This month my team has been in Phuket, Thailand. It is a huge tourist spot, partly because of being surrounded by some of the world’s most beautiful beaches, but mostly because of the booming sex industry here. We volunteer with SHE Ministries, which is helping women and at risk children in Thailand trapped in the commercial sex trade. They provide employment, vocational training, counseling, and even lodging while engaging them in a positive community, friendship, and restoration.
We spend the weeknights “ministering” in the bars on Bangla road, building relationships with the people who work this street, whether it’s the bar girls, ladyboys, ping pong show promoters, or street vendors. Sometimes we walk the streets and talk to people, sometimes we just walk the street and pray, sometimes we go sit in a bar, have a coke and get to know the women by playing a game with them. The goal is to offer them a way out of the bars. There are 2 world race teams here this month, so we rotate: one team goes to Bangla- we do a prayer walk during the day and then go out that night – and the other team does manual labor and then stays back at night and intercedes. Bangla Road is like nothing I have ever seen.
This is how the city describes it on the online website:
Like all night owls, Soi Bangla awakens when the sun sets. That's when Patong's liveliest party zone becomes closed to traffic and ready for action! Famous for its raunchy nightlife, Bangla goes all out to entertain with girls, beers and music that increases in volume as the moon rises. Jammed most nights year round, it's actually totally unthreatening and lively place to walk around as bars compete for customers.
The girls aim to please – dancing around poles, engaging in banter, or coaxing customers to play simple bar games like "Connect" or "Hammer the nail" to break the ice. The objective is to entice customers to buy drinks and hopefully, take them away for the evening.
That description glosses over the reality of this street and what goes on there. Basically, everything is permissible and nothing is hidden. I’ve heard it described as hell on earth. It’s easy to go there and judge these men buying these women and these women selling their bodies (for the equivalent of about $16 a night), the tourists getting entertainment out of all of this. But when I truly look into people’s eyes, I see a deep emptiness and I get a glimpse of what my life would be like without Jesus…a continual search of pleasure to fulfill that space inside that only God can fill…doing anything I can to survive. That’s what we pray over Bangla, for God to take over, open up eyes and hearts to The Truth, to be filled and restored in God so there wouldn’t even be a demand for this industry. And that is exactly what He is doing.
