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A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 12:24 pm
by General Mackevili
Starts playing a video of the crucifix.

I need to start coming up with better excuses for why I go to girlie bars too. :thumb:

"A FEW DAYS AGO I WENT TO A GIRLY BAR IN PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA. Sometimes I do this. I want to talk to these girls about different organizations here that can help them, that 99% of them know nothing about. And I also just want to talk to them as these are some of the most intelligent, fun, and interesting people to talk to here. So these bars are pretty different from bars back home, where you have to work all night to get a girls attention. Here you walk into these usually dark, tiny places with smoky reddish lighting and you are immediately intercepted by about 4 or 5 beautiful Khmer and/or Vietnamese girls that all have big, big smiles painted on for you, and lots of "HELLO SIR's" and "PLEASE SIT HERE SIR's" to go along with their tight mini skirts that are like a uniform at the bars all up and down the riverside red light district.

The big outpouring of attention you get when you walk in the door is not because you are suddenly more handsome than last time you checked out your ugly mug in the mirror. The girls want (need) you to sit next to them because ultimately most of them are only there so that you will hopefully pick them and take them home and, if they are lucky, want to make them your girlfriend for a week and take care of them while you have sex with them every night, before you go off to Thailand or wherever is next for you. A friend of mine here calls the girls "Cinderellas" because we see them all the time hoping to find a good man that will love them and take them away from this life. These girls never find what they are looking for from the kind of men that visit these places though. They only find broken men who use and throw away. So in this way they really aren't Cinderellas. There is no happy ending. But, in the meantime, while they wait for the man that will never come, the bars pay them between $90- $120 a month to hang out there (no girls, no customers). Sometimes the bars pimp the girls out and the girls maybe get one day off from the bar every 7-10 days. If you do your math they are making something like $3-4 a day from the bars. Things here in Phnom Penh, Cambodia are not cheap like you may think, and it is impossible to have any kind of a decent standard of living when you are making only $4 a day.

The thing that always kills me about these smart, fun, interesting, very beautiful girls that back home in Canada every guy around would be tripping over themselves and each other just to get to is that, instead, here in Cambodia they are the desperate ones. I always think what a cruel joke that must feel like to them. Made by God to be a beautiful, attractive woman and forced to compete with all the other beautiful girls for the attention of the 60 year old dude who just walked into the bar doing a pretty deadly impression of a rooster walking into a hen house.

But this is the reality here. Many of these girls incomes are helping to support their entire family back in their home province where they maybe have 4 younger brothers and sisters who won't have enough food if their big sister doesn't keep doing what she's doing every month. And the girls will lie to their family about what they need to do to earn the money they send home every month. And their families will pretend to believe them. And this is the way the cycle goes. For several years until she loses her looks and if she's lucky(?) doesn't contract HIV, or get pregnant, or cultivate a major drug addiction, or go missing because she went with the wrong guy etc etc. etc.

A FEW DAYS AGO I WENT TO A GIRLY BAR IN PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA. I saw the same sad scene replayed that I always see at these places. But this time it was a little bit different for a while. First I need to explain that a lot of these bars have an older computer set up at one end of the bar and this is for customers to use to basically play dj and find songs on YouTube to play over the house sound system. Like a jukebox, for you older guys reading this, like my dad, that have no idea in the world who, or what, YouTube is.

Anyway, if you know me at all, you know I am all about playing dj and forcing others to listen to my music. (Why wouldn't I, as all my music is awesome IMO?) So at these bars you can usually find me talking to the girls and also making playlists and taking song requests from everybody in the place, and basically ensuring that the music will be awesome for at least as long as I am there. But this last time was different. Somehow, I stumbled across a scene from the Passion of the Christ movie while I was looking for a (probably Nirvana) song. The scene was the crucifixion scene and I thought I would play it to see what kind of reaction it would get from the girls at the bar.

For the first few seconds they didn't see it. But then all of a sudden they did and then right away the whole place went really quiet and suddenly everybody in the girly bar was watching Jesus get crucified by the Romans. When the nails went through his hands and feet the girls gasped and looked away. A few started to tear up. They started to say to each other "Yesu" which is their name for Jesus, so I started to ask them questions about Him. "Do you know about Yesu?" "Do you know why he died?" And just like that me and 10 Cambodian working girls at a girly bar in a red light district in Phnom Penh, Cambodia are talking about Jesus. And for those 5 minutes we weren't anymore in a dirty, dark place where girls bodies and souls are sold so cheaply. We were in a place that had some hope for a second and where love, and not lust, was the focus. Those girls were really interested in hearing about God. They were listening to what I was saying and they were asking questions. But I think their favorite part was when I told them that Yesu died to make them clean because He loves them.

After 5 minutes the old white dudes there started to get uncomfortable and requested that music be played again. And everything went back to normal. Fade to black. But for those few minutes I saw those beautiful girls for the first time.
"

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Re: A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 12:52 pm
by taabarang
I don't think even StroppyChops would have thought of that. While I appreciate your humanism I don't believe that it was missionary zeal that caused you to enter that den of iniquity in the first place.

"But for those few minutes I saw those beautiful girls for the first time.""

And if I had been the bartender/owner it would have been the last time .

Re: A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 12:53 pm
by Cam Nivag
Western NGO types who try to help these girls often suggest that the idea of marrying a foreigner is a fantasy for them. In reality, a rather significant percentage of hostesses end up married to white guys. A good looking hostess who can speak English and who works at one of the better hostess bars like Angry Birds, Shanghai, etc. is more likely to marry a foreign man than a Cambodian man.

Re: A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 2:17 pm
by franzjaeger
Go find a public mens room, let yourself out.

Re: RE: Re: A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 2:52 pm
by General Mackevili
Cam Nivag wrote:Western NGO types who try to help these girls often suggest that the idea of marrying a foreigner is a fantasy for them. In reality, a rather significant percentage of hostesses end up married to white guys. A good looking hostess who can speak English and who works at one of the better hostess bars like Angry Birds, Shanghai, etc. is more likely to marry a foreign man than a Cambodian man.
This is all too true. I often see long time bar girls post winter pics in cobblestone streets, selfie in a car with a seatbelt, etc, and wonder what they're doing there on holiday. Then I realize they're now happily married in Chicago or Copenhagen with 2 kids.

Have to wait until they come back to Phnom Penh for their yearly family vacation and meet up with their skanky friends in Pontoon before they post any sexy pics again.

Re: A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 3:02 pm
by franzjaeger
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Re: A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 5:23 pm
by newkidontheblock
Known taxi girls will have a hard time marrying a respectable Cambodian man. Foreigner is the only choice available to them. Can take the girl out of the bar, but probably impossible to take the bar out of the girl.

Re: A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 5:54 pm
by phuketrichard
newkidontheblock wrote:Known taxi girls will have a hard time marrying a respectable Cambodian man. Foreigner is the only choice available to them. Can take the girl out of the bar, but probably impossible to take the bar out of the girl.
not always true :beer3:

Re: A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 6:23 pm
by Luigi
GM, FFS!
Did you write that diatribe or should I call it dia-tripe?
Who wrote that drivel nonsense?
What a BS story. That never happened. What PP bar owner would tolerate that BS?

Re: A Christian Walks Into a Girly Bar And...

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2016 7:04 pm
by Username Taken
Luigi wrote:GM, FFS!
Did you write that diatribe or should I call it dia-tripe?
Who wrote that drivel nonsense?
What a BS story. That never happened. What PP bar owner would tolerate that BS?