Word: baht
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...murders. But even by the bloody standards of Thailand's troubled Muslim south, it's the worst wave of violence in decades. Police stations, train stations, hotels and government offices have all been bombed lately. Since January alone, 17 policemen have been murdered, and a bounty of 200,000 baht ($5,000) has been offered up by a shady Muslim group to encourage further cop killings. And nobody knows why. "It's creepy," says Sergeant Marohsae Moohanan of Sungai Padi Station near Thailand's border with Malaysia. Earlier this month, two members of his patrol were shot dead...
Mama San won't budge from $1,000. There's the food she's paid for, the clothes, the makeup and the condoms, not to mention the middlemen's fees. At $1,000, she says, she is making nothing. She taps out the figure in Thai baht on a calculator and holds it up: 43,650. You won't get a pair of 14-year-old Burmese girls for less in this town...
...says she makes nothing from prostitution. She is in it because she cares. She takes the girls in, puts a roof over their heads. "What can I do? Somebody has to protect them." Her conscience will not let the two girls go for anything less than 41,500 baht...
...days, our sense of being impartial observers gave way to concern that just by watching the children's degradation, we were implicated. Then it occurred to us that we could buy their freedom. That's how we found ourselves driving to an ATM, and withdrawing 41,000 baht...
...That's how Jonathan and I found ourselves driving to the ATM, withdrawing $930 - 41,000 baht - and buying Lek and Tip. It wasn't merely the prospect of these two children steadily building up their collection of chips over the next decade that compelled us. It was partially witnessing the despair of the other girls who had buried all hope with their childhoods. Girls like Pim, who works in a brothel a few meters up the road...