Rating: 
Summary: Way to further the men's movement...
Review: "Highly recommended for those interested in Thailand and Southeast Asia, tourism and travel, women's rights and gender studies?" This does this book not even touch on the subject of women's rights. The "compilers" irresponsibly fail to address the serious issues plaguing the Thai sex industry. (i.e. the poverty these women endure, the child prostitution that occurs, how these men who pose as "saviors" are actually adding to the problem.) All I see here are two cowardly authors who are cashing in by sensationalizing an exploited culture. Maybe I am more offended by this book because I am female and half Thai myself, but I simply do not see anything of value here. I do not have a moral issue with prostitution itself-in fact I think it should be legal. However, I do think that there is a little more to this story than is being addressed. I know the cover art is pleasing, but please try to ... avoid this book at all costs.
...
Rating:
Summary: Way to further the men's movement...
Review: "Highly recommended for those interested in Thailand and Southeast Asia, tourism and travel, women's rights and gender studies?" This does this book not even touch on the subject of women's rights. The "compilers" irresponsibly fail to address the serious issues plaguing the Thai sex industry. (i.e. the poverty these women endure, the child prostitution that occurs, how these men who pose as "saviors" are actually adding to the problem.) All I see here are two cowardly authors who are cashing in by sensationalizing an exploited culture. Maybe I am more offended by this book because I am female and half Thai myself, but I simply do not see anything of value here. I do not have a moral issue with prostitution itself-in fact I think it should be legal. However, I do think that there is a little more to this story than is being addressed. I know the cover art is pleasing, but please try to ... avoid this book at all costs.
...
Rating: 
Summary: A MUST for anybody who wants to learn understand......
Review: ....a darker Asian chapter. I used to live in Thailand. Initially I was absolutely revolted by the many possible and impossible kinds of prostitution on public, unavoidable show there. I hated it, and especially the Western men involved. Hello, my big... helped me understand a little bit of what was going on. The rest, I realised, I needed to accept, or better leave. It was good to read about the ladies' and gentlemen's views and motivations. The book opened up a new horizon to me which otherwise I would have never seen. I stayed - nowadays my worse Asian memories originate from Bangkok traffic and not from big, big honey.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating but ...
Review: after reading about fifty or so pages, it gets redundant. How many letters can you read from men who have fallen in love with prostitutes in a foreign country?I found myself skipping to the pages where madams were interviewed. While that was quite illuminating, there wasn't enough of it.
Rating: 
Summary: Hello my big big Honey
Review: After travelling to Thailand for many many years I thought this book was a good read. Very interesting and the fact that the letters have been sourced from real farangs makes this book a good read and in general a pretty accurate guide, aswell as a good laugh!
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Summary: True confessions of prostitution in Bangkok, Thailand
Review: Along Bangkok's Patpong Road night market, in bars such as Pussy Galore, Pink Panther and King's Castle, tourists meet up with the bar dancers. This sensitive, eye-opening book examines the relationships enabled by the bars. In first-person accounts, through the dozens of letters the men write to their "darlings" after they return home, and in interviews with the women, the authors view the complex world of Patpong--money, sex, love, loneliness, disease. Also, there is an interview with one "mama-san." In the prologue, Dr. Yos Santasombat dissects and analyzes the worker-client relationship. In the epilogue, Mrs. Pisamai Tantrakul describes her role and reasons for translating and typing many of the letters. Highly recommended for those interested in Thailand and Southeast Asia, tourism and travel, women's rights and gender studies. Reviewed 3rd expanded ed., 7th printing, 1998.
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Summary: by torrance mendez, west australian
Review: Australian men bitten by the love bug after a dalliance in a Bangkok bar can take heart -- you are not alone. It seems Thai bar girls are objects of genuine desire from many overseas strangers. And they have stacks of love letters to provite it. Two writers, American Richard Ehrlich and Canadian Dave Walker, won the confidence of several women to gain an intimate slice of the sex trade that rarely gets seen. The result has been a bestseller..."Hello My Big Big Honey! -- a collection of love letters to Bangkok bar girls and their revealing interviews. Letter-writers' names were omitted for privacy though all the texts begged one questioon -- could love survive in these conditions? Ehrlich says it can, but the odds are against it. He and Walker trawled Bangkok bars for more than two years before cataloguing selected letters in a tome of tryst and mistrust. "Prostitutes told us a lot of men fell in love with them and went back to Australia, America and Europe and sent back love letters, putting money in envelopes," Ehrlich said... "That proved they were in love because they were no longer having sex." Some letters were from Australian factory workers. Cash was often intended to put the girls through school and some letters mentioned marriage. "The girls would have large manila envelopes stuffed with love letters from many guys from many countries," he said. "Most were fairly juvenile expressions of lust but there were some genuine love letters." It was the genuine letters that gave rise to the book. Ehrlich and Walker quizzed the girls about AIDS, the status of prostitutes in Thai society and their advice to fresh recruits. "One girl had several guys all sending her money and she was telling them all she would marry them," he said. "Yet she was placing adverts in New Zealand. She was more mercenary. "Her dream was to get enough gold to open a shop. "Another girl had slash marks on a forearm from a suicide attempt. "She fell in love with a foreign guy and really believed he loved her but one night she walked into another bar and found him with another bar girl. So she slit an arm." Then there was another girl taken on by feminist agencies and non-government organisations who toured the world to lecture about prostitution and the dangers of AIDS. "Although she knew everything about AIDS and safe sex, she said she would go without a condom if she needed the money," Ehrlich said. He discussed the mechanics of long-distance love affairs with a Thai academic who concluded: "A foreign man having sex is in control but the moment he falls in love she is the boss." Two fantasies are commonly played out -- he is her proactive saviour and she passively will be saved from her lifestyle and move to the West. "In reality he may beat her or take her back home and use her as a prostitute there," Ehrlich said. Money was an enduring part of a relationship, he said. For her, it demonstrated true love. For him, it shouldn't buy love. This led to the seeds of mistrust. Ehrlich saw Bangkok bars as a conduit for tourists and expats to meet normally conservative Thai women who would avoid scandalous associations with foreign men. Prostitution is illegal in Thailand. About 95 per cent of the trade is between Thais, only 5 per cent with foreigners. About two million of the 65 million Thais are thought to have HIV. Ehrlich said some foreign men did marry Thai bar girls and lived happily ever after. by Torrance Mendez, West Australian, Perth
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Summary: from tracy quan's diary of a manhattan call girl
Review: Bangkok by the Book! "Honey!" is a collection of love letters to Bangkok bar girls -- written by
their "farang" [foreign] clients. A recent rave declares, "At the core of
this amazing document are the interviews with the bar girls themselves," and
describes the range of feelings a girl can have about her client -- "from
the rankest capitalist contempt to the most tender compassion." (And why not? There are 24 hours in a day, after all.) "Honey!" is an
obsessive look at romantic and financial need... The letters from these men to their paid companions are sometimes delusional
and sometimes quite practical. I did end up caring (albeit briefly) about the guys who wrote them -- but
it's better to have cared briefly than never to have cared at all. (And that might even be the moral of this book.)
Rating:
Summary: This is TRASH!
Review: Boring and laughably contrived, this book is about as authoritative and credible as something one would find in usenet posts. The preface, introduction, and prologue, supposedly written by three different men (one Brit, one American, and one Thai), share the same peculiar grammatical errors and dropped words. Hmm. Some of the letters also share these same peculiar grammatical errors. Hmm. How odd considering that one alleged author has a "Master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism." The prologue, supposedly written by a Thai professor and lauded by the two authors, is about as thoughtful as the mini-sermon delivered by Jerry Springer at the end of his show. Some of the johns' letters share the same mannerisms that finger them as being written by the same john (customer), but the letters are not organized in any fashion. They are not even dated. They are just thrown together. Even the photos are unattractive.
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Summary: saw this in spectator and agree
Review: Chasing the Dream Girls of Bangkok: "Hello My Big Big Honey!" is, all in all, a good read. It's also a useful book, particularly for those parties curious about this neon-lit sex world of Thailand, as well as readers intent on eventually visiting this Southeast Asian capital of nocturnal lust. Not only through these love letters, but -- even more strikingly -- through poignant interviews with bar girls, bar owners, and other peripheral agents involved with the Bangkok sex scene, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" offers an engagingly insightful -- frequently far from 'black-and-white' -- look at the foreign men and the bar-room hookers with whom they've fallen in both love and lust... The love letters in "Hello My Big Big Honey!" are similarly eclectic in terms of the composers' ages and nationalities. There are letters from foreign men (referred to in Thai as 'farang') who are young and old (from early 20s to late 60s), living in New Zealand, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Korea, Australia, and America. And what I found immensely satisfying about these letters was the genuine sensitivity that the farang frequently expressed towards Bangkok bar hookers. The guys show concern about the ladies possibly contracting AIDS. Anger towards tricks who might force the ladies into having sex without using a condom. Worry about these bar girls' families, to whom the latter typically show great devotion... for the most part, the gents are a well-meaning lot, successfully challenging the stereotype of the sleazy john But whom exactly is it that these guys are going so goo-goo gah-gah over? A photo caption in "Hello My Big Big Honey!" perfectly captures the magnetism of the typical Thai prostitute: They emit 'a lure of hilarity, raunch and innocence.' And not necessarily in that order... I can definitely see why some guys would have a hard time forgetting these vixens. And, indeed, I can see why they'd begin writing them letters to stay in touch, before their inevitable or indeterminate return to the Land of Smiles... "Hello My Big Big Honey!" is quite funny, too, despite its heavy subject matter. Many of the farang [foreign men], the hookers, and bar owners really open up." "Hello My Big Big Honey!" is truly helpful and frequently entertaining...
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