Wednesday 04 December Expat feed. Latvian girls are being urged to steer clear of one-night stands with tourists as part of a campaign to prevent the capital, Riga, turning into the "Bangkok of the Baltic". The move comes following a huge increase in visitor numbers to the country, which has become popular with British stag parties looking for cheap alcohol - and sex.
Over the next month, Latvian girls will be asked to consider very carefully whether they should agree to have sex with a visitor in return for a drink. The campaign also suggests that "sex tourism" should more accurately be called "sex terrorism". We don't want to become the Bangkok of the Baltic. But the opening up of the country to the West, a process accelerated by the arrival of low-cost airlines, has spawned a very different kind of visitor and a proliferation of late-night pick-up bars and strip clubs.
Those behind the campaign hope it could lead to laws curbing the seedier aspects of life in Riga, leading to a restoration of its image as a city of high culture. In Krakow, another east European city that has been inundated with badly-behaved Britons, local leaders earlier this year said they wanted to control the excesses of stag party revellers. And in Slovakia earlier this month, a British groom-to-be who stripped off and jumped into a fountain in Bratislava was given a jail sentence.
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