldn’t quite get there. 

“Oh! Cannot cum! But I want!”

She lay back and massaged her dick, which had become red and no doubt numb from all the pulling and yanking. I offered to give her a little remedial help (I’m kind and thoughtful in that way) and got down on my knees. Her dick, which had become floppy, immediately came up hard. She thrust her hips and suddenly I was savouring a mouthful of warm, nutty, salty cream.

Well, that was very nice, I said. But what about my photos?

She giggled. “If you can wait I can do one more time.”

So I went to make some tea for myself and poured a glass of water for my non-tea-drinking friend.

“You very nice man,” she said. I had to agree. “You have lady?” I had to admit I had a few. “You want me to come see you again? I can if you want.” 

I said sure, and got her to write down her mobile number. We carried on chatting for an hour or so, and then, looking at the clock, I asked if she was ready for another wank. The slang phrase in Thai is “chuk wow”, which actually means to fly a kite. Thai slang is very colourful.

“Yes, I ready now.”

So off we went again, and she pulled and grimaced and gritted her teeth, then stopped. 

“Touch me here,” she said, running a finger over her balls. I did as I was directed, and she pulled again.

“Oh, I sorry, I very slow!”

What can I do now, I asked her.

“Kiss me here.”

And she drew up her knees and indicated her cute little bum hole. I got back on my knees and applied my tongue to the neat little opening, making sure that I had a firm grip on my camera and keeping my finger on the shutter release so that the battery-saving timer didn’t power down.

“Oh! Now!” came a wail from somewhere above me, and I leapt to my feet and, with the camera still in shoot mode, I flashed off a series of pictures that caught the spurt beautifully.

That was hard work, wasn’t it, I said, as she lay back with a complacent expression on her face. I think you should pay me, instead of me pay you. 

“Maybe I charge you extra,” she said. “For give you good time.” Then she giggled. “I joking you!”

She was a nice girl. But do you see what a difficult job I have to do? 

A ladyboy friend whose bottom and cock I have been intimately acquainted with for several years called me during the week to say that she was back in her home province of Surin, near the Cambodia border, and would be away for at least a couple of months.

I was surprised she would be away so long, as she has a responsible job as a hairdresser at a beauty salon, but when I asked her what she was doing, all she would say was that she had to spend time with her family. So I didn’t think too much more about it until Sunday, when a friend of hers turned up to see me. Why is Dawan away for so long, I asked her.

“She go be monk!” 

Of course. Now I understood. All young Thai males enter the monkhood for a short period, and many of them do so during the rainy season, when they spend two or three months in the monastery. It is known as the Rains Retreat, and it’s one of Thailand’s most charming customs. The monks and novices stay within the temples rather than roaming the countryside, and the villagers and townsfolk ensure that food and other supplies are delivered to them. This is also the reason for the famous Candle Festival: huge candles are made at this time to ensure the temples have enough light during the three-month period, a time when the days are frequently dark with rain clouds.

My young friend, who is 22, had been persuaded by her parents that she should spend at least two months in the local monastery, for it is also a merit-making time for families.

“She have hair cut off!” said my visitor, and I realised why Dawan had been so shy about telling me what she was doing. She had had her hair and eyebrows shaved off, and was no longer the cute little ladyboy I knew, but instead she was a monk, dressed in saffron robes and with no real identity of her own. She had not wanted me to think of her in this way, preferring that I retained the ladyboy image.

I had to smile at this. She is actually quite boyish, having a trim body that manages without any surgical alteration or hormone ingestion to be both masculine and feminine at the same time. She has an awesomely sweet little bottom, a perfect shape, that I plough into on a regular basis. Her cute little dick is one of those that swerves to the side, and which delivers on cue a hot little spurt that goes down a treat. But I can visualise her as a boy, just about, and I would think she will integrate with temple life without too much of a problem.


How would I react if I saw her as a monk? I don’t know, but the removal of hair and eyebrows does nothing flattering to your appearance, and if I saw her by chance in the street in that guise, I quite probably wouldn’t recognise her.

Another thought occurred to me. She is going to be completely chaste for at least the next two months. Abbots are very aware of the temptations that are felt by sex-starved young men, and they take care to monitor the sleeping arrangements in the dormitories. So even if any of the other monks and novices do realise that in her normal life she is a very cute little ladyboy who loves to act the slut, they are not going to be able to do anything about it.

Yet another thought… so chaste and so sacrosanct are Buddhist monks, that they cannot be touched by a woman or even sit next to a woman. So how does this square with my little friend Dawan, usually so feminine in appearance, thought and deed? I shall wait with great interest for November and her return to Bangkok.

One of my regular ladyboy friends has just moved down to Phuket. I’m going to miss her. I’ve known her for about four years, since she was 18, and I have genuine liking and respect for her. A few months ago, another regular moved back to her home province. Again, I really miss her. She was ways sweet company, always there for me.

The world of ladyboys does not stay still for long. I was musing over the early ones I knew when I first started taking photographs, which was about 10 years ago. They have all, with a couple of exceptions, vanished. Some have gone overseas, some back to their home towns, some have had the operation and moved into the mainstream, putting their ladyboy years behind them.

Even those from five years ago have largely moved on. When I look back to the early galleries on this site, I see them how they were in their late teens or early twenties. Not how they would look now.

I get the occasional emails from people overseas, saying they are looking for a ladyboy for a long-term relationship. I reply as gently as I can that that might seem a good idea, assuming you find someone you like, but that the gorgeous sexual being of age 18 years is not going to stay that way for long.


Without wishing to sound unkind, ladyboys do not age well. Many who have the operation do go on to be attractive and successful women. But she will not be the person that you first fell for. Once you have spent a number of years amongst ladyboys you begin to realise just how transient they are. It is very easy to fall for someone in a serious way. As indeed I have on a few occasions over the years. But you have to be prepared for disappointment and even heartbreak, because it is not going to last.

Best just enjoy the moment, and when the inevitable day arrives, wish her all the luck in the world and try not to regret too much. 

On Sunday morning I was walking outside the commercial complex in which I live, and the maintenance crew were busy hosing down the public areas and cleaning them with buffer machines. This is done every week, because the complex is well-managed, and the water and soap and the cheery bunch of cleaners, always ready with a smile, are all part of the pleasant weekend ambience of the place.

Looking over at the work gang, I saw a familiar figure. She looked up from her mop and smiled at me. A few years ago she had arrived at my apartment, taken down her pants, and showed me a whopping big dick. I had happily photographed it, and she had gone away again. But in leaving she had made enquiries with the management office about any job vacancies there might be in the building, and had been offered the job of cleaner.

This she has carried out ever since, and I find it heartening that she has shown such a sense of responsibility and kept the job, rather than succumbing to the kind of lethargy into which so many ladyboys sink.

It is all too easy, I’m afraid, for a ladyboy to think that because she is making easy money she can relax and simply rely on turning the next trick to keep the revenue coming in. I had better point out that I am talking about about a certain class of ladyboy: many of them are career minded, responsible people. But you do get a lot who will sell themselves as often as they can, become totally oriented to night-time working and consequently hopeless in the daylight hours, start taking drugs and gambling, and before very long find themselves in the kind of bind that they cannot escape. Reduced energy, no money, fading looks…it doesn’t take long.

So my young friend outside the building is to be respected. No doubt she has her own personal reasons for working in a lowly job such as a cleaner: poor education, impoverished background, the need to support siblings at school, and so on. But I admired her initiative when she first asked about the job, and got it, and I hope she is managing to save some money for herself.


I had to smile, though, when I thought what a contradiction this young upcountry girl represents. On the surface she is a diligent, hardworking, female cleaner. But that afternoon when she came upstairs to my apartment and pulled out an impressive cock, and then lay down on the sofa and wanked off while I stood over her with a camera, is really only the kind of bizarre double life that lovers of ladyboys can understand and appreciate.

I watched her now, as she returned to work, still glancing up at me through her eyelashes. Then she turned round, mop in hand, and presented me with a view of her tight little bottom: clad in overalls, admittedly, but cute for all that, and it brought back memories of how, on my sofa, she had knelt down and parted those tight little cheeks so that I could get a nice close-up of her crack.

I have no doubt that the women she works with know all about her, and her secret. I’ve no doubt too that they all know about me. Secrets cannot be kept it Thailand, and indeed they seem to fly telepathically. But do I care? No! Not me. I enjoy myself.