This past month we travel a lot back
and forth between Bangkok and Chiang Mai, the journey usually takes 9
hrs each way so we typically stay at a hotel recommended by our
contact in Chiang Mai. I enjoyed our trips to Chiang Mai, the city is
very is just an incredible place to visit and a great place to
surround yourself with Thai culture. It has an old but new feel to
it… it has modern malls and technology but still has the original
moat that protected the city from its enemies. At night you can go to
the night bazaar which is a huge market that takes up quite a few
city blocks, here you can buy all kinds of different items ranging
from souvenirs to authentic Thai clothing and pottery. Walking
through the night bazaar is fun even if you don’t like shopping
because there are people in the streets performing original Thai
culture dances and songs along with magic shows. Well this last trip
to Chiang Mai Tyson and I went again to the night Bazaar just to get
out of the hotel and do something. Once there we didn’t see anything
different than the previous trips so we became bored and I persuaded
Tyson to leave that part of town and just wander around the city for
a bit.
I have the attention span of a puppy so
I again became bored of just walking around so we headed in the
general direction of the hotel. On the way back we started to notice
an increasing amount of bars and restaurants on the street we were
walking on. Not thinking much of it though we kept walking until we
came across the part of the street that was nothing but bars and
young women standing outside of them. It instantly clicked where we
were, we had accidentally walked into the red light district part of
town and those women were standing outside waiting for the next
customer to come and buy them for the night. My heart instantly felt
heavy and burdened for the people standing before us, we started to
turn around and not walk through this street but felt compelled to
walk to the end of the street. When we had gotten around the corner
from the bars I turned to Tyson and asked “Man do you feel as
spiritually angry about this place as I do”? Tyson replied “It’s
sometimes scary that we think so much alike.” So my next question
to him was “do you feel like we should go back”? Tyson replied ”
we should pray about it first”. So we prayed at the end of the
street for about 10 min, just asking God to guide us in what we felt
compelled to do and that He would protect our minds and eyes from
anything that would have a negative effect on us. After prayer we
still felt like we should go back so we walked back through all the
while praying that God would show us which bar to go to and to whom
he wanted us to speak with. We walked all the way to the opposite end
of the street and didn’t hear anything specific from the Lord so we
stopped at a parking lot, prayed again and gathered our thoughts. We
still felt led to try again, so we walked back through and stopped at
a bar that we felt would be safest for us spiritually to go into and
share the Gospel.
We sat down at the bar and the
bartender asked what we wanted to drink, we asked for two coca-colas
and he laughed at us as he walked away to get our drinks. As we
waited I looked around the bar and saw only Thai women and Caucasian
males, some men were old like 50-75 years old few were between ages
25-40, all the Thai women that I saw were probably between ages 20-
35 years old. Some men shot a game of pool with the girls and others
were sitting with them at the tables whispering in their ear and
grabbing inappropriately on them. I turned back around a girl came up
to the bar and began pouring the drinks that Tyson and I ordered,
after she gave us our drinks she sat down with us. I asked her what
her name was and she said “Oui”, she then asked us where we were
from and I told her all about where we were from and why we came to
Thailand. Kinda to my surprise she said “this is a good thing what
you and your friends are doing” then she began telling me how much
it would be to buy her for sex that night. I was blown away by two
things, first that she still thought that I wanted to buy her for the
night, second thing was the amount these girls were selling
themselves for. The amount was $400 baht which is the Thailand
currency, the equivalent in the American dollar is about $12.50. So
again I told her that we only came to talk and that I wanted nothing
from her other than a conversation, so she asked us to buy her a
drink so we did and we began to ask her about her life.
We found out that she was 31 years old
and had worked at this bar for about one year, she said that prior to
working at the bar she worked at a hotel (she didn’t specify what she
did at the hotel). I asked her a ton of questions about whether she
liked working here and if she had a dream job, if she wanted to get
out of what she was doing, etc. Some questions she dodged and didn’t
answer, mainly the ones directed to her about leaving this job. The
conversation finally came to religion and I began to ask her if she
knew the name of Jesus Christ, she said she heard the name but didn’t
know anything about him. So we began to share with her the Gospel of
Jesus Christ and as were leading up to the Hope that is in a life
that is given up to Christ a group of men came into the bar and she
got up to greet them and help pour their drinks. We waited for her to
come back for about 20 min, she never did, and the bartender was
urging us to either buy more drinks or leave, we didn’t have any more
money to spend so we unfortunately had to leave. As we walked out we
did get a chance to tell her goodbye and she reached in her pocket
and handed me a piece of paper with her phone number on it. We began
walking back home and just talking about what happened and trying to
think of what we should do with her phone number. It hit us that we
should get it into the hands of the ministry one of our team of girls
were helping here in Chang Mai. The ministry helps young women get
out of the sex trade industry and teach them useful skills that they
can use to get a better job and better life for themselves and their
family.
It was intense to experience the
heaviness that surrounds the bar scene, it really gave me a new
appreciation of what our teams of girls were doing every night when
they ventured into those bars to help bring the Light of Christ into
these dark places. I don’t know what will happen to Oui but I think
about her often and pray for her and the girls in that bar, I pray
for the men that come into Thailand seeking out women to buy for sex.
I pray that the men find fulfillment in Christ so they don’t feel
compelled to fill the void in their lives with blind sex and that
they realize what they are doing to these beautiful women of the
Lord. I pray that the women will find their self worth in Christ and
that Christ will bring forth freedom for these women, freedom from
the bondage that men have placed them in. I know that some people who
read this will think “the girls have a choice” and that is
correct in some situations but most of the girls who are in this
industry are here because people have threatened to kill them if they
don’t go through with it or because their own family sold them into
it. Some are in the industry because they don’t feel as is if they
have any other way to make money and support themselves or their
starving family members. Please keep southeast Asia in your prayers
and if you know people who feel led to fight against this injustice
send them this direction, there are many ministries located here who
need help, just two that come to mind is Destiny Rescue and
ministries that have branched off of YWAM Thailand. Both can be found
on the internet and will gladly accept additional help in fighting
against the darkness of these countries. You can also email me or
anyone on my team for more info on helping. We can make a difference
one girl at a time.
