Behind The Smile

The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya

Owen Jones

An Epic in Seven Volumes

Can a Pattaya bar girl go back to ever being a regular girlfriend or wife?

Lek was born the eldest child of four in a typical rice farming family in the northern rice belt of Thailand. Then, one day, a catastrophe occurred out of the blue! Her father died young with huge debts that the family knew nothing about. Lek was just twenty, but the eldest child and the only one who could prevent foreclosure. However, the only way she knew how was to go to work in her cousin’s bar in Pattaya 750 km away.

Pattaya

Initially, Lek went as a waitress-cum-cashier, until she realised she was pregnant by her estranged husband and everything changed. Then, after having had the baby, she needed real money to provide a better life for her child. As a result, Lek slowly drifted into the tourist sex industry.

And thus began the adventures, dreams and sometimes nightmares… This is Lek’s point of view of what it’s really like to be a Thai bar girl. The exhilarating hopes that cover up the frustrations… The dreams that the let-downs, lies and deceit of daily life will one day give way to the dream of a normal life… Even as she meets a new man, yet again.

Bar Girl Life

When this new man returns for a real life relationship, Lek finds it’s not so easy going through the ups and downs of couplehood. Will they stay together and for how long? Will she ever be able to trust a man enough again either? Or will she go back to the bar girl life?

Behind The Smile is a glimpse into one part of Thailand, a country known around the world as ‘The Land of Smiles’.

The whole series is on Amazon here and three volumes are on Tektime: