Buddha's Birthday Bash

So this last Tuesday was the beloved Buddha's birthday here in Thailand! Since there were no opportunities for us to serve here in Chiang Rai with all the businesses and schools being closed.. We traveled to Chiang Mai for the four day weekend! 

We stayed in a hostel there and it was actually fairly nice! 

We each shared a room but had our own bathroom AND it had the toilet separate from the shower! :)

Our first day there we got up early and traveled up into the mountains to go to this place called Flight of the Jungle. That was by far, hands down, no questions asked, one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life! It was this zip line through the jungle.. I thought it would be one or maybe two zips and would be done.. but I was wrong!! We were there for hours zipping, hiking, repelling, all through the most beautiful lush green jungle I have ever seen! There were times when we were so high we were above the tallest trees and you had to literally fly through the clouds in order to get to the next platform! 

Don't mind our lunch lady hair nets.. 

Later that night we walked through the Chiang Mai walking street which they light up every night and sell just about everything by little vendors on the sides of the roads. Perfect place for souvenirs and just about everything else! 

 We stopped by a Tailor there and a few of us had a few things made..

The next day we went to a place called Tiger Kingdom where we were able to play with baby tigers and even pet the big tigers! I thought the big tigers were going to be sedated but after taking to the leaders we found that they are not! Everything is so different over here in Thailand than in America, everyone is so chill here and not even worried about law suits. 

I asked the Thai man, "what happens if the tiger attacks me?!" 

He replied, "Then you die. You choose to go in cage." 

I thought the same thing when we were zip lining standing on the rickety bridges on top of 200 foot trees. The things you can so easily do here would never fly in the USA. 

I loved these little ones so much! They were only 8 weeks old!

Monday night we got to go to this monastery and take a meditating lesson from monks. That was pretty cool to meditate with real monks!

We left Tuesday morning back home to Chiang Rai! I thought Chiang Mai was so fun and a cool city to visit but I love it here in Chiang Rai much more. Here NO ONE speaks any English AT ALL. The restaurants here are all in Thai and everything is so cheap not marked up for tourists. In Chiang Mai most everywhere I went they spoke some English and they had hamburger joints, mexican food places, and there were tons of tourists everywhere. We are the only white people in our city haha

We got here just in time to walk walk over to the local Buddah temple down the street and participate in the birthday ceremonies. We all went into the main room and bowed down making sure our feet were pointing towards the back door and never the big Buddah statue. We were each given flowers, candles, and incense to light. After the ceremony we walked around the temple three times with the monks as they chanted some ritual chant. We lit our candles and incense and walked once mourned for Buddah, once for our present/past lives, and once for our future lives. The young monks then let off fire works which were huge and I'm pretty sure we all got a little burned!

SWA-DE-KA!

Hello from Thailand! Life is still going great over here! This past week has been full of action and adventure.. I feel like I have been here forever but really it has only been one week!

This last Monday we went to the local hospital and took a tour taking notes of ways we could improve the facility.. After walking around the hospital, I'm praying that I'm safe and healthy because I do not want to end up there. They don't have enough rooms for the number of patients that need to be in rooms so there are literally beds lining the halls (which are outdoors) with sick people just laying there moaning. The waiting room had close to 100 people inside and outside just sitting waiting.. we decided that the people need something to watch or read while they wait so after talking to the hospital director we are going to make a workout video as a group that will be given to the patients as they check out. They will also install TVs in the waiting room and our video will be played in there as long with some clips on healthy living. We went down to forensics and they are VERY chill in that department. There were bodies in this room along with pictures by the bodies of how they were killed.. gun, knife, car, etc. The forensics doctor said it would be cool to let any of us participate in a autopsy and I think some of the volunteers might do that butt I don't know if that is something I could handle...

Tuesday we traveled to Mae Sai (which is up on the boarded of Burma) and went to DEPDC. 

                                                              

We met with the directors of the organization and learned a little bit about the program. DEPDC is a place for vulnerable children and youth who are usually migrants, hill tribes, and stateless people who have been or are at high risk for being sex trafficked. A lot of the girls who are sex trafficked are young girls under 18 who are stateless. This is where they are born in either Burma or here in Thailand but the parents never registered the birth anywhere so technically they do not have citizenship anywhere. Even if they were born in Thailand they have no proof of that and can not enroll in school. So these people are thrilled when their daughters are offered a chance to go to school or even have a job as a waitress. It's so sad that these parents are so property stricken that they would consider accepting money for their daughters. This program does a good job in exposing the sex trafficking issues that are very prevalent here and it also gives a place for these young girls to come and get schooling. There are girls who have not yet been trafficked and also girls who have and have been rescued. Those girls are in a different part of the "school" and receive counseling and lots of therapy. I will be working with these girls but right now we are setting the schedules and figuring out what projects we would like to do to make the most sustainable difference here.

Wednesday and Thursday we worked here in Chiang Rai at an English camp.

 There were over 500 hundred kids and it was quite the time! We as volunteers broke into teams of two and set up rotations where we had each group for a half hour. I was in charge of the game station with a girl named Taylee. On Wednesday we had the kids ages kindergarten through third grade and those little kids are seriously so cute. It was a little difficult trying to explain the games to these young Thai speaking children but after showing them some examples of "Red light Green Light" and "Duck Duck Goose" they would quickly catch on.

I also learned that those kids are extremely fast! They loved to "Goose" on me or Taylee and I would be in a full on sprint running from these kids and they would usually get me.. I started picking out the fattest kid in the group just to be safe. Like this kid..   

They had us lead all the 500 hundred kids in songs and that's when the girls camp/primary songs really came in handy. Later that night, the camp the director of the school asked us "Do you like to sing?" We said "yes" thinking he was referring to the 20 songs we had preformed throughout the day.. But no. This director takes all of us out to dinner and it turns out he was talking Karaoke! The Thai people love Karaoke here and we all took turns singing songs for hours!

 Thursday after the camp we celebrated and went out for American pizza. yumm! I don't know if the pizza is better here or I am just used to eating food like this… 

But that pizza has never tasted so good! We then went and got Thai massages for the second time :) Everything is so cheap here it's unreal. It is only $5 for an hour long massage and $7 for a two hour.. LOVE it!

So there is a 5 day weekend for us here because it's Buddha's birthday on Tuesday and the whole city celebrates. Everything shuts down for the next couple days.. schools.. businesses.. and even the hospital! This sets us as volunteers back a little bit but we have planned lots of things to fill our time with until we can serve once more. Today we hiked up to this huge water fall and went swimming!

Off to Chiang Mai! :)