Reflections on service project in Thailand

Hi,
It's been a few weeks since we got back from our service project in
Thailand. I thought I should share some of my thoughts about how our
experience met with my initial expectations. I had never been to Asia
before, so this trip opened my eyes to a whole new world. I had also
never done a service project like this before, but this experience sparked
my interest in service work.
Thoughts about how our experience met with my expectations:

BETTER FOOD
- I had heard authentic Thai food was supposed to be good, but this
exceeded all expectations!
- Lots of wonderful new fruits that I had never even heard of before.
- Delicious authentic Thai pad, fried rice, egg noodles, cashew nut
chicken, spicy shrimp, garlic fish, fried chicken, sticky rice with
banana, grilled pork on a stick served with peanut sauce, fried banana
pancakes, snacks wrapped in banana leafs and much more.
- Shared all the food, ordered many different dishes and got to taste
some of everything.
- Rice or noodles with all meals, even breakfast!
- Smaller portions and little sugary food: may explain why there are few
overweight Thais

BEAUTIFUL TEMPLES EVERYWHREE
- Beautiful shining, gold temples everywhere, even in poor areas.
- Buddhism plays a huge part of Thai culture

WESTERN INFLUENCE
- American advertisements in Bangkok
- Poor hilltribe-girls wearing makeup
- 7-Eleven and McDonalds
- Expensive and fancy shopping-malls in Bangkok.

HUGE MARKETS
- Cheap and easy to bargain
- Weekend markets, night markets and everyday markets.
- Great authentic Thai food (lots of good snacks) sold by street vendors.

FUN VACATION
- Beautiful paradise beaches in Krabi with awesome snorkeling
- Fun elephant trekking in the jungle
- Watertubing in jungle river with beautiful scenery
- Amazing and cheap massages

BIG REHABILITATION CENTER AREA
- Huge island with hospital and housing for disabled by accident patients
and leprosy patients.

SERVICE WORK
- Mostly gardening work (weeding and planting).
- Two trips to give food and rice to leprosy patients by the Burma border.
- Translated brochures about the McKean center and leprosy.
- Met with many St Olaf alumns and discussed vocation.
- Group got along really well!
- Thai language difficult to learn, but became easier with practice and
interactions with Thais.

I could have written a lot more, but there is just too much to tell. The
trip could not have been better, and it exceeded all expectations. I am
definitely going back to Thailand!
Sawadee ka, Linn

Last report from Thailand

Our amazing journey in Thailand has unfortunately come to an end, and we are now safe back in our respective home countries after an incredible last week of vacation in Southern Thailand. Here is a report from our last week at the McKean Rehabilitation center in Chiang Mai.
Looking back at our experience with the McKean center and the Thai-GermanLeprosy Foundation, I realize that we have learned a great lesson about what it means to serve others. The Thai German Leprosy Foundation is NonGovernmental Organization (NGO), which means that it does not receive any funding from the Government. Instead, the staffs have to write proposals to various organizations to raise money. We also learned that one of the conditions for living in the Taksin Village (where we stayed) is that the patients have to work, doing things such as crafts, cooking, weeding and planting. The money that they make from selling their beautiful handcrafts also goes toward the foundation. Luckily the patients seemedto really enjoy working and living in the Taksin Village. One of thepatients, a 21-year-old Burmese guy, even said that he would like to livethere for the rest of his life if he could.

It became clear that Sanuk, which means fun, is an important part of workfor Thais. This may also explain why Thais usually prefer working in groups rather than individually. During the last part of our stay at the Taksin Village we did a lot of weeding and planting, working side by side with the patients that were disabled by accidents. I was astonished by how the patients without legs were able to roll their beds and wheelchairs onto the grass next to us and help with the gardening work. We experienced that working together as a group made the work a lot more fun, and it was also a great way to bond with the patients and the staff. Another important reason why we became close with the patients was that we lived next door to them, and tried to mingle with them as much as possible. We ate our meals with them, participated in their activities (fun game-nights), practiced our Thai language skills with them, and hung out in their houses watching soccer and talking. Thanks to Tong and Luyen’s translations we were able to communicate a lot more with the patients. This also contributed to our integration in the Taksin Village. The relationships we build with the friendly patients and staff at the McKean center is definitely one of the things I will remember the most from our experience in Thailand. We became particularly close to onestaff member, named Bank, who traveled with us on both our two-day trips to visit leprosy patients in various northern villages. I came to admire this incredible young man for his great ability to connect with the patients by joking with them and at the same time treating them with respect and empathy. It was moving to see how Bank cheered up thepatients by touching them and being genuinely interested in how they were doing. We learned that Bank had been the first one to discover several ofthe patients with leprosy, because he had dared going into their houses and examining the patients that had been hiding away, too ashamed of their disease to seek help. The way Bank spends his life serving others inspired us to think about how we can live our lives in service to others as well.

Similarly, we learned that the popular King Bhumipol Adulyadej of Thailand is looked up to for his generous contributions to numerous development projects in Thailand, including projects that greatly helped to reduce leprosy in Thailand, such as the Rajaprajasamasai Foundation. Leprosy wasvery common in Thailand in the 1960s (50 incidents per 10,000 people), but with the hard work the King and the WHO there are now only 0.22 incidentsof leprosy per 10,000 people in Thailand. It was also upbringing to see that the remaining lepers are being taken good care of. We visited for example an old leprosy reservation in Chiang Rai, where 202 patients who have had leprosy live together and get support from the government. I was happy to learn that leprosy is a lot more accepted in the Thai society today, and that many lepers have started families with non-lepers. The caring people at the McKean center and the Thai Leprosy Foundation, as well as all the other friendly and caring people we met during our stay in Thailand strongly demonstrated why Thais are known for being the smiling people. Thanks to Luyen and everyone in our group for making this journey such a memorable and life-changing experience. It was truly amazing!!!
-Greetings from Linn