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About Thailand

The Land of Smiles

Thai culture is unique in its graciousness, sincerity, and generosity. Thailand deserves its nickname, “Land of Smiles.” Kindness, politeness, generosity, and hospitality are highly valued here. Thais like to make people feel special, and they will not forget a kind act.

At the same time, Thais are normal people with stressors, hurts, and sometimes hurt others. They can have a hard time following their own standards of goodness. This problem creates a huge opportunity: Thai values fit well with those of Jesus, and when Thai people learn who Jesus is and what he has done in his love for them, many are ready to receive Him.

Religion

Thai culture is very religiously tolerant; most religious groups get along. The vast majority of Thais call themselves Buddhist but, in practice, are animists, following rituals and superstitions to gain merit or good luck and protect themselves from evil, including spirits. It is not a logical system, and Westerners who try to reason with Thais about beliefs will go nowhere. While we often talk with people about Jesus, we seldom talk about the topic of religion. About 5% of Thais, including a sizable number in Bangkok, are Muslims who share the positive values of Thai culture. They also hold Jesus in high regard and are very open to learning more about Him, although their socio-religious system does pressure them not to leave Islam, even when they are only minimally nominal. Christians now make up about 1% of Thais, and the percentage is growing, with new churches being started nationwide. Most churches are small, with under 50 people.

Sex Industry

The engine driving Thailand’s huge sex industry is a pandemic of broken families rearing damaged people in an unending cycle. Stories include economic hardship brought on by spousal abandonment, family debt (often usury loans for rice planting), and drug addictions, which often are triggered by abuse. Many young women slide into prostitution very gradually. Lacking moral teaching and direction from parents, they start out as promiscuous young teenagers and become accustomed to short-lived relationships. A life of pretend romances is simply the next step.

Human trafficking is a buzzy topic, but most sexual exploitation in Thailand does not involve organized trafficking rings and Hollywood-style dramatic kidnappings. We’ve learned that much of sex trafficking happens in local communities. A girl’s first pimp might be an older friend, a neighbor woman, or an aunt. While she might be deceptively sold, more often, she is enticed by the prospect of money. While we do directly reach out to women selling sex as their main occupation, we also address child protection, at-risk youth, domestic violence, and more.

The Impact of Trauma

Childhood trauma creates ongoing anxiety that can be temporarily relieved through addictive substances and behaviors. This leads to a downward spiral of abuse that impacts successive generations.  Addicted people also maintain social networks that foster harmful behaviors. Twenty-first-century technology and mobility foster these networks in ways we are still discovering. In previous generations, the family and village provided boundaries that could help keep youth from straying too far. In today’s Thailand, young teens can easily become completely independent, especially when parents and schools are either too overworked or too dysfunctional to track them down. The pubescent child who is anxiety-ridden from multiple traumas finds relief in sex, substances, and the adventure of her peer group and is immediately hooked. By the time her brain reaches the age of maturity at 25 or so, she is maladjusted by chemical dependency, caught in unhealthy partner relationships, has one or more children to support, and has no money and no work skills. Selling herself becomes her logical choice.

Eastern and Western cultures vary in various ways, and local cultures within a region can also vary tremendously. These differences go far beyond the social manners we first learn when entering a new context. Thais think far differently from Westerners. On top of that, the main factor in the Thai sex industry is personal and family brokenness that fosters endemic childhood trauma. Visitors must understand that one-time interventions do not solve these factors, and it is possible for us to make things worse.

Here is one example: Poor children experience abandonment trauma when parents are required to work long hours or be away from home for extended periods. The last thing these parents intend is to abandon their children; it is the painful result of their poverty situation. These children may be moved to different caregivers out of necessity, and this impermanence will tend to create a sense in the child of being an unlovable burden. The attention-craving of such a child makes her really fun and adorable for visiting mission teams, but while visits by kind and safe strangers will make her happy, the repeated loss she experiences every time another visitor comes and goes can also reinforce the lack of personal value she already feels.

The Only Answers are Long-Term

Rescue is a small part of the long, bumpy path to recovery. Traumatized people, especially those hurt and deprived since childhood, often need to learn or relearn nearly everything: how to manage money, how to handle stress, how to parent, how to get along with others, how to prevent relapse, and how to work a regular job, to name just a few. Meanwhile, they still need food, housing, and transportation, and their kids have to go to school with no assistance from their broken families. Their rough pasts leave them susceptible to health problems, so they need good medical services, often including psychiatric care.

We have seen Jesus wonderfully and dramatically transform lives, but never in a short time. It isn’t that an encounter with Jesus cannot change someone, but simply that the environment of the typical lower-class new believer is so strongly hostile to the love and truth of Jesus that relapse is virtually inevitable.

Jesus transformed the world not through starting programs but by building people, and our reach-teach-send strategy is the same. While dysfunctional environments are an obstacle, God’s power is bringing more and more people to increasing wholeness, and they are having an increasingly positive influence on others. This is slow, steady, and long-term work. However, this does not mean that short-term visitors cannot help. You just need to be prepared for a job matching your skill and knowledge.

Under the surface hurt

Further Stats

Economic Challenges

  • Thailand is a developed country but has some of the most extreme income inequality in the world.
  • 14% of children live below the poverty line.
  • Thailand scores 3.8 out of 10 for Children’s Rights in the Workplace, primarily due to challenges with child labor and working conditions for parents and caregivers.
  • In many cases, sex work is often the only viable alternative for women in communities coping with poverty, unemployment, failed marriages, and family obligations in the nearly complete absence of social welfare programs. It is often a more flexible, remunerative, and less time-consuming option for single mothers with children than factory or service work. (ILO)
  • Close to US$300 million is transferred annually to rural families by women working in the sex sector in urban areas.

Domestic Abuse and Intimate Partner Violence

  • 58% of children (aged 1-14 years) experienced physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers.
  • A 2018 study found that 22.9% of women in urban areas reported physical violence, 29.9% reported sexual violence, and 41.1% reported physical or sexual violence or both. 33.8% of women in rural areas reported physical violence, 28.9% reported sexual violence, and 47.4% reported physical or sexual violence or both.

Education Challenges