The Americans came to Pattaya for five days. The sex industry was gearing up for a boom—but something went wrong

The American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in Thailand after 265 days without a port call. Around five thousand sailors and Marines were on board. It docked at Laem Chabang, about half an hour's drive from Pattaya.

Now just imagine: five thousand mostly young men, nine months at sea, and Pattaya right across the road.

I don't know who first looked at the situation and decided an international campaign to obliterate pelvic floors was about to begin, but social media quickly filled with stories that sex workers were flocking to Pattaya, ladyboys were kicking into overdrive, and demand for male sex workers had supposedly shot somewhere into the stratosphere.

But on September 6, the Abraham Lincoln sailed away, the orgy of the century was officially supposed to be over, and I decided to check the results. Where are the eyewitness accounts? Where are the interviews with survivors? Where is the line outside the proctologists' offices? Where is at least a sales chart for healing suppositories showing a nice spike around September 3?

Nothing.

And this is where my investigation took an extremely unpleasant turn.

Pattaya really had been preparing. Bars hung American flags, some establishments promised discounts for military personnel, local businesses rubbed their hands together, and the sex industry knew perfectly well that a floating city with five thousand potential customers was approaching.

Meanwhile, I went looking for the promised male sexual apocalypse.

Boyztown. Jomtien Complex. Gay bars. Male sex workers. Local news. Forums. Statistics. Mentions. I deployed an AI agent and made the machine scour the entire internet for traces of human depravity. At one point, I even changed my geolocation to Pattaya and went on Grindr. Scientific research demands sacrifices.

And this is where they finally let me down.

Silence.

No evidence that five thousand American military personnel suddenly sent the male prostitution market soaring. No gay bar owners struggling to count all the dollars. No statistics. No “we were working three shifts.”

I came looking for Sodom and Gomorrah and found no statistically significant effect.

At least I found out where this wonderful legend came from in the first place.
Even before the aircraft carrier arrived, tourism communities were already discussing claims that sex workers were traveling to Pattaya specifically for the Americans. Ladyboys immediately got a separate storyline of their own. Posts appeared on specialist forums saying there was more work, while Reddit went so far as to describe the deployment of a “strategic reserve of ladyboys.”

The Americans had not even disembarked yet, and the internet was already mobilizing.

There was just one problem.

The Americans themselves, it seemed, had not read the plan.

They did indeed show up on Walking Street. They went to go-go bars. Some of them undoubtedly had a wonderful time, and I am not about to begrudge these people their last bit of human happiness after nine months aboard an aircraft carrier.
But the famous Soi 6 was closed to military personnel after dark. The owners of some establishments told reporters that they had expected a much larger influx.

Then reports from the scene began coming in, and my investigation fell apart completely.

The sailors went for pedicures—and no, that is not a metaphor.

One salon even ran out of available chairs because American service members came in to get their feet done. Others went shopping. They bought Nike, Vans, Lacoste, H&M. American Eagle reported one of its best sales days in recent memory.

And after 265 days without a proper port call, one sailor went to buy socks. I had spent several days looking for the aftermath of a sexual Armageddon, and the man wanted socks.

At that moment, I felt personally cheated.

But Pattaya did not. Pattaya got its money anyway. Local authorities estimated the economic impact of the five-day visit at around 100 million baht—about three million dollars.

It simply turned out that five thousand young people were capable of spending money in places other than where the internet expected them to.

Pattaya had already been through all this with the Americans.

During the Vietnam War, American service members came here for R&R—to unwind between tours of duty and combat operations. Thousands of young men on American salaries proved an excellent engine for the local economy. Hotels, bars, massage parlors, and entertainment venues sprang up around them.

The American military eventually left, but the business model remained.

Pattaya gradually became an international resort, and the sex industry learned to cater not only to American soldiers but to the entire world. Districts with gay bars and male sex workers appeared, along with a huge trans scene. The Americans did not, of course, bring ladyboys to Thailand—they had existed here long before the first American sailor arrived. But the American military presence really did help create the entertainment industry on the scale for which Pattaya is known today.

And now, half a century later, the Americans were back. Pattaya dusted off the old playbook, and the bars and sex workers got ready. The “strategic reserve of ladyboys” was mentally placed on full combat alert. And what did they all hear?
— I could use some socks.

Somewhere around this point, the story definitively stopped being pornography and became comedy.

At Hot Tuna on Walking Street, about thirty Americans hugged one another and bellowed along with the band to *Hotel California* and *Free Bird*. Sailors wandered through the shopping mall carrying bags. A masseuse on the beach later told reporters that she had not noticed any unusual influx at all.

And so, much to my profound disappointment as a researcher, Pattaya’s proctological statistics remained entirely unsensational after the visit of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The economy got its 100 million baht.
The sailors got five days ashore.
Someone got sex (because of course—at least I'd like to believe so).
Someone got a pedicure.
Someone got new underwear.
And, apparently, the most sexually obsessed participant in this whole story was the internet.
Well, and me.

But at least I was conducting research.