Luxuries and Lust

Tuesday night was my first night going out to the streets and meeting prostitues (along with leaders from NightLight). Already since being here I've noticed some differences in prostitution from when I was here in 98'(part of it is I'm in a different area of the city.) All over the place you see older white-skinned men walking around with pretty, young, Asian women. And tonight I saw a ton of that. We were having dinner in an open-aired place around 8:30pm and I saw so many of those couples either pass-by or come down and sit to eat. What appals me is they all do this so unashamedly and in such mass numbers! It made me feel ashamed and embarrased to have white skin. We come to Thailand and indulge ourselves in luxuries that nationals could never afford and indulge our lust with no shame.
Our night out had three segments: meeting with the trafficked Russian women, walking through the Middle-Eastern district, and sitting in a bar.
The Russian women were just sitting at a table outside a coffe shop. I would've never known they were prostitues. I wonder what they're routines look like. They were very friendly. We wonder about the trafficking scheme because they seem to have more freedom then stereotypical trafficked cases.
Then we walked around the Middle-Eastern district looking for more Russian women. Mostly all we saw was Arabic-men. All of the shops had signs in Arabic...you would never have guessed you were in Thailand. We walked around the lobby of a hotel. It was so weird. There were so many men; lounging at couches, sitting around tables. Everyone was watching us. We saw one Russian women and a few Thais, but no one they knew yet.
Then we walked the streets lined with bars. These weren't the go-go bars I'd previously seen in Thailand. These were just normal bars/pub sort of places. Places that without the flock of prostitutes in them, would've seemed like any normal ol' hangout spot. The bar we went down and sat in even had a few pool tables at the back. However the odd thing is, there's about 20 white men and over 40 Asian females. Imagine a normal college bar and the flirting that goes on there. One guy gets lucky and has a girl completely interested in him and throwing herself on him. Well...multiply that to being every single guy in the bar and you begin to get the picture of this. And all in hopes that the guy will pick her out and take her back to his hotel room where she'll get paid.
I can't imagine how much the girls have to push their souls away in order to act like this with the men. It's sad. It's a very dispairing situation. I think I'm not so shocked by seeing all of it though, because I have other things to compare it to, like the inner-cities.
We've been fooled. We don't know what love is. We look for it in all the wrong places.

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." 1John 4:9-12