Unlike many places in the world, Poipet Cambodia is unknown and no where special. Poipet is a small border town. It is not near a body of water and is not likely to be confused as a vacation destination. I searched online to find a hotel for our team near the City of Poipet. I found one reference for a Casino Hotel in the Duty Free zone owned by Thailand. In the customer comments section one person said that the Casino Hotel was an "Oasis in a hell hole called Poipet". While that is not my opinion of Poipet it is certainly what the world thinks. Travelers, even those in missions, often go to places for what that place offers; not for what they can offer it. Poipet is one of the forgotten places on the Cambodia Thailand border, you pass through it on the way to somewhere else. There are no beaches, no Museums, no Temple or Angkor; it's easy to overlook places like this because they don't seem be significant, they don't seem to offer anything.
As a City Poipet has no infrastructure for basic sanitation and very few paved roads. It is either dirty and dusty or muddy or both. The population is largely uneducated and struggling to survive. The Casinos described in the previous article offer no benefit to the City or it's residents, they just want to exploit the situation for their benefit. The people are exploited in the same way, many exist in Poipet as day laborers renting carts and moving goods across the border between Thailand and Cambodia. If they are lucky and work hard they can earn more than the rent, usually they just break even.
It seems to me that Poipet is a place like the town of Nazareth, which is somewhere in Galilee. A small town that doesn't even appear on some maps. We wonder can anything good come from there? Nathaniel wondered that very same thing about a small town called Nazareth in John Chapter 1. Jesus was living in that town. I believe that Jesus makes a habit of going to the forgotten and unknown places in this world, places that the world doesn't see any value in. Poipet is unknown by the world but known by Jesus; He is alive and He is working there.
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