She was forced to have sex with hundreds of men before she turned 10. After such a brutal past, what does her future hold? In a Marie Claire exclusive, Sreypov Chan tells her phenomenal life story.

(via Diary of a Sex Slave: Child Prostitution in Cambodia)

Have I ever told you about my sister? I don’t think I have. Not on my blog, at least.

Jessica works in Pattaya, Thailand: a city renowned for its prostitution problem. For many severely perverted men around the world, this is a great place. For most everyone else, it’s one of the darkest places on earth.

My sister’s job in Pattaya is to play music and hang out in bars on Walking Street (the central location for most of the city’s prostitution) and elsewhere around town, befriending prostitutes and pointing them to resources to help them get out of the endless cycle and into a safe, healthy job. She also runs a church for many of the women who have escaped the sex industry.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit Jessica and see what she does in Pattaya. We went to her church, strolled Walking Street (during daylight hours) and got a feel for her life. She deals with stories similar to Sreypov Chan’s all the time.

If I hadn’t known it before, those couple days that I got to see Pattaya proved to me that my sister is strong. If you want more stories, not just bad ones, but the happy endings, you should check out her blog. (And, she didn’t ask me for this, but if you would like to make a donation to fund what she’s doing there, you can do so here. It’d make for a damn good Christmas gift.)

An interesting fact I learned in Australia: US pennies would probably not exist were it not for copper lobbyists. In the land down under, the smallest denomination coin is 5 cents. They eliminated 1-cent coins and all prices are to be rounded to the nearest 5.

I wondered out loud at one point why the US doesn’t do the same thing. One of my travel mates quickly responded that the US still makes pennies because lobbyists for the copper industry have fought all such legislation. Now there’s an interesting twist on “money equals power.”

Australia also has 1- and 2-dollar coins. I wonder if there is some lobbyist for an industry supported by the US Mint keeping smaller bills instead of popularizing coins so they won’t go out of business too.

I understand the desire for an industry to do whatever they can to stay afloat, but, with a few exceptions, it seems like a bad sign when an industry has to resort to legislation and/or lawsuits in order to keep business from dying. Deal with it, folks. No industry is guaranteed to be eternal.

Fun side note: in Thailand, where 30 baht is roughly equivalent to 1 US dollar, there are 1-baht and even 1/2-baht coins, but they’re hard to find. The only people that give them out are Big C chain stores (the Thai equivalent to Walmart [blech]). And, conveniently, pretty much nobody will take a 1- or 1/2-baht coin but Big C, rendering them almost entirely useless.