This story picks up right where my last one left off!
****************************************************************
After our time with the men on Soi Paradise, my teammates and I decided to go back to Bangla Road (Patong Walking Street), the heart of Phuket’s sex tourism and sex trafficking.
I have felt drawn to this road since the first night we walked through the throngs of people and felt the bass beats in my chest as we passed bar after bar. I see the need to go to both the women and the customers here, as well as the sleepy, complacent tourists who pass by the poles and bars with children and shopping bags in tow.
Specifically, many of us on my team have felt burdened for a specific club- a club that our host explicitly told us employs trafficked women from Eastern Europe. They weren’t sure if it was a club, like other outwardly-similar establishments on Bangla, or if there was a darker interior than the drunk clubbing and groping and buying that is commonplace in the other bars.
We were told that it’s hard to get into the club as females in a group; it exists for men.
We were warned that it’s involved with an Eastern European mafia’s sex trafficking ring, and that that’s why all the women there are white, trapped in debts and forced labor.
The women stand out on Bangla, dressed in beautiful formal dresses, inviting men in. As outwardly welcoming as they may appear, they avoid my eye contact each time I pass them. I try to catch their eye and smile, but their seasoned gazes never return mine. Bouncers, perhaps pimps, hulking men with thick accents, stand a few yards away and watch closely. If we stop for even just a few seconds too long, trying to engage the girls in an interaction that doesn’t promise a sale, it is enough to attract their suspicions.
We had been praying as a team for that club for a few days. A few hours before the madness of Bangla Road by night, my teammates and I had prayed outside of the club. We prayed for protection, freedom, and justice.
That night, we started down Bangla, and the white women in front of the club caught our hearts again. We started towards them. Behind them, a small, old, Thai women stood. We smiled and waved at her. She excitedly waved back at us. One of my teammates gestured at the club, and she happily waved us toward her. We walked to her, and none of us were prepared for what happened next.
She promptly turned around and led us straight into the club.
We followed her down thick-carpeted, wide stairs to the underground club.The big Eastern European guards at the top of the stairs looked surprised and suspicious. My heart suddenly beat fast, and I prayed the same prayer I’ve been praying before bar ministry: Jesus, please make me brave. Jesus, protect us. Jesus, please make me brave. My knees shook a little from the anticipation as we climbed down the stairs.
We exchanged hurried looks between us as we descended: Holy crap. This is happening. We’re going in. This is night two. This is the place we’ve been praying for.
We didn’t know what we were doing. We hadn’t tried to make this happen. We had simply been at the right place at the right time, and smiled at the right woman.
The guards at the bottom of the stairs wore expressions that reflected those of the other guards: confusion and hesitation. But the older Thai woman marched us straight past them without a word. At the bottom of the stairs, we are immediately escorted into a dark room.
My brain could barely keep up as we hit a wall of pumping, loud music and my adjusting eyes fixed, in shock, on a blonde, topless girl dancing onstage on a pole, right front of me.
My brain backpedals, overwhelmed; this is the real deal. We hadn’t known that it was a strip club. Our hosts told us about their suspicions that this club housed illegal activities, and now we knew for sure; there is so much wrong here. Signs were posted everywhere that prohibited taking pictures or videos–our hosts’ matter-of-fact words came to my mind: a video could be enough to incriminate the club if sketchy things went on, so phones weren’t allowed. I could only imagine the consequences of being caught trying to take a picture.
The stage and the pole were front and center, and booth tables lined the other three walls. More girls were mingling at other booths, topless and in thongs. We three stuck out like sore thumbs at our booth; we weren’t dressed up at all, there were no men in our group, and we were sober.
In the shuffling to our seats and sitting down, my teammate had taken her phone out. I honestly don’t know how she did it–the guards had been immediately suspicious of us and were watching us closely.
We ordered sodas and talked, trying to act normal and not like stunned missionaries who literally just walked into a likely-illegal strip club, supposedly ran by an Eastern European mafia.
The booth we sat in was set away from the wall, and the guards prowled behind us. My teammate slid her phone back into her bag. Even if we’d wanted to, there was absolutely no hope of any of us getting another phone out; the guards would be on us before we could press “record.”
We were completely ignored by the girls working; their attention was only for the men beckoning to them and slipping bills into their thongs. A few came and went onstage, and I could tell that the experienced women were performing not only for the men, but for the new girls, who sat at the end of the stage’s runway, watching and learning. I felt God’s pain, then, for the girls being taught, and His pain translated into my fiery awareness of the spiritual realm in that place.
“What are we doing here?”
We prayed. Eyes open, fake-laughing and smiling, we prayed for the girls, the men, the whole club, and for whatever reason Jesus had brought us there for. I prayed against the chains that keep the women working there. I prayed for justice with their oppressors and for their protection in leaving the sex tourism industry.
The loud music drowned out our prayers, but I know God heard them.
We briefly saw the older Thai woman again, and she waved animatedly and smiled to us as she passed our booth. Jesus surrounded us and protected us during our short time there as we prayed.
We paid for our outrageously priced sodas and were escorted out. We wanted to find the older Thai women who had initially let us in.
At the top of the stairs leading out of the underground, we looked for the Thai woman, but couldn’t find her. I passed four young men leaving the club, looking satisfied and drunk on lust- addicted to themselves. The expressions on their faces made me want to shake them awake.
I fought the temptation to be angry and judge them; it isn’t my job to accuse them. Satan is already the accuser; the men don’t need another accuser, they need someone to tell them the battle is already won on their behalf. They need someone to tell them that they can leave whatever it is that drives them into the arms of women that don’t love them. They need someone to tell them that they can have a new heart, in Jesus.
My teammate sked one of the guards if the older Thai woman was around; he said she wasn’t. He gestured for someone out of the corner of my eye. A European man with a thick accent approached us.
“Welcome to [club name]. This is a professional [European] Strip Club.” he said.
I realized we were looking a manager, potentially a mafia member, in the eye. Was he suspicious?
“We just wanted to thank the woman who let us in!” my teammate said. The rest of us agreed enthusiastically.
“We had such a great time! We’re leaving now, but we’ll come back and we want to bring our friends here.” she gave a winning smile.
“I miss you already.” He said, sickeningly sweet. We thanked him again and left.
My teammates and I walked out of sight from the club and huddled. I rocked side to side as I realized the seriousness of the situation we had just been in. I hadn’t truly felt endangered while we’d been in there; only a sure confidence in God’s protection of us. Outside and removed from it, however, the heaviness hit me as I replayed everything: the Thai woman, the strippers, the guards, the manager-or-owner-or-whatever creepy guy at the end.
We praised Jesus, completely in awe at what had just happened.
It had to have been Him that lead us straight into the club. It had to have been him arranging it all so perfectly. That wasn’t a place people can just wander into, and yet we had. Completely unexpected and seemingly unprepared, we did it. When we told the rest of our team, it turned out that our host and a couple of our other teammates had been outside of it tonight, praying. We don’t think it was while we were there, but prayer changed that place tonight.
It’s been changing that place since we got here; it’s changing the whole road, and the whole city.
**Before we went, my hosts were not aware that this particular club was a strip club; they’d had suspicions, and we definitely confirmed them. I’ve left out a lot of details on purpose. We’ve given them all the information we have, however, we have not returned. Either way, prayer is being spoken over, around, and inside this dark place!
