Sex Tourism
Sex tourism is the act of traveling to another location for the purpose of having sex with prostitutes. There are many countries known for this, including but not limited to Costa Rica, Thailand, Cambodia and Kenya. Las Vegas is a popular sex tourism location in the USA because prostitution is regulated by the state.
France's culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, wrote about his sex tourism adventures in Thailand in his autobiography, "The Bad Life". Frederic sparked a controversy after he wrote about sleeping with young boys on his trips abroad while lamenting about the atrocities of human traficking. Unlike the regulated sex industry of Las Vegas, Thailand depends on slavery and human trafficking to fuel its prostitution profits. The Thai government has been working with western countries such as the United States to alleviate the problem.
The sex tourism industry of Costa Rica is composed of more willing sex workers than in some other countries. Like Las Vegas, Costa Rica regulates the sex industry as an alternative to prohibition. Unemployed mothers often sell their bodies in cities to feed their kids and send them to college. The demand for such jobs skyrocketed after the global economy sunk in 2008. Thousands of women from neighboring countries moved to Costa Rica to cash in on the sex tourism trade. By 2010, there was a shortage of sex tourists to help them pay their bills as the market became saturated.
The child sex tourism industry is alive and well in Kenya, where the government officially denies that the industry exists. Mombasa is a major tourist destination in Kenya, especially for men looking for young boys to sleep with. The poor kids in Mombasa are usually bribed by pimps to prostitute themselves. Some bars even allow these kids to drink despite underage drinking laws. Officials rarely enforce such laws. To them, the leniency boosts the economy. Mombasa once had a thriving economy due to normal tourism. After a violent election and a sunken economy, this once thriving city turned to sex tourism to keep from going bankrupt.
