New wind blowing

This is the second story in a series about Pattaya, Thailand, one of the major prostitution cities in the world. Join a group of visitors, both first-time and seasoned, as they give their impressions of this city that is part paradise, part tragedy.

I wrote this in my journal one morning during my trip to Thailand:

Today I fell in love with this place. There is a smog over this city, but if you can catch a glimpse underneath it, a pristine paradise will overwhelm your eyes. And it hits you in a spiritual way—and a smile begins to push into your cheeks as you see what an honor it is to be in it, surrounded by such beauty. There is holiness hiding here, and it is worth hanging around the dirt to hear its inevitable whisper, to feel the touch of fire that heats the underbelly of a city slowly being set ablaze. Eve and Nella at the Tamar Center hold a set of matches, and they dream big. The woman in the slums who cooks for her family feels it, even when her neighbor contracts leprosy. Jessica (Mock) tastes it, too, speeding through traffic on her rented motorbike, she prolongs her commitment to live here for another year.

Welcome to Pattaya.

In an attempt to capture the hidden beauty of places in descriptions, authors often speak of a veil that, if you can manage to peek behind, covers dimly a glorious and sublime sight. They say it is like seeing it for the very first time; the place takes on new life and it becomes reborn, new again. This beauty reveals itself to those who chance behind this veil, and they walk away changed.

Cliché, to say the least. Pattaya, Thailand is smoggy. She carries water bottles and empty pastry wrappers amidst her waves, she presents a bar or 7-Eleven every 100 feet or so. If you were to take a morning jog through her clogged pores, she will clog yours, and leave you smelling – no, reeking – of all the scents lying in her thick and humid atmosphere. The streets are foreigner-ridden. Fat men in g-strings receive massages on the sand, girls wearing next to nothing flaunt themselves toward men twice their age and a tenth their beauty. A veil on this place? I admit, I thought so at first. But no, there is just smog, and plenty of it. This place is dirty, in almost every sense of the word. So imagine my skepticism when my friend Jessica (a relocated American now living here in Pattaya) tells us as we inch through the streets on our sweaty car ride into town, that she “loves this stupid city.”

Seven days later, I did, too.

It happened while on my run along the sidewalk bordering Jomtien Beach. I saw this city in all its potential. For the next 12 hours, my eyes stopped burning and my nostrils ceased to smell the fragrant bouts of polluted air rushing my way. I stopped speaking of the filth and unholiness this city finds its roots in, or possibly I just stopped noticing these sensual perceptions. Regardless of what it was, God showed me what He sees: the potential, the being-made-perfect, of Pattaya, Thailand. Below the smog a different wind blows – the underlying current of pure and undefiled love. I firmly believe that God loves all people, no matter how unaware they are of His affection, but it was at this moment I understood why He loved them. The hope that this place is not yet what it should be, not all that it could be, welled within my spirit, and evoked my desire for change, to push and pull this city out of its current state of smoggy stagnancy and into a beautiful paradise.

The city itself boasts of humble beginnings: a small fishing town catering to traveling military men by setting up one street with only bars and girls for hire. Pattaya has developed into a destination sought after by those who love to party and be entertained by beautiful women. It tends to attract mostly very lonely males in search of companionship, and young military bucks looking for a good time. Girls from all over Thailand flock here in hopes of supporting their families by working the bars and, even more hopefully, finding a rich foreign man to love and provide for them. Most will accept Pattaya for the inexpensive tourism, and ask nothing more from her streets and businesses and people. But there are some who dwell in the city and remain there with a determination for others to see Pattaya the way they do: clean and restored.

One such woman traveled to Thailand from Denmark and caught wind of Pattaya’s plight and its need for change. Four years later, Nella Davidse ventured back and began her first year in prayer for a united ministry and building relationships. The next year she met two girls in need of work, housing, and education, and began to disciple them. Along with her friend Eve, Nella began the Tamar Center, a ministry that reaches out to women working as prostitutes in the bars of Pattaya. The center now provides an established place for girls to step out of the bars immediately and into free English classes, a card making vocation and a community of compassion. Women can further their training in the Center’s bakery, cafe, hair salon and, prayerfully soon, a restaurant where they develop marketable skills to add to their resume.

Not only that, but Eve and Nella instill their own love and hope within these girls through a discipleship training school, where each woman has the chance to step out of the humid, dirty air and breath new life. The women are now bringing the chance to see more clearly to the rest of the country: Tamar Center is now taking the girls back to their home villages to share their stories with family and neighbors. They describe just how polluted Pattaya is, and tell the story of their redemption. The sweet breeze, which started with Tamar Center, is not only blowing through the city, as Nella prayed, but has started to flow into some of the poorest, most remote places in Thailand.

Thai girls from these regions flock to the city behind pressure from their parents and the desperate need for money. So while Eve and Nella work to get those girls already in the industry out, Leanne works in the slums of Pattaya to help prevent the children from entering at all. She came to Thailand 14 years ago, working in refugee camps and the slums of Bangkok until God brought her to Pattaya. She established programs for children, with the intent of moving the slums away from dependence on food handouts and evangelism and into a more independent situation. Her humble desire is to set the children’s sights high, and invite them to see more than their family’s situation currently dictates. She does it all for the love of these people.

“I feel very comfortable with poor people…I guess it’s just been indoctrinated on my heart,” Leanne’ said. Her laid-back demeanor is not able to hide her intense compassion for the work she does -these people are her life.

God is transforming this place with a handful of committed people loving Pattaya, of whom Nella, Eve and Leanne constitute only a few. Already, the bars close earlier, a diversity of businesses are moving into locations where bars used to be, ministries are growing more robust, transvestite bars host worship events, women start vocations of their own, and every day, the population is able to breathe a little easier as the wind of the Holy Spirit sweeps through Pattaya.