Her shirt is effective advertisement for her body.About 15 young pale-faced girls wearing T-shirts sit under blue and red fluorescent lights on a tiered platform covered in worn red carpet. Surrounding them is a pink curtain, also well worn. Above their heads is a sign in Thai wishing everybody a happy new year.
In front of them sit a few Thai men, ready to deliver 110 baht (25 bahts to the dollar) to a cashier to their left. For that, they expect sex in the girls' home, one of 20 wooden rooms at the back of the house-style building which each of the girls has made their own. Her shirt is effective advertisement for her body.
Some of their rooms have beds with quilts, spirit houses, posters, and fluffy toys. They are the ones who have been there a long time. To them, the room is a precious piece of territory they can put their own characteristics and personality intoIn the corner sit two middle-aged women, the mamasan who try to hurry customers into choosing one of the girls behind the glass partition quick turnover means quick profits.
Next door, one of Chiang Mai's largest hotels, the Mae Ping, is enjoying a healthy turnover of its own, a legitimate one. It is a significant landmark in one of the city's best known brothel districts.
The area has been the target of criticism for years, but it has fallen on the deaf ears of police who are supposed to suppress its most popular attraction young, foreign girls. They are sold in almost all of the ten or more brothels lining the same street. And for the customers, they come at bargain prices.
But late last Wednesday night, the system was changed, at least temporarily.At about 10:30 p.m. the Rung Ruing Cafe was stormed by 11 Bangkok Crime Suppression Division Police. They ran down a 20 metre corridor, kicked open doors, and rounded up 19 girls. They arrested the overweight, aging mamasan, a 28 year-old cashier, and a male pimp who almost escaped in his car.
The two girls they were there to rescue, Bootook and Phousi, both 15, were Akha hill tribe children from Sipsongpanna in southern China. Their parents were rice farmers, and both had lost their virginity in the village. Like many other girls from their region, they had been tricked by an agent into leaving their hometown, believing they would be working in a restaurant in affluent Thailand. 
Each time a girl slept with a customer, a card would disappear from her bundle to pay off her debt. Sleeping her way through the bundle was her key to freedom.
An agent took them along a well-beaten path which usually starts in southern China's Jinghong Province, leads through Keng Tung in Burma, and ends in Nae Sai, where they are sold to another agent. In their case it was suspected that a Mae Sai border policeman was involved in the sale The girls were taken to Chiang Mai, where they were both sold for 10,000 baht and forced to sell their bodies.
Each was issued a pile of cards, about 1,000 of them, that would effectively be their bundle of slavery. Each time they sold their bodies for 110 baht, a card would disappear from the bundle. This usually happened at a rate of four per night. They had been in the brothel for just over a month and would have to work for at least another eight before their ticket to freedom was secured if, that is, they did not come into contact with HIV before then.
In the same brothel, there were at least six other similar contracts which had been signed by parents who sold their daughters, all for between 10,000 and 15,000 baht.
After their rescue, the girls smiled and had a rare conversation with their undercover snitch, an Akha Chinese man in his 30s who had heard about the girls' captivity from a friend and wanted to help. He had spoken to them before to ask if they wanted to return home, and the answer had been obvious.The brothel owners must have become suspicious, as the girls were due to be re sold to a brothel in Bangkok and were told to be ready to leave by car at midnight that night.
Their bedrooms had nothing.
Bedroom of a 15 year old Chinese girl who was sold to a brothel for $400.00. The girls were given a small bucket with which to bathe, a sheet to sleep on, and basic clothes which previous girls had left behind. "We were told to sleep in the same bed another girl had just died in ", they said.The girls later sent a stinging message to the Thai government. "They don't have things like this in our country. We didn't know anything about Thailand. We didn't think there would be things like this. We will now go home and tell people about what we have been through. The government must arrest people who do bad things to others."
Both girls had befriended a 21-year-old Burmese girl, Sandra, who had been forced by poverty to leave here home in Rangoon to look for work. She cried nightly, finding consolation from her younger friends.Again, tears rolled slowly down her face as she told her story. She had been beaten often the brothel owners and had not received any money during here year long stay in hell. She missed her young baby, who she had intended to support by getting legitimate work. She wanted only to go home.Like many of the girls in the brothel, Sandra could speak only a few words of Thai. Of the 19 girls rescued, she was one of only four aged 18 or older. Eleven of them had been trafficked from small villages in Burma. Another girl, a Thai, was five months pregnant and was still sleeping with up to six customers a night.
Police collected evidence, contracts, bundles of debt cards, condoms, small baskets of make up and toiletries, and money which had already been collected that night. The back fence was fringed with barbed wire and the front door had sharp nails protruding from it from top to bottom. The Wednesday night raid followed a similar but failed attempt just over a year ago. Chiang Mai police had apparently heard a raid was on the way and tipped off brothel owners. Brothels shut down instantly, only to re open days later.
Last week, when the girls were taken from the brothel to the police station, local police were called in to take statements from them. One said he doubted some of the Burmese women were as young as they said.
District Crime Suppression Division chief Lt. Col.Wanchai Charoenpol invited reporters to his office and explained that he had only been in Chiang Mai 28 days, and that he was about to launch a campaign against many crimes, including the procurement of child prostitutes.
When asked if he felt sorry for child prostitutes, Lt.Col Wanchai folded his arms "I am a vegetarian. I have a family I rarely see. The police are genuinely concerned about their sanity:" He said everybody knew about the street and its active trade in young girls. But the law, he said, was not on his side. He was unsure of what charges to file against pimps and procurers. But cracking down on child and forced prostitution will be a difficult task.
The leader of the first ever full scale police raid on a Patpong bar last month was led by deputy commander on anti child labour and prostitution Bancha Charuchareet, who was ousted from his position shortly afterwards. He is now under investigation after allegations that he had embezzled money from service girls. Other rumours about police involvement in the sex trade are rampant.
On the night of the Chiang Mai raid, a map of the street near the Mae Ping Hotel was given to police showing more than ten brothels, two of which social workers from the Centre for the Projection of Children's Rights claimed had more than 20 young prostitutes. According to inside police sources, those same brothels and others had been paying police 20,000 baht a month to stay open..This happens all the time. There is a raid and the brothels close until things die down. But they open again every time.