Last night was an interesting night. Rod, Maun (our translator), and I went walked the streets intending to take photos of the bar street, when we were called into a bar.

The owner and his friend were from England and had both been in Thailand for 4-5 years. We sat and spoke with them, and having had a few drinks they were very easy to talk to.I spoke with the owner for a while, and pretty much heard his life story.

I heard about his divorce and how he came to Thailand to forget his depression. He had done “all the things a divorced man would do in Thailand” and decided he wanted to live here. So he moved here and bought a bar on the bar street. He has a Thai girlfriend who is less than half his age and now has a Thai daughter who is around 3 yrs old. He showed us pictures of her and I can tell he cares for her a lot.

The owner told me stories about his friend, who was talking with Rod. His friend is a millionaire but you would never guess by how he dresses and how chill he is. He is also 67 or 68 years old but looks more like 50. He also has a Thai girlfriend who is 31 yrs old. He came to Thailand because his wife of 30 years died of cancer and he was devastated. So he came to Thailand to forget his troubles. He seems like a very kind man. Rod was telling me how he supports children going to school and seeks to better others, but he is also a broken man. He has a good heart but I could tell he has not found what he is looking for. His life just is full of numbness. He has a girlfriend, he drinks, he smokes, he is escaping the pain from his past.

I really believe so many of the men who are in Thailand are there because they are escaping the pain of their lives back home. They see how things are in Thailand, where young women need money and are willing to give sex and their bodies to these men in order to have security. Even though the men that they are dating are the age of their grandfathers, it is worth it to the women.

The western men seem to justify it by saying that the Thai population had only roughly 20% straight men, while the rest of the population is 60% women, 20% ladyboy and 10% gay. The obsession to be a woman in Thailand is so bizarre. I have never seen a culture more starved of faithful, righteous men. The women here are groomed for prostitution since childhood and the ladyboy men are becoming more and more acceptable. Walking down the streets, you would never guess that half the Thai women in the bars are actually men.

How could a beauty become so distorted? I would not call this place “the land of smiles” as the name Thailand means, but rather I would call it “the land of confusion.” But our God is a God of order and clarity, and that is exactly what He created our world to be. My prayer for them is the story of creation which was God’s original plan for the world and for mankind.

Genesis 1:26-28 says,
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

This was God’s plan for man. He never intended for all this confusion. He made it and called it good. So my prayer is that the Thai people would act out on what they were originally planned for.

-Kimber Jean (YWAM ORLANDO 2012)