Stripper poles, sex toys, condoms on display as museum celebrates Thai sex industry

Bangkok: A museum in the Thai capital is celebrating the country's famed sex industry with a rich display of stripper poles, condoms and sex toys.

The unique exhibition, whose entry is strictly by appointment only, also praises the the industry's contribution to the economy.

The museum named “This is Us” is run by a 68-year-old woman called Chantawipa Apisuk.

Apisuk is pushing to decriminalise the trade so that sex workers can have equal rights.

The museum is not open to the public. On the walls of the museum are texts that describe how the Thai sex industry got a boost during the Vietnam war, when soldiers spent their recuperation weeks in the brothels of Thailand.

“Once again sex workers adapted to the new customers, learning about exchange rates, rock’n’roll, [the] meaning of army ranks, slang and providing services to young American men, some traumatised by the war, in a rush to enjoy their week before going back to the war,” one of the signs on the walls reads.

There is also a painting of a 400-year-old Chinese trade ship on a wall. Wooden buckets of rice sit in front of it, the payment used for sex by sailors.

“Sex work was legal back then, and sex would cost 15 kilos of rice. That much rice costs roughly 1,050 baht today. So the price hasn’t changed,” the guardian.co.uk quoted Apisuk as saying.

Some 250,000 people in Thailand work in the sex industry, accounting for about $6.4bn in annual revenue, the report said quoting Havocscope, a database of information on world black markets.