Favourite Thailand Times

..in no particular order.

-Watching tiny baby Piccolo, Dee's latest addition to the family, pulling tiny baby faces.

-Riding an elephant through the jungle, and then rafting down a gorgeous misty little river afterwards.

-Our last night at Sankla children's home: Games with the kids, communal outdoor hotpot (big steaming pots of broth over fires, in which we cooked meats and vegies and noodles), watching the kids play with glowsticks, singalong by a bonfire.

-Completing a nice long chunk of fence.

-Visiting a family Dee was helping out during the flooding, and unexpectedly being treated to a lovely Thai feast.

-Singing and sharing in the evenings at Dee's house.

-Helping with the big Sunday cookup, kitchen humming with activity, mortar and pestle beating away..

-Dee's amazing, varied, endlessly trumpeting laugh (no reason required).

-eating.(and more: eating.)

-Crazy scootering around Samed Island (I didn't die, or kill anyone, so it's all good.)

-Watching the gorgeous Mocha dance.

You may have figured this was a kinda different Thailand trip to many!

Fence-building and River Fun!

We spent most of the past week at Dee's main children's home. It's situated near the border with Myanmar, 3 lovely buildings that Dee designed herself on a little block of land just outside town (there's another home in town, with more of her family, where 20 other kids live). About 30 kids live there, cared for by Dee's sister and her husband, and one of Dee's brothers. Dee's sister, Pola, loves to cook, and makes amazing meals for the entire community every single day! They also have a bunch of pigs (Dee loves pork), lots of banana trees, flowers and herbs, and a little soccer field.

Being waved off by Pola and the 3 youngest there - nicknamed Cocoa, Milo & Chocolate!

We were helping to build a new fence - cement poles, wire strung between, and then bamboo sticks woven in the wire to make it animal-proof. They were even making the cement poles from scratch! Tying together a wire frame for each one, then filling it with concrete mixed in a pile on the ground.

We also helped load and unload 4 ute-trays of gravel and rock from the river to the house one morning. We'd just filled the first ute up to the brim, only to hear the engine roll over and die! On the wrong side of the river, no less. Thankfully they soon got it going again.

We went swimming in the river every day to cool off, and played games with the kids every evening (they LOVE duck duck goose - generally pronounced duh duh goo!). They have a time for devotions every night (so beautiful seeing the kids singing their little hearts out!) which we got involved with, telling stories, clapping along as best we could.. and sometimes singing the english words if it was a tune we knew (that copped some strange looks!)

One day at the river, we'd all got out of the ute already when all of a sudden, Cusay drives it right in, obviously intending to cross (no one has any idea why he decided to try it, but there you go!) and he got stuck in the pebbles just past half-way. Another ute turned up as well (apparently we were collecting more rocks?). It was much more of an off-road vehicle, and purred away quite happily in the river there as we filled it with rocks and waited for someone with a rope to come and rescue the first car! No one seemed perturbed in the slightest (I was all like - ahh! What if the motor drowns?!) but they pottered along, some of the kids even taking advantage of the opportunity to give the cars a bit of a wash!

All in a day's work.


p.s. FYI I'm getting used to the rough sleeping, but my bum's still sore.. haha

Sore Bum Chronicles Day #2

Tuesday

Waking this morning to the sounds of a couple of chirpy toddlers, bucket showers in action, traffic outside, bustling in the kitchen.. We take stock of the situation over breakfast (which, incidentally, is eaten on the floor, with the hands, like most meals. Also, like most meals, it is based on rice, helped along by most members with lashings of chilli paste.)

About 10 or 12 people live here - I'm still not sure exactly how many! - but there's Dee, of course, the bubbly leader/older sister/surrogate mother, two toddlers who Dee has rescued from abandonment and are not yet big enough for any of her children's homes; there's a bunch of guys, a few girls, and of course blessed old Timu, who takes care of everyone, champion of the kitchen, cleanliness management etc.

After getting ourselves together we pack our bags and pile into their old ute - 5 in the cab, 6 or 7 in the tray. 7hrs driving, here we go!! Agh, you're beginning to get a feel for this sore bum business? We're off to one of Dee's children's homes - primarily for taking care of a whole bunch of orphaned Karen refugee kids (Karen people lived in Myanmar until the Burmese decided to try and exterminate them a bunch of years ago. Dee is also Karen, and everything she does is centered on caring for her scattered people).

After a couple of hours we've finally beaten Bangkok and are out in the towns. We stop now and then for fuel, or drinks, or food (the last is easily the most important to all concerned). The ground begins to rise, the air freshens, we pass some lakes or rivers, and arrive at a cluster of little bamboo huts on stilts. One of them is ours! We meet the kids, and as it's the hour for showering Belle and I head down to the shower hut where we wrestle with soap and sarongs and tip buckets of water over eachother (which one of the girls is pulling up from the well there).

Back for dinner which we share on the rickety but clean bamboo floor; we have fun teaching the kids a little english, drawing pictures, saying and repeating.. We sing some songs and they copy our actions with suprising speed and accuracy. I tell a story, we sing some more, unroll our beds and sleep (the bamboo has a little more spring than the solid wood floors at Dee's, which is nice.) The cocks start crowing around 4:30...