Carol McVetty - Bangkok: A Western City In An Eastern World

Bangkok is a vibrant, intense, international city…in many ways familiar to a Chicagoan. We moved around to our appointments using the “sky train”, a newer, cleaner, smoother version of the El. Office workers scurry and school kids chatter and giggle just as they do in Chicago. But there is no doubt we are in Southeast Asia. Women scrub and sweep the sidewalks following a rain, half the vehicles on the streets are motorbikes, market stalls and even entire restaurants sprout on the sidewalks after dark, and along the sois (lanes) the distinction between inside and outside is blurred. In order to visit one ministry located in a multi-story town house, we walked through a laundry operating out of what would have been the garage, completely lacking a front wall.

The international aid agencies we visited gave us precisely the information I need to better understand the Karen refugees arriving at our church. They painted a picture of the Myanmar regime’s “development plans” that seemed as bizarre and brilliantly diabolical as those of the Kmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1980’s, even if their fatality rate in not as high. The Myanmar military are using forced labor and evacuation of villages to gain control of the rich resources found in the ethnic areas, including Karen State. The result is a nation some have called “the world’s largest concentration camp.” I left thinking “How long, O Lord, how long?” This violent oppression of the Karen people has been going on for decades, sending them over the border into Thailand by the thousands. The bright spot in those visits was meeting people from all over the world dedicated to feeding and clothing the refugees , and slogging through the bureaucracy necessary to resettle them.

The second day we visited Night Light, a ministry founded by Annie Dieselburg, an American Baptist missionary. She is a visionary dynamo who has taken on the global sex trade in her corner of Bangkok. Night Light offers employment in jewelry making for 70 former bar girls. They are welcomed into a community of love that works holistically to mend their brokenness. Some of us had commented on the intense presence of advertising in Bangkok, even more so than in the US (though I wouldn’t have imagined that was possible.) High rise buildings are turned entirely into giant billboards, video ads play on monitors on the skytrain, and so on. After visiting Night Light we discussed the impact of social norms by which everything is for sale making it easier to sell women as entertainment. It is not surprising that Bangkok is the world capitol of sex tourism. But it is a difference in degree, not in kind, to what happens at home and elsewhere around the world. On that cheery note I close. We are off to Chaing Mai in the north.