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