A Tale of Two Cities

We board a budget flight from India to Bangkok. It strikes me that our flight is full of single men. I take the time to count passengers – out of about 105 people on the flight, 66 are Indian men traveling alone or in all-male tour groups. Another dozen or so passengers are foreigners, and the rest of the passengers are Indian families, couples, and women.  Of the men (traveling without women) that dominate the flight, I am especially struck by a group of 15 middle-aged, middle-class Indian men who appear to be going to Bangkok on a tour together.

Bangkok is a “destination city”. That means that it is a destination for human trafficking. Women are brought from all over Thailand – and indeed, all over the world, especially southeast Asia, central Asia, eastern Europe, and Africa – in order to service men in Bangkok’s sex industry. But it could also be called a “destination city” for men. Sex tourists travel from all over the world in order to take advantage of these women. Approximately 60% of men who travel alone to Thailand will end up participating in the sex industry. It accounts for an estimated 3% of Thailand's GDP (about the same as what defense spending accounts for in America). I have the feeling that these all-male tour groups might ramp up those percentages.

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I board a bus from Chiang Mai to Pha Yao. Across the aisle from me is a teenage girl, traveling back to Pha Yao alone. I see a number of other young women interspersed among the bus seats, also traveling alone. I can’t make assumptions about their travels – some of them certainly are students, commuting back from Chiang Mai to visit their families.

But I can’t help remembering that Pha Yao is famous as a “source city”. In the major cities of Thailand it is known to both traffickers and the NGOs that combat them as a major location to get young girls. When my in-laws took a tour of Thailand, even the tour guide openly told the group of the city's reputation as the place where beautiful young women are bought in order to be taken to the sex districts of Chiang Mai, Bangkok, and other "destination cities". And as I think of that, I can't help but wonder how many of the young women traveling alone back to Pha Yao had been away from home for that very reason.

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I believe that knowledge is a good thing, and I'm glad I have it, and think I should share it. But sometimes, as I'm traveling to and from such cities and remembering such things, knowledge brings a lot of pain. Please pray for the girls, the johns, the pimps, the madames, the traffickers, their families and neighbors, and those who are working to help them find paths to a more fulfilling life.