Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing illicit businesses in Thailand and why you need to beware as a foreigner operating in that zone. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that's thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Biggest Sex for Sale website shut down by police unit in early morning raid targeting foreigners. Quoting directly: "In their presentation to the reporters, stressed that the operation of businesses by foreigners in Thailand which causes the country to be seen in a negative light is a priority in terms of suppression by the Royal Thai Police. I want to read this again: "In their presentation to the reporters, stressed that the operation of businesses by foreigners in Thailand which causes the country to be seen in a negative light is a priority in terms of suppression by the Royal Thai Police." 

Again and if you read that article, I quoted a small excerpt, it is a very good article, a lot of good information in there. As usual Thai Examiner provides a lot of detail and you get into it and yeah I really do see where Thai Authorities were a little miffed for lack of a better term about foreigners operating a business that makes basically Thailand look bad. Essentially if you get into that article, you will see they had a website which was promoting what was ostensibly escort services, but in my mind I mean it was just a kind of a thin fig leaf if you will with regard to that. And then you sort of read what's going on on the website and yeah I do get, once you sort of see it and you understand - I have done another video where I get it very in-depth on what the legal definition of prostitution is here in Thailand, I am not going to go into any further detail on that. I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that video for more information - but yes prostitution is illegal in Thailand. They do have a different definition of it than we do in the West so when Westerners come here, I think they have a misconception about how things work insofar Thai Authorities are not at all in any way interested in interfering in what happens between consenting adults behind closed doors. But when things are done in an open and notorious manner or a promiscuous manner, to use the exact phraseology of the statute here in Thailand when it defines prostitution, Thai Authorities get pretty concerned when that starts to happen and running a website which apparently was openly purveying in sexual services, that was clearly a problem for them. 

So again, those who are looking to come to Thailand to do business here, yes it's a fun place to do business. I have got many friends, I have got many colleagues, I have got many acquaintances, people I know, that have been or are in the Bar Industry in one form or another. Now some of them it is very innocuous in the sense that they may run a little kind of a bar and grill next to like a driving range at one of the resorts or something like this and then I have met people over the years that are heavily involved in the Go Go Bar Industry and those types of businesses. Again, bear in mind, especially as a foreigner doing business in Thailand you need to be very careful of the sentiments of how Thais view these kind of things and just the sort of general belief that in Thailand you don't want to do things to make the country look bad as noted in that excerpt. And again, running a website like this I think fell into the category of making the country look bad if nothing else and I think there are a lot of other legal problems for these folks also involved in that but I haven't seen the actual criminal charges or anything so I can't really speak to that directly. But long story short, just generally speaking sort of illicit activity if you will, anything that can sort of cast Thailand into a negative light or could be construed to cast Thai in a negative light is probably something to shy away from.