Sawaat dii!
This post is coming a day late because we were all pretty tired last night, but here's a run-down of our first non-sightseeing day. Yesterday, January 4th, we had breakfast at the hotel before getting in our trusty vans and heading to the Concordia Daycare, which is located in Bangkok. We squeezed out of the vans - as they were parked pretty close to the wall - and walked into a yard full of Thai preschoolers. P Dang and P La explained to us that all of the children at the daycare come from the next-door slums. If not for the daycare, many of the children would be locked in their houses all day while their parents worked. Kids from ages one and a half to four are welcome in the daycare for free, and each day they receive a breakfast snack, lunch, and a bath. They also learn their alphabet and basic social skills, like how to interact with other children (remember that most of them had been alone in the house all day). In Thailand, public schooling is free and they are eligible to begin at age four, but the daycare also provides evening classes and homework help for the older students.
Our team arrived and immediately began to sing songs, both Thai and English, with the little ones. Then we did some impromptu skits of Bible stories! We first did the story of David and Goliath, and how God is strong even when we are weak. They asked us to do it twice, and then we followed it with the story of Noah's Ark. The kids all got up to help us "build the ark" and then came on two-by-two like the animals. After that, Marshall (Deac. Betsy's nephew) handed out frisbees and our team got to enjoy lots of playground time with the kids. We ran around and even played Duck duck goose in the heat before helping with lunch and bringing them all into the house (with our shoes off, of course) to get them ready for baths and nap time. Scotty played guitar and we all sang songs with motions for them, including "Jesus Loves Me" multiple times. Then we had various Thai snacks (including Coca-cola with Thai on the can!) and prepared to go walk through the nearby slum. Everything was made out of tin pieces and there was water and trash running underneath everything because there is no sewage there. All of the families are living there on someone else's land, and P Dang told us that the owner had tried to reclaim his land multiple times by burning it. Thankfully no one was injured the last time he tried to do so.
Next we arrived at the JJ Mall. However, the JJ Mall is not what you would think of when someone says they're going to a US mall! It was more like a market jam-packed into a building. We got food cards to eat in the mall and had various dishes, including fried rice. We also had some Thai tea called "cha yen," which means cold tea and it was extremely delicious! David and I finished by eating some traditional Thai desserts: pumpkin steamed in coconut milk and mango with sticky rice. Both were delicious! From there, our team split up into smaller groups to explore all the little stalls. Some of us bought really fun Thai pants, scarves, and other clothing items. Others, including myself, got a traditional Thai massage. It cost 150 Baht for a 30 minute massage. Now to put that in perspective, $1.00 is worth about 30 Baht… so we got a massage for $5.00! Everything here is much cheaper than at home, but it seems more expensive just because it costs hundreds or thousands of Baht.
We made it back to the hotel and were able to beat the Bangkok rush hour traffic. Then most of us took advantage of the pool before walking to the Big C shopping center for dinner in the food court. I had some tasty pork pot stickers and we even went to Starbucks afterward. It tastes the same as the US, and it costs the same too… It was still a really fun excursion in the city though. We had our nightly devotions once returning to the hotel and then we were all pretty wiped out. It was a full day of exploring and sharing, and we were all very excited to actually work with the kids (although we've enjoyed our sightseeing as well).
Please continue to pray for our team as we being our work in Chiang Mai with the student center, and we'll keep you updated on our adventures!
- Jamie Helmreich and the rest of the Thailand mission team
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