Producer/Director Jordan Clark enters a world with various levels of prostitution — from basic bargirls, who merely pour you a drink, money for sex relationships, to hooking on both sides of the gender line.

The documentary provides a glimpse of Thailand’s sex tourism told through the experiences of a 19-year-old bar girl named Pla. Working in the bars since the age of thirteen, Pla has managed to avoid selling her body for sex, a remarkable discovery, given her surroundings that sadly cannot last. En route to the film’s startling conclusion, you are given a true understanding of why and how she ended up in her current environment and wonder if she will ever escape.

The introduction of ‘falangs’, or foreigners, to Thailand has forever changed their city, their economy, their lives, and their desires. This film is a daring and unabashed look at ourselves, through the eyes of one girl, in an honest, morally gripping story, which challenges the worldwide, accepted practice of sex tourism.

Jennifer exposes the ugly side of Vancouver’s streets, where Canada’s current laws have led to the increasing marginalization of street walkers and have made the women at the front lines of the notorious Downtown Eastside particularly vulnerable. It’s a danger that made international headlines last year with the arrest of Robert Willie Pickton, charged with the murder of 26 women, many of them Vancouver sex trade workers.

On the other side are high-priced sex workers like Simone, who are not at such risk. Their expensive services are advertised in the yellow pages as escort agencies, and are taxed and operated under tacit approval of the police.

“The sex trade is a valid career option today if managed properly,” says Scarlett, who now speaks publicly about her work as a madam and her belief that prostitution should be legalized.

A Safer Sex Trade explores this double standard at work by putting faces to the women who represent both perspectives: life in the high rise and on the street.