Bam sits on a stool, surrounded by the twelve of us and smiles brightly. She stops only to talk and jumps from her seat frequently to keep us hydrated. More Coke? She asks. Her job is to make sure we are comfortable. Satisfied. Well taken care of. For the moment, we are her customers. We look a little different to her traditional customers. First of all, we are there to get to know her and not to get from her. Also, five of us are white women and the men on our team are not looking for anything in return.

We listened to her story – her attempt at this thing called life. Her 20 year-old son died two days ago – two days ago. As we stared at her, mouths agape with surprise, she told us “Is Ok! Is Ok!” She dropped her story and asked us if we were comfortable. The sadness in her eyes went as quickly as it came and she continued to smile – Thais are good at smiling. A woman we met told us that though Thais smile on the outside, they are mourning on the inside. Bam works seven days a week from eleven a.m. to one in the morning. She serves western men, tells them to buy drinks, tells them they are handsome and wins their affection. She must reach her quota of being taken out of the bar by at least eight men a month. If she doesn’t, the bar owner will take 4,800 baht (approximately $160 USD) out of her wages, made from commission of the drinks men buy for her and what they pay to take her out of the bar. This will set her back enough to be in debt to the bar. If she is in debt, she cannot send money to her 16-year-old daughter who’s finishing high school.

I asked her if she liked Bangkok. She shook her head no. She told me she was only here because she could get no work in her village and she was obligated to support her older parents and daughter. Apparently, her wages are still not enough to keep her son alive from a common illness. She showed us pictures of her his funeral that was only days ago.

While she talks to us, the rest of the girls in the bar call to western men walking by, asking them to come in for a drink. One older man sits down, lights a cigarette and buys a drink. He never takes his eyes off the young Thai girl who serves him and keeps him company as he drinks.

It’s easy to get angry at the customers. But I remember that they are just as empty, broken and desperate for love. The woman that they visit (often more than once) make them feel like they are something. Some men will walk away from the bar. Others will pay to take the girl away for an hour, a night or a weekend.

Most women hope that they will be taken away forever.

They wish that the next man that buys them a drink will fall so madly in love with them that he will pay for her daughter, her son, her mother, her rent or her bar debt. But that rarely happens. Bam said she will be in the bar until her daughter leaves school. We ask her why she won’t join the local ministry that offers girls jobs to make jewelry. She says it’s not enough money and she couldn’t leave the bar. Her family is now the other girls that join her every night, waiting to reach their quota for $15 a man. Before leaving, we pray for Bam while I hold her hand. Her fingers are wrapped tightly around mine and I squeeze gently as we pray, as if to reassure her that I will never forget her. Maybe it is to reassure myself, to make sure that the fingerprints of this beautiful woman never leave me.

She tells us that she is thankful we stopped by and never stops smiling or laughing at herself. It’s all most of us can do not to beg her to come with us. If only she understood that she didn’t need to be disappointed by men anymore. If only, in her broken English, she could understand that there is a God who loves her more than she loves her daughter, more than she misses her home.

Photos from Thailand: