Other instances, I'm transformed. Whether local or farang eyes, (word for foreigner), my presence is met by longing, curious eyes, wandering, formulating, judging and discriminating. I wonder what stories and questions unfold in their minds when they see me? For a moment, I step into bare scalded feet of a young thai girl from a poor remote village, born out of a mother who does not value her, does not care what happens to her, she is unloved and neglected. She has inherited to exist in a culture that devalues females - she is expected to be the sole wage earner to support the entire family. She swallows her position and become what her mother sold her to be - a slave.

At 10 years old, she is sold to promises of working in a factory and a secure future while locked up in a secret hideaway of child slave labor camp, barely nourished merely to exist just another day, exploited and dissolved of her spirit and dignity, frightened, lost and too young to understand her fate. At 12 years old, again she is sold- to the sex trade and her virginity to the highest bidder, her soul is raped. Knowing only this kind of life, she lives it, breathes it, sleeps it and eats it. This is her breath of life and for a second, it is mine.