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This book is the complete reference for
anyone who wants to learn about a hidden phenomenon that
affects hundreds of thousands of traveling women and foreign
men: Instant vacation love affairs that banish loneliness,
provide cultural insights, offer one-on-one, hand-to-hand
foreign aid to the world's poor, create international
children and sometimes even change the course of history.
Romance on the Road is bound to become a landmark title
revealing how the rules that once bound women to choose only
"socially appropriate" mates have begun to crumble, as
female executives and heiresses gallivant with penniless but
charming beach boys around the world, from Kenya to Jamaica
to Thailand.
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Female sex tourism is travel by
women, partially or fully for the purpose of having
sex. The practice differs from male sex tourism in
that women do not typically use the structures of
the sex industry (e.g. strip clubs, sex shows and
organized tours) to meet foreign partners. Women's
trips may be referred to as "romance tourism." They
typically involve sex with locals from the holiday
destination country, as opposed to with other
tourists, possibly from their own country (a holiday
fling).
The phenomenon has been explored
by French Novelist Michel Houellebecq in his novel
Platform and in the non-fiction book
Romance on the Road. These works support the
idea that sex tourism by both men and women reflects
serious problems in the tourists' home countries,
including a "dating war", or profound conflict
between the sexes.
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Thailand, the Dominican Republic and Cuba are
exceptional in that both male and female sex
tourists use these countries.
An estimated 650,000 Western women
have engaged in travel sex from 1980 to the present,
many of them as repeat customers.
Lesbian sex tourism is nascent but
evident in Lesbos (Mytilini) in Greece, Bangkok and
Pattaya in Thailand. The men used by tourist women
are termed kamakia (“fishing harpoons,”
Greece), galebovi (“seagulls,” Croatia),
гларуси (glarusi) (“seagulls,” Bulgaria),
sharks (Costa Rica), rent-a-dreads, rent-a-rastas,
rent-a-gents and the Foreign Service (Caribbean),
Kuta Cowboys or pemburu-bule (“whitey
hunters”, Bali), Marlboro men (Jordan), bomsas
or "bumsters" (the Gambia), "sanky pankies"
(Dominican Republic), "gringa hunter" o
caza-gringas in Ecuador and brichero in
Peru. "Beach boys" is a more generic term.
Male prostitutes may in general be
referred to by various terms and euphemisms. Some of
these men can be considered gigolos, for instance.
"A holiday fling" or "a holiday
romance" may refer to either sex tourism (having sex
with a local) or an affair with a fellow holidaymaker,
possibly from one's own country or indeed package tour.
Either may be called "fun in the sun". Euphemisms
abound.
History
Barring some isolated cases of women
traveling for sex among North American Indian tribes and
within Turkey, female travel sex (involving American and
English women) began in Rome in the late 1840s, at the
same time as first wave feminism, which encouraged
independence and travel.
Affairs and intrigues, particularly
between American heiresses and impoverished European
aristocrats, continued steadily until World War I,
inspiring a whole genre of literature such as Henry
James's Daisy Miller, Joaquin Miller's The One
Fair Woman, and much of the early output of E.M.
Forster.
Female sex travel declined from the
time of the Depression until the 1960s.
Coincident with the explosion of
leisure travel in the 1960s and second wave feminism,
sex tourism by women re-ignited, first via French
Canadian women travelling to Barbados and Swedish and
Northern European women to Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia and
the Gambia. Female sex travel became ubiquitous
throughout the Caribbean, from the tiniest islands
through the big destinations of Jamaica, the Dominican
Republic and Barbados.
In the 1990s, women from Japan and
Taiwan began to appear on the beaches of Bali and Phuket
in Thailand.
Today, many other destinations are
popular, including Morocco, Nepal, Thailand, Ecuador,
Costa Rica, Mexico -- everywhere with beaches (or in
Nepal's case, mountains) and a surplus of underemployed
men.
Reasons
Female sex tourism's first and second
waves coincided not only with feminism but with
Victorian era man shortages that began in England and
later occurred in continental Europe and the United
States.
Social reasons for women seeking
promiscuous and no-strings-attached sex abroad include
the dating war, as typified by extreme competition
between the sexes in schools, the workplace, while
dating, in marriages, and even in contentious divorces.
The dating war appears especially to drive sex tourism
by Australian and Japanese women, and to a lesser
extent, German and Scandinavian female tourists. The
changing theme of pop culture in the wake of the
feminist heyday in America and elsewhere cannot be
ignored. From the 1970s onward, the emergence of
stronger, independent character roles for women in film,
music and television doubtlessly influenced the
expectations of ordinary women viewers everywhere in the
western world.
Serena Graham is looking forward to the
vacation of a lifetime-a week at Paradise Resort, a
Caribbean hideaway where she'll be able to indulge her every
sexual fantasy with complete abandon and total anonymity.
For the next week, she's Sexy Siren Serena and she'll do
whatever she wants-with whomever she wants.
Michael Donovan planned a week at Paradise Resort to
research his next erotic crime novel, as well as indulge in
some hot sex with his fashion model girlfriend. But when he
finds his now ex-girlfriend has other plans, he's resigned
to research without recreation. That is, until Serena shows
up at his door claiming he's occupying her room!
After a little negotiating, Michael and Serena become
roommates, and Serena boldly asks Michael to be her lover
for the week. How can he pass up the opportunity to mix a
little pleasure with business? But despite their vow to keep
their relationship strictly physical, they find much more
than passion in paradise
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The men may do it for the money, or
for the sex, or for other un-researched reasons. Women
usually give clothes, meals, cash and gifts to their
male prostitutes. In some destinations, there are "going
rates" for male companionship, ranging from $50 to $200.
In other destinations, especially in Southern Europe,
Turkey, and the French Caribbean, men do not expect to
be compensated.
Depictions
Non-fiction books include Anne
Cumming's The Love Habit and The Love Quest,
Fiona Pitt-Kethley's The Pan Principle and
Journeys to the Underworld, Cleo Odzer's Patpong
Sisters and Lucretia Stewart's
The Weather Prophet.
Female sex tourists have been
notoriously difficult to find and interview on the
record (see de Albuquerque, 1998, in "Major academic
publications" subheading, below). Thus some observers
have turned to film and fiction to examine the
motivations of women who travel for sex, love and
affection. Movies include Heading South (Vers le Sud),
with Charlotte Rampling, which depicts three Western
tourists in Haiti in the 1970s, taking their pleasure
with local men. Earlier film depictions include How
Stella Got Her Groove Back and Shirley Valentine.
Stella led to a quantifiable increase in trips by
women to Jamaica . Important works of fiction include,
in addition to Michel Houellebecq's Platform,
Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, which coined or
popularized the term "zipless fuck".
