Thai Ladyboys (Katoey, Katoy), Thailand's 3rd Sex

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Ladyboys (Thais' say "katoey") pronounced like "katoy" but the k is almost like a g-sound, are guys that dress up as women. In America we'd call them cross-dressers or shemales or transvestites. Most of them still have their male anatomy, though the procedure to remove it is widely available in Bangkok and a discount job could be had for 100,000 baht. A good job would be about twice that much. Ladyboys with well-off boyfriends frequently get the operation. As a result they end up having a fully 'working' set of female part s, but of course they cannot become pregnant (yet!).

I'll not get into what 'working' versus non-working is... but I've seen some good katoey sex-change jobs and some not so good.  The not so good are quite scary. The good - well, it would be IMPOSSIBLE for you to tell by just looking.  There are bars in Patong - another friend owns one, where the girls dancing half naked, and sometimes fully naked on the stage are katoey that have had the surgery. The owner swears that some guys barfine these 'girls' take them back to their room for some overnight activities and then come back in a few days and do that same thing. They haven't a clue - and I could believe that.

Ladyboys might start taking hormones at an early age to foster development of breasts. They can grow breasts almost as big as Thai girls - which isn't saying that much - but still, it's something. They "work" too. They can lactate. You might just be squirted in the face at "Soi Katoey" in Patong if you're not careful. No joke. In addition to taking the estrogen some get breast jobs. Again, the quality ranges from bad to great. Some look as good as any woman's breast job.

Ladyboys stick together. They walk together, work together, room together, do everything together. There are ladyboys that act as men with other ladyboys and there are those that are very, very feminine.  There are ladyboy bars in Patong where only ladyboys are found. There are ladyboy cabaret shows in even small towns - Ubon Ratchathani has one nightly at "The Rock" in the Nevada Hotel on the main road (Chayangkun).

Thai katoey ladyboys can be nice and sweet or they can be loud, obnoxious, rough and abusive. They are men and often times they are not afraid to fight if they are hurt or upset because they've been fighting much of their lives. If you try to cheat one you might find her violent.  Ladyboys can speak English generally better than Thai girls for some reason. Perhaps they feel they need to in order to be able to change their voices to a high-voice to fool some of the men.

Ladyboys working in bars can make decent money - 40,000 baht per month (1000.00 usd) is not unheard of in Phuket. In Bangkok I'm sure it runs much higher for those passable as girls. 

Why are there so many ladyboys in Thailand versus the rest of the World?  A couple reasons... while growing up in a Thai family some children don't really FEEL like a man.  The gender roles are not that clearly differentiated here as adults - so, understandably in children it's even less so.  Little boys are not treated like little boys in America. Little girls are not treated just like little girls. A ladyboy begins to dress differently and act differently as early as Prathom 4 or 5 (Grade 4 or 5 in Western schools). If their parents let them they may spend the rest of their lives acting gay or as a katoey.  Some parents encourage a boy to act as a katoey as they might believe the boy could bring in more money than a girl could. Sometimes they'd be correct.

There are some stunningly beautiful ladyboys in Thailand. Some you CANNOT guess by looking at them. Some you CANNOT guess by talking to them. Some you CANNOT guess by being in bed with them. You might think you cannot be fooled, but if you come here and spend some time in the tourist areas you WILL be fooled sometime and you'll be as shocked as I was.