Cambodia forum

I'm presuming English is not your first language and that you mean 'strip of bars'?
There are Streets 51, 104 and 118, in fact there are bars everywhere these days. The nicest is the Riverside area.
If you mentioning the other possibility the answer is NO

Very serious Madmac, the moral police here don't want to turn the country into another Thailand.Despite the fact you can't walk 5 yards without tripping over a prostitute in Wat Phnom or Street 51 the girls have to be properly dressed.Bar girls have to have skirts to their knees and no cleavage showing. Pole dancing is strictly verbotten as is dancing on the bar. About 15 months ago the police raided quite a few places, massages etc and dragged the girls away.Some of the owners are still languishing in gaol especially those who were profiting from prostitution by imposing bar fines.Of course it doesn't change the fact that sex for money exists.You can't stop the oldest trade.The freelancer places like Walkabout on Street 51 are full of girls.Not really relevant but Cambodia is the only place where the bar brawls are between women competing for men, and boy can those Vietnamese girls fight.

This is familiar territory. Methinks we're heading down the road to Pattaya again
Walkabout-avoid it like the plague full of vampires and skanks.

Heart of Darkness used to have a reputation but it's pretty tame now; gone are the days when scores were settled by rolling a live grenade through the door.
I suppose Martinis is the best bet for a night out as it's got an air-conditioned dance floor if you like Thai pop, a large cinema screen and a huge and rather quaint outdoor area to sit around in and serves half decent food. Again though it's full of the same girls who frequent Walkabout.The vampire comment was made only half in jest as a friend of mine was bitten on the arm right to the bone when he spurned the advances of a girl.

SBE I mentioned Pattaya because I thought you were trying to wind up Madmac again

Personally, I prefer Mekhong River bar on the Riverfront at the end of Street 118 for it's excellent 75 cent beers and superb service. They also do a breakfast buffet for $2.75 from 7a.m. until 11.30 a.m and I often go there to stuff my face and drink the excellent coffee.Can't wait to get back in 2 weeks.Some hardy souls combine a night on the beer there with the breakfast.

Oh and my son lives in Khon Kaen, he told me there's a place called "Rad" which is notorious in that domaine. In Thailand it's endemic.

Although I don't know of any of these sort of places in Cambodia if you ask a tuk-tuk driver I'm sure something can be 'arranged' as most things can in Cambodia if you've got the greenbacks.
The moral crusade has been taken very seriously in Cambodia though; with even a General, who thought he was above the law, languishing in Prey Saw ( the less than salubrious prison here in PP). The guy in question was jailed for allowing certain sexual acts to take place in a public environment namely his bar. Mmmm, that's got you thinking!
Word is that the real leader of Cambodia isn't Hun Sen but his wife Bun and her coffee circle.
Taking money for providing sexual favours or shows is very much frowned on and I have it from the horses mouth, as it were, that the massage girls pocket all the money and the house does not take a percentage unlike Thailand.The parlour only receive money for the legit massage.Now you've learnt something I bet.

"Most places contain very bored girls who are already mostly undressed. The girls wear numbers and spend most of the time shuffling round poles looking at themselves in a big mirror opposite the stage. They aren't very good pole dancers either. There's sexier pole dancing on CSI Las Vegas."

Yep, it is absolutely uninteresting. The gogo places are just boring. I don't get it myself, so I am with you there.

"I've never seen a show involving an erotic striptease in Nana or Soi Cowboy ...ever."

I've only been to one club once on Soi Cowboy. And it was boring. "Erotic striptease"???? No. But the OP just said "strip off" so I am under the impression he meant your normal gogo place - but perhaps not.

"You have TWO striptease clubs in Mukdahan??"

We have two clubs where the girls get naked - I don't know if I would call them strip clubs as the dynamic is thoroughly different.

"It was the mention of go-go bars that started it, now I wonder who mentioned that?"

You did when you referenced "the other". And no, table dance is usually the term used and the event meant as well. Gogo refers to SBEs description - which is quite accurrate.

Well, without going into definitions - at this point in the game gogo bars the girls largely get nude, or close to it. Coyote girls don't, but dance very suggestively.

As for stigma - for me personally I don't attach a moral judgement to the whole thing one way or the other. I just note reality. People are going to do what they are going to do, and it ain't my business. Girl wants to hook, have at it. Guy wants to buy sex - fine. I don't care. It is what it is. Many of the village girls around here have engaged in that practice at least part time if they had the goods to make it saleable. But I know plenty who haven't as well. Whatever floats their boat.

Same with who people date. I don't care if you date or marry whoever. If it works for you it's fine. I don't caste judgements on those things either, and I am not sure why some feel a need to.

Yep, most of the girls have no experience in budgetary planning, and the money goes as quick as it comes...

Having said all that, a lot of the girls do send hard cash back to their families. Some waste it, like the girls do. Others are barely subsisting, and so spend it on food and so forth. But for a few, they actually make real home improvements, or find ways to use that money to generate more (such as open a small business). I know one family in the village who has three girls who have "gone to work" in the industry, and they have now added 7 Rai to their rice farm, improved their house and made other small improvements to the overall family welfare. However, I would have to say they are the exception and most don't spend as wisely as that.

The only way they get money, and I think this applies to Cambodia too is to marry a farang(barang). In Cambodia the girl sends money home and the father, brothers drink it away.When she comes home the family look at her with disdain.Amazing double standards

There's a Cambodian saying that sums up the lot of a girl.
A man is like a diamond when he falls in the dirt you can wipe the dirt off and he shines again but a woman is like a piece of cloth when she falls in the dirt it won't come out.
Feminism hasn't arrived in Cambodia yet.

It's the double-standards that amaze me, the hypocrisy. Cambodia is a very conservative country and in the villages life still remains very traditional. Part of this tradition is that a woman must remain pure. She shouldn't drink, smoke or have sex before marriage. All the money a family accumulates will go on the education and well-being of the sons. The woman's job is to care for the family and the home and she normally is the one who holds the household budget. Girls feel obliged to support the family and often go to the city in order to make money to help the family when it is struggling. This can be for a variety of reasons from general poverty to unexpected doctor's bills, death of the main breadwinner etc. They soon learn that it's not so easy to make enough money to live and send some home by working in the factories, though many do by working long hours of overtime fuelled by taking yaba or yama as they call it here.
The alternative is bar work or freelancing in a bar or on the street.Being kind-hearted or responsible, call it what you will, the girl will suddenly send home larger amounts of money than would be the norm and the mother will notice. They'll accept the money but the girl will, from that time, become less valued.She has been sleeping with men with whom she isn't married.She is less marriageable.
I know it stinks but that's the way it is here.Look at one of the Khmer words for prostitute, 'fallen woman'.
BTW If she snares a Barang she will be 'reinstated' and get lots of kudos from the family.

I am with you all the way Sayadian

My pet peeve is the rejection of people carrying HIV. My now deceased mother in law carried the virus, which ultimately became full blown AIDS. She had a host of physical problems, and ultimately it was her bad heart that killed her, but watching the village in which she grew up completely isolate her socially was pathetic - and I took every opportunity to remind them of that (somehow I remained popular - must be because I have money). To their credit after some years and constant harping by a small group of us they did begin to come around. But it was a struggle. For her boyfriend / husband (not my father in law) it's a sad time (he is also infected, which is how they met) as his children will have nothing to do with him and won't let him live with them. My wife and I have let him live on our farm, so he stays there now, but how sad it must be to be rejected by your own children because you carry HIV.