Sooner or later, it happens to any straight single male away in Asia. That busty, alabaster vision of beauty enveloped in a cloud of perfume proves to be part- or entirely female. He/she is a ladyboy, aka katoey, to use the Thai word.

Any traveller can be wrong-footed. Ladyboys are often convincingly stunning — Cleopatras without the obvious virility traits that make many Western cross-dressers so obvious.

Media magnets

A source of fascination, ladyboys are rarely out of the news. They form the focus of a Pattaya Beach "morality survey", according to a February 10, 2010, report in the Thai resort publication Pattaya People. US Navy personnel are advised to beware "the katoey ladyboy invaders who usually accompany US Navy visits to Phuket," says a January 30, 2010, report run by the Phuket tourism site Phuketwan.

Catering to the entertainment industry side of the ladyboy equation, a January 16, 2010, Boston.com story alludes to Lek, the "ladyboy" in the John Burdett thriller The Godfather of Kathmandu, who helps a character "navigate Bangkok's sexual crazy quilt".

Across Asia, particularly Thailand and Cambodia, ladyboys abound, flirting on the fringes of society and patchily catered to by the authorities. In 2004, a technology college in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, allotted a separate restroom for katoeys, with an intertwined male and female symbol on the door. The 15 katoey students were required to wear male clothing at school but allowed to sport feminine hairdos.

Thailand's curious glamour girls often serve in restaurants and can pop up in just about any scenario. There are ladyboy guides, ladyboy boxers, ladyboy pop stars and (above all) ladyboy cabaret performers. Visit www.bangkok.com/nightlife-ladyboy-shows and www.phuket-simoncabaret.com for more information.

Cabaret dazzle

With their impeccably applied make-up, sleek skin and silk gowns, the divas just made for the stage ooze feminine allure. Children laugh uproariously. Stunned heterosexual males watch in silence and leave "dribbling and asking themselves a few deep and meaningfuls," writes an anonymous reviewer in response to Bangkok's Calypso Cabaret.

Ladyboys start out life male but, early on, decide to live as females. In his 2003 peek behind the curtain of ladyboy culture, The Third Sex, British social critic and theatre director Dr Richard Totman documents how katoeys have been an accepted subculture in Thailand for centuries. Some travelled with troupes of entertainers to village fairs where they performed saucy songs and dances called likay theatre.

After studying more than 40 Thai katoeys for four years, Dr Totman decided to group them in a distinct class that marked them out from Western notions of transgender (transsexuals or transvestites). Dr Totman's approach appears enlightened.

Any gender-related word with "trans" in it has a clinical feel that invokes the snipping of scissors more than the fanning of peacock feathers or anything remotely life-affirming. Calling ladyboys "transgender women", as Asian activists do, medicalises them. It may even sharpen the stigma conveyed by the Pattaya morality survey, which the term must be meant to lessen.

No-go girl

Despite Thailand's mai pen rai (no worries) attitude toward sexuality, ladyboys are only pervasive up to a point. Absent from high office, they also play little or no part in the police or the army.

Just flip through the pages of the 2008 book of the outsiders' lives, Ladyboys: The secret world of Thailand's third gender by Melbourne-born Bangkok resident Susan Aldous. In Aldous' book, a go-go girl called Mali tells how, when called up for national service as all young men are in Thailand, she was medically rejected on the grounds of her "misshapen chest".

So, ladyboys have yet to achieve total acceptance. Deep down, they have it tough.

Still, most men and women in Asia do not bat an eyelash over them. Typically, ladyboys are treated with affectionate amusement that could be seen as patronising by earnest types. Ladyboys have no spokesperson except the transgender activists who take the eccentric demographic very seriously.

Family guy

The 6 billion baht question that hangs over ladyboys is why there are so many. They amount to an enormous family whose tentacles fan out from Thailand all over Asia.

One popular, unproven explanation is that Asian men have low testosterone, which means that they can smoothly slip into a ladyboy role. Another reason must be the deep-rooted cultural acceptance embodied by likay theatre with its singing, comedy and ham acting.

The Thailand blog ThaiPulse.com detects another reason. While growing up in a Thai family some children do not feel like men because gender roles are hazy. As a result, the children grow ambivalent and hatch a desire to switch sex.

Strength to strength

Once they reach maturity, katoeys embrace solidarity. "Ladyboys stick together. They walk together, work together, room together, do everything together," ThaiPulse.com says.

Thai katoey ladyboys can be sweet, the writer adds, "or they can be loud, obnoxious, rough and abusive". Despite their gorgeous looks and theatrical aura, they remain men. If stung, they may fight because they have been fighting for much of their lives.