Is Bangkok the world's one-stop shop for sexual reassignment?
By Cecile Lopez Lilles (The Philippine Star) Updated August 15, 2012 12:00 AM
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?publicationSubCategoryId=446&articleId=838128My family and I recently took a trip to Thailand and saw as much of Bangkok as we could, including a certain immersion in the "lady-boy" scene there. We noticed a burgeoning of transvestites everywhere: in the streets, stores, restaurants, offices, markets, hotels, bars — literally everywhere. I don't remember the numbers being as high in previous years. Of course, the first to comment about this was my spunky 10-year-old daughter.
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Jip went on to explain that transvestites closely resemble women because a majority have resorted to hormone treatment and cosmetic surgery — and many have, in a real sense, become women, meaning they have had gender-reassignment surgeries. "Bangkok is also known as the capital of cosmetic surgery in Asia because one, it's cheap, and two, our hospitals are better than most hospitals overseas. Also, it has become well-known all over the world as the Asian capital of sex reassignment surgery."
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Talbot claims that by the late '90s, thousands of tourists were already coming to Thailand to avail of its best-known medical attraction: discount plastic surgery. She said, "In Thailand, you can get a $2,400 facelift or a $1,200 nose job; you can get liposuction, body contouring, extra-large breast silicon implants, a buttock lift, a brow shave, a laser resurfacing of the face — and pay a fraction of what you would pay in the US."
Talbot attributes Thailand's move to market itself as a center for medical tourism as a way to counter the floundering economy caused by the Asian economic crisis of 1997. According to Talbot, "Its success can be mostly attributed to the one plastic surgery procedure that Thai doctors have come closest to perfecting — namely, the sex change operation."
