4 hours ago
27
Sky Kanyarat was playing pool in the early hours of the morning in one of Thailand’s most famous red light districts when a middle-aged foreigner with a heavy gait approached her.
She had often seen him walking past the bar where she worked in Pattaya, a city about a two-hour drive from Bangkok. But this was the first time Kanyarat had seen him come in.
As he passed under the bunting of flags from around the world, it appeared “he was drunk from somewhere else because he walked wobbly,” says Kanyarat, who identifies as a ladyboy, a term commonly used in Thailand’s transgender community.
He sat with her colleague, Tang, on a rattan cane couch, bought them both a drink and began nuzzling and massaging her.
The man asked Tang to go home with him, but she didn’t want to, and he left the bar at about 2am. It would be more than two days before Kanyarat would see his face again – and this time, it was on the news.
The man was Simon Peter Carman and he had been charged with murder.
Soon after leaving the bar on 25 June, police allege Carman went to the nearby palm-tree lined beach strip and met a 17-year-old girl named Thunchanok Donhomla who had only arrived a week before in Pattaya from Kalasin, an area in north-east Thailand with high levels of poverty. Police allege CCTV footage captured Donhomla holding Carman’s hand as they waited for an elevator in his condo’s lobby.
She was not seen alive again. The following night, her naked body and her belongings – her clothes, vape and platform sandals – were found in a suitcase left in high grass near the railway tracks.
Donhomla’s death has drawn international headlines and her family are demanding justice. Experts say her death speaks to broader issues in Thailand’s sex industry – including the underage girls exploited by it.
Thailand’s sex tourism capital
Pattaya is known as the sex tourism capital of Thailand – despite locals’ attempts to fight it.
At night, sex workers lean against palm trees fanning themselves, as a constant flow of songthaew – or converted trucks – pick up and drop off male tourists. On the city’s garishly lit walking street, loud music blares from go-go clubs and people wave menus in multiple languages, offering everything including ping-pong shows. There are clubs targeted at specific clientele – “Russian Girls Show” and “Bollywood Night”.
About 116,000 Thai nationals are registered as living in the city, as well as about 40,000 to 70,000 foreigners living either full-time or for extended periods.
There are also an estimated 60,000 sex workers. Many come from underdeveloped rural provinces.
Three kilometres away from the main strip, the more relaxed suburb of Jomtien caters to retirees and long-stay visitors – like Carman.
Here the bars are clustered along a lane, where fruit sellers push carts full of watermelons and bananas. Some of the bars have traditional palm-thatching and names that evoke paradise or Australiana. The clientele are mostly older, white men, some with their arms draped around a woman’s waist or placed on her thigh.
It’s not far from here that police allege Carman met Donhomla.
Donhomla had come to visit a friend who had moved to Pattaya from their home province of Kalasin. Police are investigating whether the friend worked in the adult service industry.
Carman told police he took Donhomla to the condo where he lived. He claimed they had an argument, and he killed her in self-defence. Police said a medical examination found Donhomla likely died from suffocation.
According to police, Carman said he did not know what to do with Donhomla’s body and put her in a suitcase in his bathroom. Police allege CCTV footage shows Carman leaving the condo with a suitcase at about 9pm.
The next day, Donhomla’s friend reported her missing to the police before going to Carman’s condo. Within hours Carman was arrested and later charged with murder, concealing a corpse in an attempt to hide the cause of death, and abduction of a minor over 15 but not yet 18 years of age for indecent purposes, and taking a person over 15 but not yet 18 for indecent purposes, even if the person consents. He denies the charges.
Donhomla’s stepmother, Oradee Bussarakum, told Reuters she wants Carman “to face the full consequences”.
“We just hoped it wouldn’t turn out the way we feared. Now our eyes are swollen from crying,” she says.
The lane shaken by Donhomla’s death
On the Tuesday after Donhomla’s death, Kanyarat is back at the blue-walled bar, sitting on a red-plastic covered stool and putting on makeup. She is barefoot – it’s early evening, and the lane is just coming to life. Most of the chairs in the bar are still empty.
Immediately after she saw the news, Kanyarat texted her friends who work in the lane. They all felt the same – “scared”.
After she heard about the alleged murder, Tang says she couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t felt unsafe when she was with him – he seemed “normal”, like the other customers.
But, as Kanyarat puts it, normal in a Jomtien bar is working in an environment where for every 10 customers of hers, four “are not good”.
“Some clients have used force against me, locked me in their arms or strangled me, pulled my hair,” Kanyarat says.
Sometimes she has run away, not waiting for anything worse to happen.
“If those clients come back to the bar, I won’t go out with them again. In one case [a client] strangled me so strongly I kicked him because I was about to suffocate. After kicking him I grabbed my wallet with my payment and ran away.”
Despite this, Kanyarat says she likes her work. But others in the lane are shaken – another woman who asked not to use her name says she’s so scared, she doesn’t want to continue working.
The regulars’ bar
For months, Carman had lived in a condo in a featureless grey apartment block, one of three identical buildings next to each other about a 20-minute walk from the lane.
Carman’s favourite bar was just downstairs in the adjacent building.
In the early afternoon on the Tuesday after Donhomla’s death, wind chimes tinkle in the distance and many regulars are already drinking and smoking. “Happy birthday” bunting is still hung up for one customer whose birthday was the day before.
“Hello darling,” one regular says to the owner as they walk in.
When asked if he knew Carmen, the customer – who moved to Jomtien from the UK almost a year ago – says yes. “We all knew him around here.”
The owner of the bar, who did not want to provide her name, says she was shocked when she heard the news. She had known Carman for at least eight years – he used to live in the area but had moved back to Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic. While he was in Australia, he called her from his farm and showed her his tractor.
She rented him a room in November when he came back and since then, he came to the bar every day.
Her customers are normally friendly, she says – they offer to help her if she’s carrying something heavy, for instance.
But Carman wasn’t necessarily well liked.
The Finnish man, who, like the others, did not want to provide his name for reasons of anonymity, says Carman was not his friend. The British customer says Carman “wasn’t my cup of tea. Bit strange.”
A ‘massively concerning’ industry
Pattaya’s red-light district image goes back to the Vietnam war era when it became an R&R spot for American soldiers.
Authorities and businesses are now trying to push the city as a family-friendly destination, says Dr Pipatpong Fakfare, an associate professor specialising in researching tourism at Bangkok University.
But “that history never really left the city’s brand,” Fakfare says.
Despite sex tourism operating openly, prostitution is illegal, and there are specific laws preventing sexual activity with people under 18. But the laws are inconsistently enforced – and even result in sex workers being punished. Some politicians and advocacy groups in Thailand are actively pushing for sex work to be decriminalised.
Thai feminist organisation the Manushya Foundation said Thai sex workers endure routine violence “just to survive”, including homicide rates 17 times higher than the general female population and widespread abuse by clients, pimps, and even police.
“The influx of Western tourists seeking ‘exotic experiences’ perpetuates exploitative dynamics, while women involved remain stigmatised and criminalised instead of protected.”
Australians make up a high proportion of tourists who engage in the sexual exploitation of children under 18 in south-east Asia and the Pacific, according to an article published last year in the Bond Law Review.
Laura Parker, CEO and co-founder of the Exodus Road, a not-for-profit dedicated to combating human trafficking, says the demand for sex tourism is “massively concerning”. But what concerns her most is how easily the exploitation of minors can be concealed when there’s a normalised commercial sex market.
“When buying sex is treated as ordinary, the trafficking of children and coerced adults becomes harder to see and easier to ignore,” Parker says.
Fakfare says the sexual exploitation of children in Thailand’s sex industry is directly linked to poverty and tourism demand. “It deserves to be treated as its own serious problem, not folded into the general debate about adult sex work.”
Destiny Rescue Australia, which works to find and help children being exploited in Thailand, consistently finds children rarely enter exploitation by choice.
“Instead, they are groomed, manipulated, deceived or coerced by offenders who deliberately exploit existing vulnerabilities,” says the group’s CEO, Greg Bradley.
Questions remain over why Donhomla came to Pattaya. But back in Kalasin, her community is feeling the toll of her death.
Hundreds of people attended her funeral and there was “tremendous grief”, Phra Vichien, the abbot of the monastery where her funeral was held, told the ABC.
The victim’s father, Thongchai Donhomla, told Reuters he was struggling to come to terms with the loss. “My daughter had no mother, so whenever she wanted anything, she would find a way herself, and she always helped me, too.”
