God of this City: Pattaya, Thailand

As we’ve said before, much of our trip is an open agenda. This means opening ourselves up not only to whatever ministries God puts in front of us, but also to whatever cities he brings us to. From the beginning of our time in Thailand, we were presented with a few options – Chiang Rai, to teach about the Bible with an awesome team from LA or to go to Chiang Mai to work with the Karen refugees. Although both of these options sounded appealing, for some reason, one city kept tugging at the both of our hearts: Pattaya.

Pattaya is a fairly well known city – infamous worldwide for being a prime destination for sex tourists. At that, it’s not exactly Disneyland (although, Pattaya is recently being marketed as a family-friendly place). Pattaya was first established as a resort town during the Vietnam War. What had once been a sleepy fishing town transformed into a livelier place due to U.S. Army GI’s searching for some R & R. With word quickly spreading, the town became a hot spot for weekend partying. Decades later, this impression has lasted and has since left the city with quite a reputation.

This reputation mostly sits at Walking Street, the center of Pattaya’s nightlife. Go-go clubs, bars, and sordid massage parlors line the mile-long street accompanied by scantily clad girls, dancers and a large handful of tourists. It has become so notorious that locals and tourists alike have labeled it as “Amsterdam times ten”. Because of Pattaya’s already negative status, much of sex tourism and seedy activity is quarantined to this city. The government views this type of lifestyle and tourism as inevitable, and their solution to managing it is to let such activity happen in a small area (i.e. Pattaya) where it can be controlled.

As you can imagine, our desire to visit this city was not always well received. Two girls traveling to this city alone seemed dangerous. One local friend frowned upon it warning us that since we both looked Thai, men would approach us asking, “how much?” Although we understand this cause for concern, when God places something on your heart, you don’t seem to have any other choice but to follow (a theme that seems to run throughout our trip). Without any connections in Pattaya or a place to stay, we just knew we were going to end up there. As usual, God provided. Our connection came in the form of Mercy Center (read MERCY CENTER blog post).

Although most of our days were spent at Mercy, through a series of divine connections, we were able to spend a day downtown and a night at Walking Street with our own personal driver and a Thai tour guide. In broad daylight, this city does not try hard to hide much. Amidst the groups of sunbathing families, we found swarms of men of all ages either with or in pursuit of Thai women. Walking Street by night is a long stretch of neon lights and chaos. Girls stand outside beckoning for men to enter their club, pole dancers can be seen out in the open, girls wearing short skirts and revealing tops dance on balconies above your head. These sights no matter where you look surround you. Never before had we seen such a concentrated presence of prostitution. Unlike what we had expected, the visitors of Walking Street come in many colors… young, old, men, women and children from all over the world. I wondered if this street had come to desensitize families that it didn’t matter that images of sex and prostitution were so obviously displayed in front of them.

With impressions like these, it’s easy to view the women who work in these areas as dirty, a disgusting choice they’ve made. Often, they enter this line of work because they have no choice. Poverty and greed have a nasty way of making individuals do whatever is necessary to get what they want or need. Unfortunately, the girls are victims of this increasing problem. It’s a sad reality, but it’s what these girls have to face day to day. Sometimes they are in this sex trade out of their own consent to help support their families. Other times, family members sell them as a commodity for extra income (sometimes sold for something even as little as a television). Tragically, this is a hard life to escape, as many are held captive by debts owed to brothel or bar owners. This was a lot for us to take in, walking down this street, passing by many beautiful girls. In my head, I silently repeated to each girl I caught eye contact with, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made”. I couldn’t help but wonder what each of their story was...

Although we didn’t get to hear any personal stories of these girls, there is one story that we came across and often like to tell. At a youth conference called Passion World Tour, we first heard the song “God of This City”, a worship song that has been made famous by Chris Tomlin. The song was actually written by a small Irish band called Bluetree in a small city called Pattaya. Before coming, they didn’t know much about the city, but soon heard countless stories of girls in the sex trade, sold as young as the age of 5. They came to this city to attend an event called Pattaya Praise, to worship God and to show his light in a dark place. Wanting to play more than just the event, they found a bar in the middle of Walking Street that would let them play worship on the condition that they would buy bottles of coca-cola all night. Although nervous and uncomfortable at first, they begun to play and soon enough, felt attune to the music they played. In the middle of this set, God spoke to them in the form of a spontaneous song.

In that moment of worship, they saw God’s heart for Pattaya and the words came out easily. In Bluetree’s own words, “Amidst the depravity God says, ‘I’m the God of this City, I’m the King of these people and Greater Thing are Yet to Come, Greater Things are Still to be Done HERE”. This song had not been written before that night, but Bluetree came out of that bar having God’s song – a song that has made its way from Pattaya to around the world.

We’ve always loved this song, but having been to places as dark as Pattaya, this experience has given us greater meaning to this song. Even through the darkness, there are still glimmers of hope and we’ve seen this firsthand. God has blessed this city with his people – missionaries, NGOs, a house of prayer… All these things remind us that our God is a big God.

“You're the God of this city. You're the King of these people. You're the Lord of this nation. You are. You're the light in this darkness. You're the hope to the hopeless. You're the peace to the restless. You are. For there is no one like our God. There is no one like our God. Greater things have yet to come. Greater things are still to be done in this city. Greater things have yet to come. Greater things are still to be done here.”

[Check out our Pattaya video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsJtaVxp5IM ]