Bangkok: May, 2007

In the middle of Bangkok > I have been loving walking around such a big and interesting city, swimming in the hotel pool while enjoying the heat, eating fruit and drinking coconuts (this is while im not working from 8 to 5 every day.. hey, i am working here, well, being trained in monitoring and evaluation... : ) ) Bangkok. I would probably have named it sin-city, but i spose i wasnt around back then. Positioned high up on the 27th floor of the 5 star Imperial Queen's Park Hotel just off the busy Sukhumvit Road on Soi 22, a street crammed with open walled pool bars, restaurants from Japanese to Italian, from Indian to Thai, along side internet cafes and laundry shops, massage parlours competeing for customers who walk by by saying 'wel-come, wel-com, you like massage, i give good massage madam, sir you like massage'.... all of them smiling, well, no, some of them smiling, some of them sitting looking insanely bored of being out in the hot all day... i suppose they could go in and watch tv next to a fan, but they would go home with less money in their pocket. I have spoken to so many people here...mostly women in massage parlours or just in passing them sitting outside bars... a place where they work 12 hours a day and only get the equivalent of $4...plus 50c in tips if they had a good day.... or for the majority of them, their income relies on whether they get picked to go home with a stranger..... might happen once or twice every two weeks. One girl, a nice 30 year old who i could have sworn was my age said she had been working at the pool bar for only 5 months. she used to work as a receptionist at a golf course, but it was such a low paying job so she followed her friends advice and got a job as what i would call a company girl....not quite a prostitute, but pretty much. Sh says she has no choice. she has an 8 yr old son, and her 44 yr old husband died 3 years ago. people think that because she works in a place like that, and dresses skimpily, that she is a 'bad girl' but she says its not true. she just needs more money. Another one, Pim, at a Japanese bar used to work in a sewing factory, such bad conditions, got 10,000 Baht a month. now she gets 30,000 a month. She can get paid up to 3000 a night when she has to go home with one of the usually older Japanese men that frequent the bar. She is used to her life, but doesnt like it, but its good money. she dreams to save enough money to start a thai restaurant. i asked her abouth her first night on the job and her face fell and she said it was horrible as she put her hand over her heart and didnt want to talk about it. just in my street there are hundreds of these women. in massage parlours too, they do dodgey "special massages", but they get paid 1000 baht to do it..it is their own choice whether they do or not.... the more i hear what these ladies tell me about their lives the more i move away from my initial naive thought of, 'how can they live lives like that and do such things' to more of 'far out, i am understanding that poverty has driven them to do these things and live lives like this, being cheapened by the day. what would i do in their situation? there is such a demand for these services here in Bangkok, its so easy to get into, and i know that i have never been burdened by poverty, i dont have a kid and live on $4 a day and have to pay for taxis, new clothes and food, and rent..... of course they turn to that option, what is their choice? compromise themselves and survive easier, or stick to their low paying, over working jobs...hmmmmm.....it makes me angry at sin and its clutches....that pull people from other countries to this place for the ever increasing sex-tourism that runs rampant here' Every time i go walking i walk past old men from all backgrounds with a young/ beautiful thai lady on their arm... who tells them they are handsome and charming and gives them what they want in exchange for gifts and money...both parties may be 'happy' but i dont care. its not right. it shouldnt be that way. Hmmmm. im venting in my blog, sorry if it doesnt make sense, but its just what i feel when i walk around here. But amoung all that junk, there are smiling happy faces and genuinely lovely people. I suppose the moral of the story ..or should i say the 'immoral' of the story is that money talks. its as simple as that. Poverty afflicts. souls searching for something. people trying to fill that unexplainable void inside with entertainment, sex, money, materialism, even human company, but really they will not be filled unless they find God. God fills the void. Bangkok needs God bad. I hope I can show at least one person God in my life and the way i live. I hope you can too..