All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [51]
HIV/AIDS first appeared in Thailand in the mid-1980s among the male and female prostituted sex workers and intravenous drug users. From there the virus made its inevitable journey into the general population, as husbands brought it home to their wives, who then gave birth to infected babies. Unlike many governments that denied or ignored the epidemic, the Thai leadership mobilized early with a comprehensive education and prevention program. The authorities required all prostitutes to use condoms, which were manufactured and distributed by an amazingly practical Thai politician and businessman named Mechai Viravaidya, also known as “Mr. Condom.” The campaign had astonishing results: After an all-time high of 143,000 new HIV infections in 1991, the number fell to 19,000 in 2003; and overall, HIV was reduced by a jaw-dropping 90 percent. Thailand proved that clever intervention works. Mechai calls condoms “weapons of mass protection.”
Still, there were more than 600,000 HIV/AIDS sufferers in Thailand, along with ominous signs that the virus was about to make a comeback. Prevention and education program funding quickly ran dry. A new generation of young people who didn’t remember the earlier campaigns was coming of age. PSI decided to open up shop in Thailand in 2003 to help revive and supplement the programs that once worked so well. It might have been just in time: A recent survey sponsored by the United Nations had shown that 95 percent of Thais polled believed that AIDS remains a big problem in Thailand, but 75 percent of those polled—and 80 percent of people aged fifteen to twenty-four—felt that they were not personally at risk.
PSI was launching a new brand of condom called “One.” After months of careful and precise social marketing research, they determined that young Thais want to be independent, different from their parents, take what they like from the West, and create individual personalities. The upbeat campaign spoke to that. I loved the television spot that showed the One condom packet pulsing like an eager little heart in the back pockets of jeans and purses of hip young people in shops and discos, ending with the tagline: “Got Your ID?” (We have other campaigns that target businessmen whose nights out invariably end with them purchasing sex.)
Afterward we stopped for lunch at a beautiful, quiet seaside restaurant, a calm moment in the center of the storm. While we ate, a banana tree smiled at my soul. I excused myself and climbed up onto one of her graciously curved branches and turned my back on people for a moment, looking up in her crown of leaves and out at the indigo Gulf of Thailand. I stretched myself out, fully supported by her nurturing branches. “Rest, O beloved, rest in me.” Then it was time for the two-hour drive south to the prostitution capital of Asia.
Compared with the more discreet and ambiguous storefront brothels of Cambodia’s Svay Pak district, the raucous neon bars that line the streets of Pattaya look like a postapocalyptic Vegas strip for sex tourists. The resort city was a notorious destination during the Vietnam War, where U.S. Navy ships would anchor offshore and spill thousands of troops onto the beach for “rest and relaxation”—nothing more than gross sexual entitlement and exploitation. Although prostitution was and is illegal in Thailand, hundreds of bars sprouted in Pattaya, stocked with cheap liquor and “bar girls” to satisfy