Video emerged at the weekend, showing Thai police bust an illegal orgy happening at a Pattaya hotel.
Dozens of tourists from Australia, the UK, America, Canada, China and elsewhere were among the captured crowd along with multiple young Thai women, with condoms and lube found in the rooms.
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The owner of the Tulip Hotel - 53-year-old Sheng Liao Yang- had been reportedly holding these sex parties regularly, charging guests 1,500 baht (£35) per session.
The hotel itself is split into several zones over the 30 rooms and four floors, with one area as the dedicated 'play zone'. Officers described how most of the participants were in this zone when the raid broke out.
Pattaya is one of the most popular places for prostitution in Thailand, despite the industry being illegal throughout the country. You can buy sex in brothels, massage parlours, karaoke bars, hotels, bars, and saunas.
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There was an attempt to legalise the industry in 2003, which would have not only improved the situation for sex workers but would have also reduced corruption and vastly boosted tax revenue. Unfortunately, nothing was done.
As a result, there's no legislation regulating the industry to ensure prostitutes are being looked after and that no one underage is employed.
A report released in 2005 revealed that there were as many as 30,000 to 40,000 sex workers under the age of 18 in Thailand - which didn't include prostitutes from other countries that have moved there voluntarily or as a part of sex trafficking.
Thailand ranks among one of the worst countries in the world for child sexual exploitation, along with Mexico, Cambodia, India and Brazil.
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One of the motivators behind children getting into the sex trade is poverty as a third of the population survive on just $2 a day. According to the Sun, prostitutes can earn up to 5,000 baht (£114) a night, which is 20 times the minimum wage.
The End Child Prostitution and Trafficking network released a document in 2014 saying: "It is the economic power of foreign tourists that makes the sex industry so lucrative for organised criminal gangs and a source of support for individual women or children in the sex industry.
"These men include both the opportunistic and the paedophile sex tourists who are to be found mainly around the well know beach resorts, such as Pattaya and in Bangkok."
While there have been minor pushes to rectify the situation, both male and female sex workers still face the same problems and there's no light on the horizon.
Featured Image Credit: ViralPressTopics: Police, News, crime, Thailand, Politics