Jaclyn and I hopped on a Tuk Tuk and took a drive across the city to the bus station to acquire 30 some tickets for our squad to head out of cambodia next week.They told her in a thick accent, “No, I'm sorry. Purchasing tickets cannot be done this far in advance. Come back later.” Well, that was pointless! Lets go find our Tuk Tuk man and get out of here.
So we scurry along to our guy and head home…
Jaclyn is on the phone getting logistic issues situated and I'm just enjoying the 30 minutes i get to sit and do nothing.I start to notice our driver has done 2 U-turns in the last few minutes and while i’m noticing this, he stops. He pulls up to this old man and starts to talk to him in camie. They are going back and forth and our driver is waving a card around. So, i figure he’s lost and he’s getting directions. (Here in the Asian culture if you ask “Do you know where this is, can you take me here? they say “Yes” even if they don’t. So getting lost is pretty much normal.)
We our onto our third U-turn and on we go down the jam packed city roads…
about 10 minutes later he does ANOTHER U-turn and stops right in front of another old man but this time this man happens to be facing a dirty, dark, sketchy alley way filled with lots of other men. Jaclyn and I look at each other with our eyes wide, body positioned to run, shaking our heads no, saying:
“I’m not going down there!”
“Do we jump out?”
“I don't know, what what do we do?”
“OMG were going to be sold into prostitution!”
then he starts to talk to the old Asian man… “Oh good he was just getting directions.”
a sigh of relief!
and a few seconds later he starts to pull INTO the alley way
No No NO noooooooo….We both jump up ready to actually jump out. I start to hit him on the back saying, “Hey hey hey, we don’t want to be here. Don’t take us down here”
He turns around, looks at me with a smirk, and shakes his hand at me and says, “Ehhh.” As if to say in english, “Your fine, shut up and sit down.”
So, somehow we end up in the middle of this sketchy, dark alley with a lot of weird old men staring at us, a bunch of Tuk Tuk’s in the corner, and as we pull in a little further..
we see two women, one with a child and the other women with a bunch of folders sitting across from them.
Okay, theres women here…. I think were safe.
We hop out of the Tuk Tuk.. Jaclyn try’s to go see whats going on and I’m trying to talk to the women.
“Do you speak english?”
you no they don’t when you either get ignored because the words that come out of your mouth sound like gibberish or they look at you with a face full of confusion and laugh.
and thats exactly what happened
WHAT IS GOING ON?
Why did our driver leave us in the middle of this sketchy alley way??
Me and Jaclyn are completely and utterly dumbfounded. We are left with no other option but to laugh..hysterically….
and out of nowhere I see this woman walking towards us with tight purple leggings on and high heeled shoes. She stops at the woman sitting alone and pulls out this huge wad of cash and surrenders it over to this woman. She counts it all, puts it in her money bag, picks up her folder, and records the number.
Umm okay, thats weird….
Soon enough two more women come down and do the same exact thing! Holy Frig were in the middle of a brothel and this woman is the pimp.My initial reaction in any awkward situation is to laugh. So, i’m sitting here laughing with the thoughts of: “Holy hell i’m going to get kidnapped and sold,” running through my head a mile a minute. What will this look like? How can i escape? Okay, Jaclyn and I can just make a run for it andd……
she starts paying!
Jaclyn is praying!!…
Okay, yea lets pray! So we go over to those women and I yell over to Jaclyn, “They don’t know english so lets pray out loud.” We start pacing back and forth, talking out loud to our selfs and praying with our hands in the air.
It sounded a little something like this:
“Lord, rescue these girls. Pour your blood upon this place. Destroy this brothel. Protect us, Father.”
They were all staring at us like we we just had escaped from the mental institute. Pacing back and forth talking out loud in a language they couldn't understand, hands up in the air…They must have thought we were terrified or crazy or both..who knows.
Okay, so after we had prayed( this might have not been the best choice to make but go big or go home right?) I secretly tried to take some pictures and the lady pimp caught me! She immediately gets on her phone and starts yelling and the whole time is staring at us with these intense devilish eyes. In the moment she kind of looked like Gollum except Asian version.
I leaned my head over to Jaclyn and tell her “ We need to get out of here.”
and our little Tuk Tuk driver pulls up his Tuk Tuk and don't ya know it, he brought us all the way down here to get an advertisement placed on the back of the Tuk Tuk and then gets his picture taken next to it…..
we get back in and all the guys are laughing and one of them yells out “see you tomorrow.”
We had plans to purchase bus tickets but I wonder if God had a different plan in mind.I wonder if God had placed us in that particular situation to pray his blood over those people and that brothel.And I wonder what effect our prayers will have on the lives we “accidentally” ran into all because our driver wanted an advertisement placed on the back of his Tuk Tuk.
im sorry i couldn't post pics…it just takes forever…internet sucks….Ill have them up on good ole facebook
hope everyone is well. Love you guys, send me prayer requests i want to know whats going on!!!
