"Hello My Big Big Honey!"
>by Dave Walker & Richard S. Ehrlich
TIME magazine hailed this book for its investigative journalism, interviews, and "intimate portrait" of the sex industry in Thailand. "Does love conquer poverty, cultural barriers and the fear of AIDS? Sometimes..."
- TIME
"A number of themes run through the book: prostitution, love, family, cultural stereotypes, AIDS. The most prominent, however, and perhaps the most interesting is money.
"'Hello My Big Big Honey!' is interesting and readable, surprising and engaging...intriguing...picking up a copy of 'Hello My Big Big Honey!' is worthwhile..."
- Bangkok Post
A "masterwork" of "feminist research"
- The British Library's Oriental and India Office Collections
"...very funny..."
- Publishers Weekly
"...a Freudian whirlpool of sexual fantasies and frustration, of damaged egos and haunting super-egos, of dreams of pure love and acts of cold calculation, and a milieu of cross-cultural mayhem."
- The Far Eastern Economic Review
Richard S. Ehrlich is the Bangkok-based co-author and co-photographer, along with Dave Walker, of a book of investigative journalism entitled, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.
Nearly all of the girls have flocked to the cities and resorts to escape their own prison: an impoverished existence in Thailand's rural expanses, whereas a night's takings from the city bar could sustain a family for a month.
From Isan's desperately poor, rice farming villages, where hunger is the norm, the bars of Bangkok or Pattaya are a welcome escape.
For girls with little education, they provide an opportunity to shine, and have the honour of providing for their families by sending new-found riches back home.
- The Observer, U.K.
"Thailand super-expats Richard Ehrlich and Dave Walker have many distinguished lines on their resumes, though none quite so noteworthy as 'Hello My Big Big Honey!', their anthology of love letters written to Bangkok bar girls by men of all nationalities, who, once back in the lands of dowdy, nagging women, strip malls, and other nine-to-five drudgery, can't seem to get the exotic vacation trollops of Thailand out of their minds."
- Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer, by Chuck Thompson
"'Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews - This classic study of the Bangkok bar scene has been extolled by anthropologists and sociologists throughout the world."
- S. Tsow, The Nation newspaper, Thailand
"...our favorite is the timeless classic, 'Hello My Big Big Honey!'"
- Bangkok Inside Out
This book is a collection of love letters, written by men from all over the world, to Thai women who work in bars on Bangkok's famous Patpong Road.
Plus revealing, in-depth, question-and-answer interviews with the women who receive them.
How does romance blossom amid the harsh streets?
"Hello My Big Big Honey!" delves beyond the neon, glitz, hype, and tragedy of Bangkok's red-lit nights and discovers a world of loneliness, desperation and - sometimes - love.
