Gay Boy Thailand

I was in my first police raid today. All these years and I have never been in a raid before.

This was the new category of police action: Internet cafe raids. I was in the Straight No Conspiracy Internet cafe and just after 10 pm a bunch of boys in brown came barging in, led by an self-important officer with stars and stripes. These guys take themselves seriously. In a Western country someone would have shot him down with a comment about his pompous behaviour, but in Thailand nobody does.

A while ago authorities decided that persons under 18 could not be in Internet cafes after 10 pm. So the cops were checking for this, and for any other immoral or subversive activity.

Last week Thai media reported an unfortunate incident involving some children in a bathroom in one of the 30,000 Internet cafes in the country. This added to the dire warnings in the media about the dangers of Internet cafes, which we were told are at least as corrupting as the Internet itself.

I find Internet cafes to be safe and tame places. Very little can happen there without everyone seeing it. There are usually video cameras in the corners of the larger cafes. As for the bathrooms, it must be quite limited what can take place there. The coming and going to the bathroom is also in full view of everyone.

But this doesn’t stop Thai officialdom from whipping up a moral panic about Internet cafes. There are so many Internet cafes now, and they have become a neighbourhood meeting place for young people. This is of course threatening for older folks, who wonder what is going on there.

A more cynical view is that the boys in brown, having seen how much money the cafes take in, want a piece of the cake. Hence they play up any unfortunate incident. With 30,000 Internet cafes there is bound to be something somewhere they can make a fuss about. And then they can raid and inspect and collect donations.

With typical skill and professionalism the raiding party didn’t realise that the Internet cafe had more rooms in the back. Lead by their Napoleon they only inspected the front room, which is only one third of this Internet cafe. No minors were found. I don’t think there were any, but in any case the kids like to sit in the back rooms where they can be as noisy as they want and where the cops don’t look.

The ladyboy-in-training’s mother thanked the officers for the visit. Thanks to the dedication of half a dozen policemen, spending their crime-busting overtime budget, the Straight No Conspiracy Internet cafe is now morally safe.