I am out

[Blastah]

If you find out let me know

Me too please let's get this girl through college!

 

[three-eighths]

To give you an example, on my 2004 trip to Thailand I was traveling with a Canadian girlfriend. We went to the large Banyan Tree grove in Phimai. There, we met two schoolgirls, sitting on a bench in their white blouses and navy skirts, maybe 13 or 14 years old. They started talking to my girlfriend but their english was poor. With my few words of Thai, we managed to communicate. They wanted to know everything about Canada. What's snow like etc. So cute. When we left they walked out with us and the older one asked if we wanted to see where they live. The "house" was like something out of a Tin Tin book, a little hut, perched on stilts over a river, toilet outside etc. We met the mom. She made us food. We sat for an afternoon and talked, saw there vegetable/fruit patch, how they lived with car batteries for electricity, it was really nice experience. They seemed like a happy family. Place was obviously poor, but clean and orderly. When it came time to leave, I told them that I had so much fun and so appreciated seeing their place that they had to accept a little gift, and I gave them 2k baht. It was probably too much (about $60.00 to $80.00 Cdn back then). They were happy with the offering, but what happened next shocked the hell out of me. The mother offered me the girls. She did it smilingly, in Thai so that my girlfriend didn't understand. She nodded to the older girl, who put her hand on my forearm and squeezed it and looked at me. I know some of you guys will joke, but it scared the shit out of me and I got the hell out of there, politely, but fast. We had exchanged email addresses before this happened and the girls wrote to me a couple of times, I never replied. It just goes to show, this world is still a big place and the people in it see their lives differently than you or I might. I wanted to judge a mother that would do that to her kid, but I don't live there; and the memory of those kids, they seemed so normal, happy and well-adjusted. I don't know what to say, but after the scare was over, I felt humbled by my ignorance.

The cynic in me is wondering whether this was the plan all along. Have your cute daughters, innocently dressed, sit in a public park engaging foreign men. Bring them home, show them hospitality while underscoring their living conditions. More often than not, the foreigner will offer money out of kindness/pity. If you get the sense that there's an opportunity, offer one of your daughters.
Shit, I am WAYYY too jaded.