The Lost Girls of Bangkok

Enjoying lunch at an outdoor restaurant by the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, I sat watching the boats go up and down the river. A mahout with his elephant walked by, and I was savoring the delightful flavors of an exceptionally spicy tom kha gai. A young girl, maybe 11 or 12 years old, came up to me and held out a box full of colorful pens, pencils, and other sundries. She just looked right into my eyes, without saying a word, holding out her box. She obviously wanted to sell me something, but this girl seemed different somehow. Usually even a youngster will try to say a few words to me, and will almost always give me a broad smile, but this one just stood there. She seemed a little frightened, somehow, but I couldn't quite tell what was wrong. For more info about Burmese Girl click here.

I tried speaking a few words to her with my limited knowledge of Thai, but no response. Then my friend who was with me clued me in. "She's Burmese," said my friend. "She doesn't speak Thai." I shook my head in understanding, took a pen out of her box and handed her a 100-baht note, and she scurried away. A little while later I saw her handing over her box and her money to a well-dressed man in a car. He seemed unpleasant, and I saw him forcing her into the back seat.

"You shouldn't have given her that money," said my friend. I have to admit to having been a little clueless as to what was going on. This wasn't just a little girl looking for food money. I found out later that gangs enslave these children, smuggling them over the border and forcing them to go out and sell these items on the streets of Bangkok. Most of the money goes to the gang, and not the children, which is why my friend admonished me about making a purchase. But at the same time, if the girls fail to bring in the gang boss's requisite amount of cash, they get beaten. And so I saw an immediate dilemma. If you give her money, it goes to the gang boss, and if you don't, she might get beaten. There's no way to win.

Burma is a difficult place to visit, and a more difficult place to live. But the following week I knew I had to venture over there and see for myself what the people lived like. Cut off for the most part from Western culture, they still dress in traditional clothing. Across the border in Tachilek, Burma, it is a different world from Thailand. Venturing out from the busy border crossing area and nearby bazaar, you start to get a feel for what this country is really all about, and how the people there live.

I heard a story there from a European aid worker who verified my tale of the little Burmese girl who had been forced to sell pens and pencils in Bangkok. "It happens all the time," he told me. "They're terrified. They don't know where they are, they don't speak the language, and the big city is totally unfamiliar to them." He told me a story of a young family whose daughter went missing one day. There was no way to know for sure, but they suspected that the gangs had gotten to her. The girl's mother was distraught but completely helpless. A couple years passed and the mother had discovered microloans, and was able to start a small business, and purchased a food cart. She had never gotten over her daughter, and dreamed that some day they would be together again. The mother was able to save a little money over time, and was eventually able to take a trip to Bangkok, on the extremely remote chance that she could find her daughter. People told her Bangkok was a city of ten million people, and she would never find her-and she didn't even know for sure that's where she had been taken. But she had to take a chance. She took every last bit of money she had earned from her microfinance-funded business and spent the next two months in Bangkok, searching desperately for her missing daughter. Know more details visit at http://www.genghisphone.com/