Ladyboy prostitute Gam is used to being arrested, paying a fine to police for soliciting, and then being released almost immediately to continue her work.
But since Pattaya's new police commander started getting tough on street walkers, Gam and other prostitutes say they are spending the night in custody in a police office.
"Getting arrested is not something new," said Gam, a tall, slender ladyboy in her twenties, scouting for customers on Pattaya's City Beach Road last week. "We all have been through this before. All we have to do is pay the fine and get back to work.
"What is new to all of us is that the police lock us up in the office until the morning. We can't even make a phone call to ask someone to help us out. By the time we get out, we can't work any more."
Tourists look on as Thai transvestites dance in Phuket. (AFP photo)
Another transgender sex worker, Sandy, seated on a beachside bench, told the Bangkok Post Sunday she had been working the area for three years and had never seen nightly police raids until recently. Sandy said they are conducted almost on a nightly basis and are targeted at beachfront areas - especially near Pattaya's seedy Walking Street area - where ladyboy and female prostitutes hawk their trade.
"Life is already hard as it is," Sandy said. "I can't imagine what it would be like if the NCPO came to town."
One police officer told the Bangkok Post Sunday that arrests for soliciting can be difficult to make, as the sex worker and client must be caught making financial negotiations for a sex act. Usually the sex worker is taken to the police station, fined 500 baht and released, however, sometimes they are fined a nominal amount as low as 100 baht if they are short of cash.
Som, a ladyboy sex worker recently arrested by police, said foreigners and police volunteers were posing as customers to help secure arrests.
"They pretend to be a customer or get some foreigner to pretend to be a customer," Som said.
"They negotiate the price, and once we agree the police reveal themselves to arrest us."
Thitiyanun "Doi" Nakpor, the manager of Sisters, a health counselling centre for transgender people in Pattaya, said she received a phone call for help at midnight last week from a ladyboy arrested by police.
Ms Thitiyanun said she went to Walking Street and confronted a police officer who had set up a checkpoint.
"Why you are only arresting ladyboys?" she said she asked the officer.
The policeman did not give her an answer and told her to go to Pattaya City Police for an explanation instead. There she saw at least 100 ladyboys locked inside an office. The soliciting charge is not serious enough for them to be held in a cell.
"It is the NCPO's policy," a duty officer explained to Ms Thitiyanun. "They ordered us, and we implemented the order."
Ms Thitiyanun said on that night the ladyboy sex workers were not detained for very long. "They were released as soon as the police put their names and fingerprints on the record, and they paid the fine. But if they have to come here on a nightly basis, it will affect them a lot."