Happy Holidays from Khao Lak!

We can't believe it's only 2 days from Christmas. It doesn't feel like the Holidays at all here. It's been cloudy, but very hot and humid. You also don't see many Christmas decorations because the majority of people here are Buddhist.

We are still having the most amazing experience here though! Our last week has been very busy because there was a rush to get everything done before all of the tourists arrived for the Tsunami Anniversary. We are feeling good about what we've accomplished, but there's still soooo much to do! The last few days we've played with the kids some, but our time has mostly been spent helping the orphanage fund raise. The poor woman who runs the orphanage has a ton of training in helping children, but no business training at all. she's been thrown into a huge job that requires here not only to care for these children, but also to raise funds to feed them, build them a real home (they live in a tent now), etc. Because we both have business backgrounds we figured out that while teaching the kids English is much more fun we could be of much more value by helping Rotjana with the fundraising. We took her around to all of the big hotels and pitched them on the idea of letting us put a donation box in the lobby of their hotel and saw a huge success! That was great news, but caused a bit of a panic because we had no boxes and NO literature to put with them so it all had to be created from scratch. Guess who had to do it? :) It was a little stressful, but we turned around 20 boxes with signs and a color handout to go with in under 24 hours! Those boxes are all now sitting on either on the reception or concierge desks of hotels as big as the Le Meridian. We are already seeing huge success from them too.. people have not only been donating, but have also been bringing food and clothes to the orphanage.

We also have some more good news!!! Bai (the woman we are building a house for) found property and the deal closed on Wednesday. We went to see it yesterday and it's great! It's tucked back in a small village not too far from the orpahange and in a village where she knows a few people. Bai was soooo happy and we can't thank all of you who helped out enough. We are bummed we have to leave before the house will be completed, but have people here we trust to get it done. We are also already planning our trip back so we can see the house and throw her a small house warming party. There's a picture up of the property if you want to check it out!

We can't believe we are leaving for Australia in only 5 days from now... our time here has flown by so fast and we are really going to miss these people. The next few days are going to be really busy and emotional. The Tsunami Anniversary is on the 26th so tons of people who lost loved ones are coming for the memorial. We've met a bunch of incredible people in the last week and all of them have really really sad stories of losing someone close to them. We've adopted 3 Canadian brothers who lost their parents and have been taking them to the orphange and introducing them to all of the good people we've met here. The more we are here the more we know how lucky we are to have met the people we have and to have gotten involved in the orphanage. Many people are just building houses which is a huge help, but they haven't had the opportunity to get to know the locals. These people have incredible stories and are so strong..helping them rebuild their lives has been amazing.


We some how got roped into being in a tv show tomorrow. We aren't sure exactly yet, but we think the donation boxes has gotten them a spot on a morning tv show. Rotjana has asked that we be in it and speak about what she's doing and what people like us have also been doing to help. We don't have all of the details yet, but we'll find out tomorrow at 7am... yes I said 7am on Christmas Eve. After, we are going to take our new friends up to the orphanage to meet all the kids! We are going to stop and get them fresh food and some new toys and then go play with them for a while! We haven't gotten to play with them much this week so we are very excited!!!

Tonight we've been invited to have dinner with the manager from the LeMeridian, Daniel, at their new restaurant which has sushi and Korean BBQ. We LOVE all the Thai food we've been having, but are kind of excited for something new. We've invited our new friend Yui to join us and we're excited to give her a girls night. She has the biggest heart of anyone we've ever met! She's spent her entire year helping other Thai people who need help and barely helps herself. She barely survived the tsunami and lost her house, job and all of her friends. She's only 23, has a 2 year old and a 41 year old husband (this is very common in Thailand) so she can use a night out :)

We aren't sure what we'll be doing on Christmas Eve yet, but we've got a great day for Christmas planned! The older girls at the orphange have been learning Thai Dancing and we were able to get them a gig to dance at Le Meridian's Christmas Brunch. We promised Rotjana we'd go and watch, but we have a feeling we're going to get talked into doing the introduction and getting donations from people ;) Somehow we just keep getting new jobs, but we love it! After the show we are going to dinner with a big group and then we're all going build a bonfire on the beach and hang out. Not exactly like Christmas with the fam (and we'll miss the fam alot) but it should be a good day. The 26th is the memorial and we aren't sure what we are doing for that yet... it's going to be a really sad day no matter what we do. Then, the 27th is the big party and we've got lots of friends coming now too. Even our new friends from Khao Sok (Nic from the Morning Mist Lodge and my magical masseuse, Fun) are coming down. We really have been so lucky with the people we've met.

Ok, we have to go get ready for dinner. Thank you again for all of your kind emails and support. We miss you all tons and wish you the BEST Christmas!
Love you,
Rach and Steph

Hello Hello!

Hope you're having as great of a day as we are!

So we know we owe you entries still on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Phuket, but we've had such an amazing time here in Khao Lak the last couple of days so we're going to boast about that first :)

As most of you know, we've decided to change our travels a bit so we can stay in Khao Lak (town completely destroyed by the Tsunami) for a few weeks and volunteer. Other places we've been in Thailand have been almost completely restored, but Khao Lak (even though it had the largest number of deaths in Thailand) has somehow has been neglected. Their orphanages are full and there are still several people without homes :(

We have decided to stay here for a few weeks and help some of the people we've met! Over the next few weeks we will be spending a few hours each day teaching the orphanage kids English and the rest of our time overseeing the building of a house for a single mother who lost not only her home, but one of her daughters in the Tsunami.

Yesterday had to be one of the best days yet! We spent almost all day at the orphanage with the kids .. it was a Thai Holiday (Constitution Day they call it) so the all the kids were off school. We are helping with a project here to create profiles of all the orphanage children so that sponsors can be found to provide them with money to pay for their school uniforms, lunch money, supplies, activities, etc. Because of this, we had to identify each kid and get information such as their age, birthday, mother/father's name, hometown and their biography. This sounds simple I know, but try getting this from little kids with no attention span and speak only Thai ... it was trying, but a fun challenge. The hardest part was having to hear these kids' sad stories. We met kids who lost family in the Tsunami and now have one alcoholic parent that beats them, kids who have never known their father and their mother can't afford to support them, and kids who live at home, but have such a broken or poor family life that they spend most of their time at the orphanage. Thai culture is very different from ours in that they don't talk about their family problems publicly. Because of this, there are many kids that don't know all the reasons they are there or may have just blocked it out.

Last night, the woman we are building the house for (Bai) and the woman who runs the orphanage (Ratjana) invited us to stay at the orphanage and have dinner. We had a long day and asked if we could come tonight, but they insisted we have dinner with them last night because they had caught fresh fish that day and it wouldn't be any good tonight. How cute is that?! Of course, we changed our plans so that we could stay and have dinner with them. It was the best decision! We not only had the most amazing meal, but a really meaningful time with the people there. The kids eat first and then all of the staff eats together.. we ate with them. Before the Tsunami, Bai cooked for a hotel that was destroyed. As you can imagine, she cooked us the best Thai food - the best we've had yet. We had fresh local fish ( 2 different kinds), pork curry, fish cakes, tom yum gung soup with shrimp, snails, steamed white rice, singha beer, and tons of fruit ... some that they didn't know the names for in English! All of them were so gracious to us and thanked us so many times for what we are doing... really makes you feel good to be able to spend time with the people you're trying to help!

We had a great time at dinner, but heard some heart wrenching stories about things that go on here. There are women there that are working around the clock to pay for themselves, their children, and their husbands. Why doesn't the husband help?... we asked the same thing? Well, things just work differently here. For example, this woman's husband sits on his butt all day and yet she still gives him money because if she doesn't he'll steal her daughter and run away with her. It happened before to her and she says she's not going to let it happen again, so she's in the situation she's in. Thais don't have a good system like we do to find missing children and police just don't get involved. On top of this, this woman says she would never leave her daughter alone with him because she doesn't trust him. How horrible is that? She basically lives in fear every day of losing her daughter and has nowhere she can turn to get help. So, as she told us, she just stays strong and gives him in order to secure her daughters safety.

We also learned that rape and abuse are very common here. Many times a child will have to go live with an aunt and her husband or another family member because the parents can't afford to keep them, die, or just leave and start new families. Because it's not ok to share your problems in their culture everyone tries to deal with these problems behind closed doors and the children get punished if they go for help. Ratjana has gotten a room donated that she can use to have private conversations with these children and has asked us to help her paint it, so that's what we're doing tomorrow.

Today, we went out to an island called Koh Kho Khao to help build a playground at a school in the town of Ban Nok Na. The playground project is almost complete, so we helped with some of the finishing touches in the garden (planting flowers, palm trees, etc) and raking, shoveling, and sweeping sand. The kids at the school were so gracious. And...you would never believe it, but we most of them gave up their recess to help us! They found brooms to help us sweep, they were tearing up grass from an area along the road to use to fill in parts of the garden, and they even cut up fresh fruit to offer us as snacks. So cool! Oh, and one child's dad, after dropping him off, stayed for the rest of the day to help us with the work. These people are some of the nicest, most giving, hardworking people we've ever met.

We thought we'd seen a lot of damage here in Khao Lak, but what we saw today on Koh Kho Khao blew our minds. Apparently this island is filled with a lot of Burmese people who didn't want to report any one missing because they were scared they'd be deported back to Burma, but it's rumored that more were lost here than anywhere else in the area. The wave came up over the entire island and wiped out almost everything. They've started rebuilding houses, hotels, schools, etc., but there are still a lot of destroyed homes, buildings, boats and land. There are 2 HUGE ships that were carried several blocks from the ocean and are still there (see pics.) Standing next to them boggled our minds... they were so far from the ocean that we couldn't even begin to fathom how they got there.

After we finished at the playground we went back to the orphanage for a few hours to see the kids and are now at the internet cafe sharing our stories with you :)

We've gotten a huge response to our email about donations and we can't even begin to thank you enough. We come across opportunities to help every day and are having a hard time not biting off more than we can chew! For now, our focus is still teaching the children and building Bai a house. We are also taking Ratjana down to Phuket this weekend to shop for Christmas gifts for the kids! We are then going to help her wrap them in preparation for the big party on Dec. 27th. Each kid gets a gift worth 100 Bhat (that's $2.50) and a special meal of fried chicken and vegetables. We thought we were leaving that day, but have now decided to stay for the party... how could we miss that? 150 kids opening presents and performing special talents for us like Thai dancing and playing instruments. We can't wait!

Sorry for the long entry, but had so much we wanted to share! We are truly having the most amazing time here. Luckily they don't let foreigners (farangs, as they call us) adopt kids or we might come home with a housefull ;)

Ok, it's time for us to go to bed now. We have to be up early to paint and teach!

Miss and love you all so much!

xoxo,
Rach and Steph

Hello again from Thailand!

We are now in Khao Lak, a very small town on the western coast of Thailand (north of Phuket). We spent the last few days visiting the Khao Sok National Park where we slept in tree house bungalows, hiked thru the jungle, and rode elephants. It was awesome! And so so beautiful! We have lots of pictures up, so take a look at the new postings. A few highlights are sleeping in mosquito netted beds, Rachel getting her blood sucked by a leech that crawled in to her shoe while hiking, making friends with a great kid (Sunthi) who we met at the Morning Mist Lodge, and Rachel jumping in to a waterfall in her underwear. Comments under the pictures with more detail about each one will be added shortly, so stay tuned!

Most of the resort areas in Thailand, which is where we've been up until now, are on their way to being completely restored, so until we drove thru Khao Lak on our way to the National Park we hadn't seen much of the devastation. Something about Khao Lak really struck us as we passed thru, so we are back and getting ready to volunteer. More people died here than anywhere else in Thailand and this little town is still suffering greatly from last year's disaster. They've received little to no funding from the government to rebuild and help the people who survived here. We aren't sure what kind of work we'll be doing, but we have met some really nice people who are working on projects re-building playgrounds, schools, and homes. All sound like great ways to help to us!

We know we still owe you stories from Bangkok, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Phuket. We've included highlights of our last day in Bangkok below and are working on the rest so keep an eye out for our next entry.

**Remember...You can drill in to the pictures for more details too!

Our last day in Bangkok:
Steph #2 came to join us on our last day in Bangkok. We all thought 3 traveling together would surely be better than 2.....well...not so much. For the first time in our travels we got scammed! Luckily it was a minor scam and we didn't lose anything or get hurt in any way, but we still fell for it and couldn't believe it! So, here's what happened....We took a water taxi up to see the Grand Palace. Upon entering - or trying to - we were stopped at the gate by a man who was nicely dressed in slacks and a button down. He told us that the palace was closed for a few hours due to the Buddhist holiday and no visitors were allowed in to see it until 3:00 (it was 1:30 when we showed up). We were a little hesitant to listen to him, but there were monks walking around everywhere and it didn't look like other visitors were being allowed in at other entrances either, so we believed him. He offered to map out some other temples, shops, etc. that we could go to while we waited for the Palace to re-open. He was even so nice, or so we thought, to help us negotiate the "locals" price for a tuk tuk to take us around to the sights he recommended and wait with us at each one (Giant Golden Buddha, Ruby Market, and another small temple.) We thought how nice, finally someone who is not trying to sell us something or harass us! Um, yeah right! We thought was a really nice afternoon and met some really helpful people, but later realized that every "nice" person we met was in some way part of the scam. Luckily we didn't buy anything, but unluckily we missed our chance to visit the Golden Palace - it was closing as we got back. The guards chuckled when we asked them about the Buddhist holiday and closure of the palace. They said...sorry, but you were scammed - the Palace is never closed for religious holidays. We should have known better! We laughed it off and headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner and Muay Thai Boxing.

Muay Thai Boxing is a big deal in Thailand and we were told you MUST go if you want to really experience a big part of the Thai culture... so we did :) The only tickets left through our hotel were ringside so we sat right in front and watched these little guys kick the "you know what" out of each other. Thai Boxing is much different than American boxing! It's much more of an art, it's more intense, it's focused on kicking more than punching, and there seem to be no rules! The boxers extremely small and most seem very young because they are trained from the first day they can walk. The matches are religious and begin with a ritual specific to the school where each boxer was trained. Each boxer begins wearing a lei made of the same flowers that are traditionally used for religious offerings and the winner boxer takes both leis at the end. The experience is heightened by the hundreds of Thai men yelling and screaming not only to cheer on the boxers, but also to place their bets. Being women, we were definitely the minority in the place, but still very glad we went!

Ok, this is a long enough entry and our fingers are cramping from typing! We are coming back tomorrow to finish the rest so you should too :)

Miss and love you,
Rach and Steph

As promised we worked on the blog again today! We added titles and descriptions to the pictures from Bangkok, Hanoi, Ha Long Bay and part of Sapa! More to come over the next few days! Enjoy!
xoxo,
Rach and Steph

Sawasdeeka from Phuket!

We are thinking of you and missing you from Thailand. We have been in Phuket for a few days, but are leaving tomorrow for Khao Sok National Park and should be in Krabi by this weekend. We were able to get the pictures up tonight of both Cambodia and Phuket, but again (sorry!) ran out of time for labeling and writing about our experiences. We are so excited to share our stories from Vietnam and Cambodia... cross your fingers we can find internet again soon!

Hope you are all doing great!
xoxo,
Rach and Steph