Ms. Dandin said: “Farang who love skiing go to Switzerland or Canada. If they love climbing mountains, they go to Nepal. If they love sex, they come here.” She screws up her nose comically — she is aware of the irony. After all, she generally has a good relationship with her students, many of whom are technically kee-nok ne’er-do-wells themselves; not a few disappear inexplicably for periods of time. I remind her that in the 1980’s, before H.I.V. and AIDS forever altered perceptions of sex, promiscuity and prostitution, there was no doubt as to how Thailand intended to claim its share of tourist money. Reputations like that are not easy to shake.
Ms. Dandin nods her head. “The Indians brought prostitution to this country 300 years ago, but we can’t blame them,” she says. “We took to it like ducks to water.”
She looks at me in that helpless way Thais sometimes have when they are aware of the cultural divide. “But you see,” she said, “it’s not a sickness with us. It’s just something some of us do. The sickness comes from elsewhere.”
I have been here long enough to know what she means. The pale pageant queen dancing too perfectly in the video clip. The equally pale, preppy-looking Mr. Karr on the front page of all the newspapers. The books, the documentaries, and the astronomical fees paid to lawyers and investigators. The reputations cynically buffed or damaged. And the terrible manner of JonBenet’s death. In the old days, all of this would have pointed to something alien, monstrous, sick and irrelevant to Thai life.

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