Beards and Cinnamon Rolls

I love my city, I really do. Pattaya,Thailand is one of those cities where every minute, you turn around and see something so crazy, so preposterous and unexpected, that you just have to laugh. Or cry. It’s no secret that prostitution is so rampant in Pattaya. It’s one of most popular locations in the world for guys to get their sexual kicks. It follows that you see things everywhere you turn that you would not see in most cities around the world.

All day long, I see girls wearing close to nothing, clamoring for the attention of every passing foreign man. They will do anything to sell themselves in an attempt to make enough money to get by and to have enough to send home to their parents (and often their children) back in their home villages. Often, it’s not what the girls do to get attention that’s shocking to me, but the foreigners who come to Pattaya that think it’s suddenly OK to completely abandon all sense of morality. It’s not uncommon to see an 80-year-old man wearing a string Speedo publicly. Many women seem to think it’s OK to go topless at the beach (which, incidentally, is completely inappropriate to the normal Thai person, and shows a lack of respect for their culture.) Suddenly, your average bearded European man becomes like a kid in a candy shop. You can almost picture them wearing little suspendered trousers, high socks and loafers, with wide eyes and drooling mouths as they peruse the goods at hand. OK, some of them really do dress like that.

Just in case you were starting to think that my life in Thailand must be totally miserable, I will say that there is another side to Pattaya. There are places where there is peace, quiet, refuge from the crazy, and amazing cinnamon rolls. One of my favorite places to hang out in Pattaya is Tamar Center, a branch of Youth With A Mission Thailand. Without going into details that you can research on your own, I will say that the Tamar Center’s bakery has to be one of their most successful and wonderful businesses that they have started as an means of providing alternative work for women who previously worked in bars (the front for most prostitution in Thailand.)

Pii Kak, who runs the bakery, is a good friend and highly respected maker of cinnamon rolls (along with cakes, cookies, pies, and every other baked good imaginable.) She can barely keep up with all of the orders they have, and that’s a good problem. That means that they are able to employ multiple women who are working on building job skills outside of the prostitution industry. They’re able to enjoy a work environment where they can be loved and respected for who they are, and not for what their bodies have to offer.

Every time I walk in the doors of Tamar, I feel it. God. Love. Peace. And refuge from the gaping stares of Speedo-wearing old men. Amazingly enough, there’s even love enough to go around to all of the men who frequent the Tamar Coffee Shop and Bakery (but only for those who are fully clothed). Frequently, as I’m sipping on an iced cappuccino and eying the carrot cake in the glass case, I end up talking to a tourist who is there to get his kicks, but, coming up short, has found and rested at the Tamar Bakery because peace, quiet, and a bit of normalcy emanates from the doors. “It’s just good,” they say. And most of them have no idea that it is not “just good.” God meets with them whether they know it or not, through the amazing and transformed women who work at the Tamar Center, through those of us who hang out there, and through the peaceful atmosphere. God is present, God is working, and God is pursuing their hearts.

God loves those men, in their desperate search for love and in their emptiness. I pray that every time they come up dry and still searching for fulfillment in Pattaya, that they find themselves wandering into a place like the Tamar Center, and encounter the One who forever loves and fulfills.

For more information on the Tamar Center (and where to get the best cinnamon roll in Pattaya), go to:

http://www.ywamthai.org/pattaya/tamar.html

Jessica Mock is a missionary based in Pattaya, Thailand. She is a worship leader, makes amazing curry and crochets copious amounts of beanies. You can read her blog here.