Can Burma Avoid the Curse of intercourse Tourism?

[Time]

On a recent evening at a popular beer hall in Rangoon, two dozen women wearing skimpy dresses and hair extensions swayed mechanically on a stage and took turns mumbling lines of high-energy pop songs into the microphone. The crowd — mostly Burmese men, but also a few groups of foreign tourists — drank mugs of Tiger beer and took videos with their phones. Every once in a while, a girl would receive a feather boa — a tip from an admirer in the audience, costing about $12. The show concluded with a performer bouncing a flaming ball on her foot while jumping through a flaming hula hoop — and the doors were closed by 10 p.m. Rangoon's so-called "model shows" are hardly salacious affairs compared with the raunchy intercourse shows that have made Bangkok one of the world's intercourse-tourism capitals. But Burmese officials and human-rights groups are worried about what could come next as tourists pour into Burma after decades of isolation. In 2012, Burma received more than a million foreign tourists, up from 816,000 the year before. This year, the country is anticipating 1.5 million — a near doubling of the number of visitors in two years. While tourism is pumping much needed cash into the country — more than half a billion dollars last year — officials want to keep intercourse off the list of local attractions. One need only look across the border to see why: Thailand has the highest HIV rate in Southeast Asia, and Cambodia, tragically, has a thriving child intercourse industry. (MORE: Will Burma Become Asia's Next Economic Tiger?) Burmese fears are well founded. Human-trafficking networks have long operated in the country, funneling thousands of women and girls into Thailand to fuel the intercourse industry there, to say nothing of the many women (particularly from the impoverished border state of Shan) who voluntarily go. Many are underage and willing to sell their virginity for high prices, says Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw, the Burma project coordinator for the U.N. Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP).

Via: TIME GlobalSpin