Free Under the Dragon by Rory Maclean

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    Prostitution does not exist in Burma; at least it cannot be mentioned in the press. The Burmese kings had a history of taking numerous wives, and religious sites always offered the service of ‘pagoda servants’ to pilgrims. Neither custom still exists today, officially. The girls on the steps of pagodas sell flowers and candles, religious requisites, not physical comforts. The royal zenana has been replaced by the executive escort agency. But both traditions remain part of the culture and, as a result of the smallest misfortune, a woman can become trapped.
    Louis’s dollars, though worth a fortune to Ni Ni, didn’t last until the end of the monsoon. Soon after her return to Wayba-gi she fell ill, and May May Gyi spent the money on medicines which did nothing to improve her condition. No drug seemed capable of restoring her energy, no tonic would lift her spirit. Buddhists are taught that they are responsible today for what they will be tomorrow. Every man and woman is answerable for their own actions. But Ni Ni’s sense of duty had left with Louis’s departing aeroplane. The roar of its engines had shaken the satellite town. Like her father before her she brooded through the airless, vaporous afternoons, not hearing the rain drumming on her roof, ignoring May May Gyi’s encouragement, even turning down Law San’s offer of Shan hkauk-hswe noodles. The past was memory, the future might only be fantasy, but she had no love in the here and now. Ni Ni did not feel anger, wished no vengeance, and when the money ran out, when there seemed to be no other choice, she went in search of Way Way.
    Way Way’s friend promised to find her work in Thailand as a dishwasher. The wage he promised was double that which she could earn in Rangoon. He paid for her bus ticket to the border, where she was met by a Thai driver. There were five other women in his car: two Burmese, two Shan girls with milky-white complexions and a single, silent Chinese. On the road to Bangkok the driver paid a uniformed man at a checkpoint. In the brothel Ni Ni was given a number and told to sit in a windowed showroom. She toyed with the hem of her blouse when bypassers stopped to stare at her. The first man who took her in the hong bud boree sut , ‘the room to unveil virgins’, paid the owner 120 baht – less than five dollars – and tipped her the same amount. During that month she was sold as a virgin to four more clients. She was allowed to keep her tips. They were the largest she was to receive over the next four years.
    The friend had been an agent. The debt which enslaved Ni Ni was his fee, plus her transport, clothes and protection money, compounded by 100 per cent interest. She was required to wear high heels and a mini-skirt instead of her silk longyi . In lieu of money she received red plastic chips; one for every client. Each morning she counted them twice to calculate the amount that had been subtracted from her debt. She kept them under the cement bunk on which she was forced to prostitute herself. Under it also was the secret door to a locker where she hid during police raids. The abrupt arrival of a dozen armed officers never failed to alarm the brothel owner. More often though the policemen came in ones and twos after work. However they arrived, the girls were always theirs for free.
    The cubicle measuring six feet square was her home. Here Ni Ni slept and worked, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Only two days a month were allowed off, during her period. The clients were mostly Asian, although Westerners paid for her too, flying in from Frankfurt and Brussels on ‘sex bomber’ package holidays. She served five or six men each weekday. On weekends she often had as many as thirty customers.
    The demand for new faces dictated that every few months she be moved to a different brothel. Each was the same as the last. The neon-lit rooms were dingy, the walls always stained grimy grey along the edge of the bunk. There were never