Sports stars and working girls have a few things in common. They have the opportunity to earn plenty, but also know that they have a limited period in which to make the big bucks.
All it takes is an injury or a health issue and their career can be over. Sports stars may later have the option to become coaches, managers or commentators. They might write a book about their career. But for working girls, few lucrative post career paths exist. If they don't get married, or save enough to set themselves up, they might end up as just another bitter mamasan, forced to watch young girls doing what they once did.
But some girls don't even get to see out their career. Sometimes a girl's worst fears come true. In life shit can happen. I'm sitting in the lobby of a top Bangkok hotel with Sophia. Clutching a designer handbag and elegantly dressed, she looks like she stepped out of a salon. Perhaps she just did. She is attractive, refined and presentable in polite company. But more than that, she has a sweetness that men find endearing, a sweetness that defies what she has been through.
Sophia used to be an escort. Before her first birthday she was sent to Lampang where she would be raised by an aunt. Her upbringing was typical and she talks fondly of her aunt. They weren't wealthy, but they had all they needed. Sophia left home at 15, making the trek up the road to Chiang Mai where she would get her first job as a waitress.
The meagre salary barely covered her own living expenses let alone provided enough to help her aunt. Perceiving little opportunity in the north, Sophia headed south to find better paying work, ending up on the assembly line at an electronics factory in Ayutthaya. Things started to look up when she met and fell in love with a good man. They were good together, happy, and were soon rewarded with a child. But that happiness was not to last and at just 22, Sophia was widowed when her husband was killed in an accident.
