Sex work is no dream job

A Thai woman who has worked here a year as a masseuse wants to go home

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By Merituuli Ahola
     
      It's around noon and a watering-hole in downtown Helsinki is already doing a roaring trade. A couple of middle-aged men stand outside in the street smoking cigarettes.
      A younger man appears, striding around the corner, and he slows his gait as he passes a net-curtained window at street level. On the other side of the window, Thai Massage is on offer. The man does not step inside, however, and nor do many other people in the neighbourhood this week.
     
The furore set in motion by Helsingin Sanomat's road-test of Thai massage parlours has driven away the customers. "It's really quiet now", says a beautiful Thai woman sitting on a beige sofa in the apartment behind behind the net curtains.
      Using veneer partition walls, a couple of small rooms have been created in the neat and tidy ground-floor flat. On the floor are thin mattresses and a row of rolls of thick tissue paper, massage creams, and oils. A heart-shaped lamp is hanging from the wall, and there is a wall-clock. Radio Nova plays softly in the background.
     
The woman does not wish to give her name. "I have a daughter and a boyfriend", she says by way of explanation for her reticence.
      The woman's daughter is studying in Thailand, and will soon graduate with a degree in computer studies. In part, the girl's university education has been financed with money earned by her mother in Europe.
      The 43-year-old mother has lived and worked in Finland as a Thai masseuse for just under a year. Before that she spent nine years in Central Europe, working at a service station.
      Her marriage to the gas station owner broke down, and the man found a new woman.
      "I figured I ought to leave", she says. So she did.
     
She is slim and delicate and exceptionally beautiful. Her eyes are heavily made up and a cosmetics bag is lying there on the sofa. The woman is wearing a black tricot knitted blouse and brown slacks. Clean-cut, stylish; nothing frilly or fussy. "I usually have a lot of customers", she says quietly.
     
The work of a Thai masseuse in Europe is not, however, by any means a dream job for a Thai woman.
      "Sex often comes up here. I like the massage work, but sometimes the sex services side of things is rather embarrassing and difficult, as I'm quite shy."
      The woman says she often manages to work her way around the requests for sexual favours by telling the customer that she has a Finnish boyfriend. "The Finnish men respect that, and they back off."
      She only has good things to say about her clients. The great majority behave politely and pay up without causing any trouble.
     
The woman is the daughter of a farming family from a small village in Northern Thailand. "It is poor up there. There were seven children in my family."
      She left home at 18 to marry a man chosen for her by her father. "The man came from the same village and he had a good profession. He was a teacher."
      A year later, her daughter was born. The marriage came to an end after another year. "Did I love him? Well, maybe a bit, yes."
      The woman then moved to Europe because her company in Thailand failed and went bankrupt. "We made components for elevators, but business did not go well. A friend of mine from the same village was living in Europe, and she arranged to get me married off here. I figured that I would have a better life in Europe."
     
But it was not to be. And after ten years in Europe, she intends to return to Thailand. "I'll set up a massage business back there. It's different in Thailand - proper massage."
      Her relationship with a Finnish man is also problematic.
      "My boyfriend is a young man, and he can have a much better woman than me", she says in a whisper.
      Her eyes fill with tears. She gestures towards the massage room and its red light on the wall.
      "I'm a bad lady."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 14.9.2007

More on this subject:
 "This is a respectable occupation"

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Minister of Interior calls for police investigation into Thai massage parlours (11.9.2007)
  Sex services offered at all Helsinki Thai massage parlours visited by HS (27.8.2007)

MERITUULI AHOLA / Helsingin Sanomat
merituuli.ahola@hs.fi