Rating: 
Summary: This is a very intimate portrait
Review: This very funny and at times poignant book reveals the love pangs of foreign "boyfriends" who write love letters to their beloved Thai bar girls.Journalists Walker and Ehrlich interviewed the girls and got their hands on a cache of those love letters. What they reveal is a complex interplay of ego, loneliness, lust, love, a loose grip on reality, and cold calculation on both sides of the correspondence. This is a very intimate portrait of the Thai prostitution industry from an unlikely perspective, informative as well as entertaining, and a bestseller in Asia.
Rating:
Summary: roving insight from marc richard and loreen neville
Review: This was a book waiting to be written, but if you're looking for a raunchy sex tale about Bangkok's red-light districts, try the Internet -- it's full of sites with much more graphic descriptions, even streaming video. What Dave Walker and Richard S. Ehrlich have done is approach a social fact of life from a different angle, a very human angle. "Hello My Big Honey!" is a sociological study dealing with a section of society that can be found in just about every country in the world, their hopes, their fears, their dreams and above all, their interaction and deeper involvement with their clients, the farang (foreigner). As Dave Walker explains in his 10-page preface, the germ of an idea was born in the bars of Patpong Road in Bangkok...True, the days of the Vietnam War were over, but the reputation that Bangkok had gained as a "wide-open town" had spread near and far. Where there had been GIs, now it was oil workers and other professional expatriates hunting a living in Southeast Asia... The letters followed, more than a reliving of stolen moments of physical passion, these were letters of hopes, dreams and longings to return... To some it might seem the craziest of places to find love, a road full of hustling, neon lights, prowling transvestites and ear-shattering music. Lust yes, but real love surely no. Yet whether or not it's the wrong place to be looking for lasting commitment, there are those foreigners who have found their heart's desires in a love that's been reciprocated. This is something that Richard Ehrlich takes up in his 10-page introduction. It's "a surreal night-time world" in which the bar girls live, one in which "men's fantasies, desperation, emotions and hormones" all "collide" with the "sleaze, partying" and highly "intensive care", plus of course, "cash". Most times it's a purely physical interaction that lasts no longer than rising from the crumpled sheets, but sometimes... As Richard points out though, "the odds" are really stacked "against" it [love]. "Dancing on her tiny stage", a girl may try and shut out the leering faces while trying to pick out just one where there is a deeper feeling she believes she can read. Other girls may become outright exhibitionists playing to the crowd, but they too are searching for a soul mate. The "competition" is fierce, for the girls have only one thing on their mind -- grab a man. Their reasons differ, some so spaced out on heroin or amphetamines that their only worry is where they can find the money for their next fix, while the professional plasticine jobs with their fake smiles of enduring love are mentally counting baht as they move around weighing up the potential catch. With so many girls and so many bars, to make the right connection can be tough... No wonder the poor old farang is confused, for it destroys all his Western conceptions of "normal" life...It is easy to become deluded and believe that they are really in love, but what about the girl. Does she really love me? Does she really care that much about me? If she does, then why does she always want money? I know she has to live, but surely she can earn money in some other job. If it's a quandary he finds himself in while in Bangkok, at least the ministrations of his newfound love provide some temporary relief. It's when he's back home that the whole meaning of this relationship begins to gnaw on his mind... It is into this strange melting pot of fantasy and reality that Dave Walker and Richard S. Ehrlich have delved, fishing out a selection of 71 letters from foreign men all around the world, as well as interviewing a dozen bargirls and three bar owners, one English, one American and one Thai. It may seem a massive invasion of privacy to read someone else's letters, for there are only two places a person can never hide -- in bed and in their letters. Yet the only people able to tell the true story of life on Patpong Road are the bargirls themselves and it is story that merits being told. Be warned however, this is a journey that is not for the faint-hearted...The American serviceman on his way to Saudi Arabia prior to the Gulf War desperately trying to persuade his teenage Thai girlfriend that he really wants to settle down and marry her, is one letter that stands out not only for its length but also the intensity of feelings expressed. Then of course there are the girls, who provide another cross-section. There's the consummate professional, all business, who is busy saving to buy a house -- no time for romance in her life one suspects. Or the girl whose
seen it all, from being a barmaid right down to being a mama-san today. Then there's the would-be suicide, who has tried once and hopes she can stave off the desperation to try again. Yet perhaps more typical is the girl who lives in cramped squalor with her son, mother, two younger children, her sister and her boyfriend and another girlfriend... "Hello My Big Honey!" doesn't delve into the morality of prostitution, nor was that its intention... There is even one Thai girl who has traveled the world as an anti-AIDS campaigner, but admits that if desperate for money she would quite willingly have unprotected sex.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading
Review: Tom808 is right. It is easy to judge the culture from a western perspective and make certain assumptions, that from a native viewpoint, just is not appplicable. Including not only the sex industry, but the "child abuse"-like-training very young boys undergo to become Thai fighters.
There is an equiette and protocol, so to speak, with Thai girls and prostitution, and, it's business. And if you are a westerner doing some propositioning there, I believe it is the westerner's responsibility to do some research, and understand the culture and the nature of it. For your safety and out of respect for the host culture, and for the girl you choose to be with. It may not seem like a big deal, respecting a prostitute, but in Thai culture, yeah it kinda is a big deal.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad fiction sold as nonfiction
Review: Walker and Erlich must have had lots of fun sitting around and fabricating these "true" confessions. I lived a decade in Thailand, working as a journalist, spent my share of time in the brothels and bars, and not one word of this insipid little book rang true. But the publisher had a brilliant idea: put a teenaged girl on the cover in a revealing pose and the book will sell. He was right.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting to say the least
Review: With "Hello My Big Big Honey!" journalist Richard S. Ehrlich and documentalist Dave Walker, penetrate the intimate relationship which unites Bangkok's
bar girls and their "farangs". To affectionate nicknames ("sweet cuddles",
"my mosquito") the girls from the go-go bars
reply "money," "a better life". Some foreigners understand the message, "when I'm rich, I'll buy you a helicopter," others sink into despair, "I
would like to be your dog, just to have the
right to raise my eyes and look at you". The abundance of letters comes close to
being indigestible however, and to read
"Hello My Big Big Honey!" at one sitting leaves the reader drunk on ardent declarations. Despite
everything, the book is a meticulously
carried-out survey, entirely free of the
greasy imprint of voyeurism.
Rating:
Summary: Gavroche Says These are Anguished Love Affairs
Review: With "Hello My Big Big Honey!" journalist Richard S. Ehrlich and documentalist Dave Walker, penetrate the intimate relationship which unites Bangkok's
bar girls and their "farangs". To affectionate nicknames ("sweet cuddles",
"my mosquito") the girls from the go-go bars
reply "money," "a better life". Some foreigners understand the message, "when I'm rich, I'll buy you a helicopter," others sink into despair, "I
would like to be your dog, just to have the
right to raise my eyes and look at you". The abundance of letters comes close to
being indigestible however, and to read
"Hello My Big Big Honey!" at one sitting leaves the reader drunk on ardent declarations. Despite
everything, the book is a meticulously
carried-out survey, entirely free of the
greasy imprint of voyeurism.
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