Sangkhlaburi is a tiny town near the Three Pagodas Pass into Burma and has been my home for the last week and a half. We're staying here to do some voluntary work with the children in the Mon village across the lake. The Mon village is predominantly made up of refugees from Burma, These people are very poor and cannot not get Thai citizenship and the benefits that go with it. I've been working in a children's centre for children from 2 to 5 years old. My class has around 30 children and we've been teaching them a small amount of English and generally playing with them all day. The kids are so sweet and really clever. I'm amazed at how much they can do for themselves at such a young age. I've discovered the best 2 ways to amuse them are to pick them up and spin them round, and to take photos of them!
During the day the kids have a nap of about 3 hours and during this time we have been helping to improve the centre. I've painted a flower pot and plant lots of plants, I've helped to paint pictures on the new ceiling and on the walls. And I've helped to make a Bamboo fence to surround the garden. This has been really fun... You have to saw a section of bamboo off the long bamboo stick, then using a machete to break/cut the bamboo into small 1 inch sized sticks. Then the fun bit is using the machete to "sand" down the rough edges of the stick. We then crisscrossed the sticks into the soil to finish the fence! The adults at the school can do this whole process in a couple of minutes, they use bamboo for so much here. We take a little longer.
My picture is the elephant one!
The town is very quiet without much to do in the evenings so we have been rotating between the 3 different restaurants each night. However after a day of picking up children all the time I'm quite grateful for some time to relax.
View across the lake to the Mon village
View from my bunglow
