See the gallery First month in Sangkhla for photos from this post.
An early morning taxi to Bangkok’s southern bus terminal and a bit of confused wandering later, I found myself on the number 81 bus heading north-west to Kanchanaburi. An easy two and-a-bit hours later I arrived, with an hour to wait for the next mini van to Sangklaburi. A couple of hours out of Kanchanaburi the landscape started to get quite scenic; twisting around mountain ranges, limestone hills, past rivers, streams and waterfalls, but I hardly dared to turn my head to look out the window for fear my neck might snap as the driver fanged it at god knows how many kilometers per hour, onward and upward. I think the questions on the application form for mini-van drivers in Thailand must be: 1) do you hope to qualify to become a professional racing car driver in A) less than one year; B) 1-2 years; C) more than 2 years? 2) In each hour of driving, approximately how many minutes (total) is it possible to spend at less than 100kms/hr? Eventually I got my first glimpse of the “lake” and knew I wasn’t far from my destination. Almost literally the end of the road. Sangklaburi (or Sangkhlaburi) is a border town, snuggled up close and personal with Myanmar, and while you can’t go much further past Sangkla (the border crossing Three Pagoda Pass is only about 20 clicks away), making it the end for anyone traveling west, for many people fleeing Myanmar, Sangkla is the first stop, rather than the last.
The original township of Sangklaburi was drowned in 1983 when the valley was flooded to create the dam (which people like to call a lake) around which the town is now built. Being a border town, there is a big mix of ethnicities that makes up the population; Mon, Karen, Burmese, Thai, and pretty much all of them about as poor as you can get. Border towns hold host to all sorts of problems; human trafficking, refugees, poverty, and with these problems come more like prostitution (either as a sex slave or because no other options seem available, or to support a drug habit), abandonment of children and/or women, children being orphaned due to all the above, banditry, general lawlessness borne out of pure desperation or anger at all of the above, and pretty much any type of exploitation you can think of. Sangkla is pretty tame as far as border towns go, I’m told, but there is definitely something in the air here that’s different to anywhere else I’ve been in Thailand. There are also a bunch of pretty interesting people here, because of all the above. There are two refugee camps, one about 80kms away in one direction which is home to about 4,000 people, and another about 60kms away from Kanchanaburi storing about 2 or 3 thousand people, as well as a few organisations quietly providing food, shelter and other basic stuff for untold numbers of others. The children’s home I’m now volunteering at has over 140 kids, from babies to, well kids who’ve finished school and want to stay, so work for the home doing the many, many jobs that are needed to keep an operation like this running. And this isn’t the only orphanage in town…. Children are obviously the most vulnerable people in the picture in a place like this, and women don’t fare that much better. There are also people (foreigners) here working for NGO’s and various advocacy groups, all trying in earnest to improve the health and opportunities for whichever group they’re fighting for. So for such a small place in the middle of nowhere, there’s some pretty interesting folk around.
The day I arrived I caught a taxi bike up to the orphanage (well, 2 taxi bikes – me, my laptop and handbag on one bike, my backpack on the driver of the other one) and found my way to the office. There I met Didi Devamala, the Italian woman who started this place 20 years ago. She took me to her office where I had a three hour briefing that crammed in a lot of information – all my tasks and deadlines and responsibilities as the new Volunteer Coordinator, as well as some other things to look after while Didi was away in Malaysia for eleven days, starting the next morning! So there I was, in the thick of it again. Oh well. The last proper volunteer coordinator had left a couple of months ago, and from the look of it pretty much everything had been on hold since then. On second look it became clear that some other stuff has always been on hold, such as managing the six, yes, six email accounts, one of which (I’m not exaggerating) has over 4,000 messages in the inbox. Most of them have been opened, but no one has ever thought to maybe, delete the spam or other useless messages from the inbox, let alone file them into folders….. oh well.
So, the next morning, Didi left and I got stuck in. I had to work out how to prioritise three groups of short-term volunteers arriving over the following two weeks, including developing programs for each of them; uploading the twice-yearly newsletter to the website and emailing it to a database that had not been maintained; and working my way through the mess of email accounts to try to work out if there were any other long-term volunteers due to arrive soon, so I could create a calendar for their (and my) placement.
We eat early here – lunch is at 11:30 and dinner at 4:30. A few hours after lunch on my first day, me and a couple of other volunteers took an early mark and headed into town. I needed to pick up a few essentials (bowl and spoon for eating at the orphanage, pillow, stuff like that), and so it was that I was introduced to “the shop that sells everything”. The term “everything” is used quite loosely, but as far as stuff that you need, and can get in Sangkhla, this is probably the place to get it. We’re in a pretty remote part of Thailand here, and progress (or maybe I should say “westernization”) is slow in arriving. The best way I can illustrate this is to say that “town” consists of three streets, and the 7-11 opened less than six months ago. Stocked up with my purchases I headed back to my new digs behind the Baan Unrak Bakery, which is a fifteen minute walk from town, and halfway between town and the orphanage. The rest of the female volunteers share a house on the next street over, and the rooms behind the Bakery are officially for male volunteers. However, when Didi took me to the women’s house the night I arrived, the only available room is kind of tacked onto the front verandah with a dodgy lock that anyone with a screwdriver could open, so she showed me the rooms at the Bakery. Seeing as there is only one male volunteer at the moment so no high demand for these rooms, I opted to call this home, at least to start off with. It’s not a house; just a building with two rooms downstairs and two rooms up a set of external stairs, all with their own entrance door. My room’s ok, as far as rooms go; it has concrete walls and wooden floorboards, four windows with screens and glass louvers, a plywood ceiling, and a fluorescent light. A mattress on the floor and a small table are about it as far as furniture goes. All I need, really. The bathroom is the hurdle. My room is upstairs; much better to be the one creaking around on the floorboards than being below and driven to distraction by someone else doing it, so the bathroom is outside and down the stairs. It’s the public toilet for the bakery, which is also a small café, internet shop and clothing store, all proceeds going towards the orphanage. So my bathroom is a public toilet with a shower (cold, of course) on the wall. I have to say that I’m struggling with it a bit, but as I’m writing this I’ve already been here for four weeks, so if I keep thinking about my time here in chunks of four weeks, it should be do-able. The other problem with living at the Bakery is trying to resist the chocolate cake, pineapple or apple pie, cinnamon swirls, croissants and banana bread every day…. The gluten thing is getting out of control…
Sangkhla is a pretty social place for all us foreigners, and just about every night there seems to be something going on somewhere, so it didn’t take long to get to meet everyone. Mostly people seem to hang out at a place called the Tea House; a cute little café with free WIFI and alright food, and is a handy five minute walk from the Bakery. Wednesday night is pizza night, and is attended by pretty much every foreign volunteer and aid worker in town. The pizzas are limited though, so if you can’t get there early enough, it’s best to phone someone who you know is there to order one for you, or drop in earlier in the day and ask them to save you one. I tell you, they’re pretty good pizzas….
There is NO bar or pub in Sangkhla. That’s right – none. The Tea House doesn’t even serve alcohol (but they do let us BYO). Some of the other restaurants around the place serve beer, but that’s as close as it gets. Over the wooden bridge (the longest wooden bridge in Thailand – Sangkhla’s claim to fame) on the Mon side of the lake, alcohol is not allowed at all, so I guess in comparison, things are pretty loose over here.
After toiling away for six days I took my day off for the week, and it all started off quite nicely, thank you. I got up at 8:30 – best sleep-in for weeks, and put on my trainers for the first time since being in Thailand, and did my first bit of intentional exercise in nine months. Surprisingly this did not kill me, and after a shower I decided to check out the breakfast at P Guesthouse down the road, which has a great view over the lake. The breakfast wasn’t as good as the view, but it wasn’t bad, and you have to try these things. Next on the agenda were some domestic chores, and then a walk into town to withdraw some cash and have a bit more of a look around. Arriving at the bank I stuck my card into the first of two side by side ATM’s, and after futilely pushing buttons resulting only in error messages, I cancelled the transaction and tried the one beside it. I kept getting some kind of error message with that one too, so after a few more goes I took my card and went inside the branch. Here I stood in line for the teller for at least twenty minutes (there were only three people ahead of me), who, once I reached the counter, told me I should try the ATM again. I tried to explain (tricky when they don’t really speak English, and I really don’t speak Thai) that I had already tried both of the ATM’s again, several times, and tried to ask if I could do a manual withdrawal inside the branch. I got the message that this would be possible, as long as I had my passport. Of course my passport was in my room, and the teller insisted that I try the ATM again, and if it still didn’t work, I should come back inside. So, I tried the ATM’s again, and of course they didn’t work, so I went back inside, and waited in line for the teller, again. Eventually I got someone’s attention and managed to get my message across that I wanted to make a manual withdrawal, and I was ushered along to the foreign exchange counter. After waiting a while I eventually handed over my card, and then was asked for my passport…. I explained that my passport was at my accommodation, but they insisted that I needed it, so off I went to find a taxi bike to take me back to the Bakery and wait while I got my passport, then take me back to the bank. Actually, before I did that I went in search of another ATM that was rumoured to be somewhere near the hospital. First I had to work out where the hospital is (not that hard in a town with three streets), and then find the ATM. A nurse pointed me in the right direction and I thought my problem was solved, until I saw the ATM…. The only bank in Thailand that won’t accept my card is the Government Savings Bank. Their ATM’s won’t take my card in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, nowhere, so I nearly cried when the ATM near the hospital came into view; the hot pink Government Savings Bank….. So then I took a taxi bike back to the Bakery then back to the only bank in town. Of course I had to wait a while at the foreign exchange counter (I can’t work out what actually goes on there because I’m damn sure there aren’t that many locals exchanging currencies), but eventually the guy took my card and my passport while I waited and enjoyed the airconditioning. Not for long. He came back to the counter and told me that I didn’t have any balance in my account. I told him there was plenty of balance in my account and he should try again. He disappeared for a moment, then stuck his head around the corner and motioned for me to go into the back room with him, where I observed him swipe my card through an EFTPOS machine onto the screen of which appeared the word “declined”. Declined??? I asked him to try again. He did. Declined. I couldn’t believe it. I asked him if he could make a phone call to his head office or something to find out if there is some kind of problem between his bank and my bank, and he told me that he was too busy working. Incredulous I stood there thinking, “actually buddy, I’m a customer, so I fit into the category of your work”, but said to him “so you’re not going to help me?”. This seemed to strike a (deeply resentful) chord somewhere within him, and after rolling his eyes and grunting he trudged off to get a phone. I went back out to his “foreign exchange” counter, where I had by now lost my spot at the front and had to stand behind a couple of people whose business at the bank somehow necessitated them taking up a position at this counter. After two phone calls which included a lot of derisory use of the word “farang” and a few snorts and chuckles, he put the phone down, handed my card and passport back to me and shaking his head said “no”. NO WHAT????? When it became clear that I wasn’t going anywhere without a bit more of an explanation, he muttered something to one of the people at the counter in front of me, and they said something that I took to mean that this bank and my bank aren’t talking – much like my bank and the pink Government Savings Bank. Oh great. So down to my last 50Baht I trudged back to the Bakery to pick up my laptop and headed to the Tea House to use the free WIFI and come up with a plan.
A couple of hours later one of the other Baan Unrak volunteers turned up and offered to loan me 1,000B to tide me over. So I decided that the following day I would take the 8:00am mini van to Kanchanaburi (three hours away), withdraw cash, and come back. Because of the high fees I’m charged to withdraw money, for the past eight months I’ve been in the habit of trying to take cash out only once a month, to try to keep the fees to $10/month. This has now moved onto a much more advanced level, involving trying to work out a way that I don’t have to use my one day off a week, once a month to go to Kanchanaburi to withdraw money. Tricky.
Two weeks after I arrived in Sangkla it was Christmas, which I couldn’t manage to get very excited about. In the morning I walked up to the home to see the kids get their presents, which were various things saved from donations over the past months, and then back to the Tea House for a late breakfast. Baan Unrak practices a philosophy called Neo-Humanism, which in a nutshell means love for and connection with everything in the universe, so no eating meat or eggs, and not eating other things that they reckon stimulate certain glands and inhibit spiritual growth, including mushrooms, onions and garlic. I’d say eight times out of ten the food at the home is really good – there’s always a selection of at least three or four dishes, and the other times it’s just ok. One thing that isn’t ok looks like potato, but it isn’t potato. We don’t know what it’s called, so we call it “not potato”. The only protein we get is tofu, which is ok because the tofu in Thailand is really good, but without even eggs in the diet, you really feel that something is missing…. Other high-protein things like pulses or nuts or whatever are too expensive, and a not completely balanced diet is really just a fact of life in a Thai orphanage. So, on Christmas morning I was really craving some protein and had a cheese omelet at the Tea House, which was pretty good, then went off to meet up with some new friends (an Australian from Adelaide and a German/Kiwi from Auckland) for the rest of the day. We took off on their motorbikes to the Three Pagoda Pass to stock up on some cheap Myanmar whiskey (100 baht for a 700ml bottle – much better than 100+ baht for a half bottle of Sang Som Thai whiskey!) and then spent the afternoon lolling about in a bamboo hut on the side of the Songkaria river, which is absolutely stunning and the perfect place to spend a lazy afternoon. The water is frickin freezing, and definitely not my minimum swimming temperature of 21.5 degrees, so we all made do with dangling our feet over the edge of our hut and watching the river tumble over rocks, with the occasional Thai teenager floating past on an inner tube. At around 5:30 we packed up and ordered some food from one of the cafes that line the track that runs down to the huts along the riverbank, and took it with us to join some other folk at a place called Generation Journey, which provides a fairly self-sufficient long-term living solution for some people who need it http://www.generation-journey.org/ Everyone was asked to bring a plate and we shared all the food around a campfire in the jungle. And that was Christmas.
The next morning it was back to work for another seven days, including new year’s day, which turned out to be very difficult indeed. Our constant hosts at the Tea House had invited all their friends, personal and professional, to join them for dinner around a campfire (popular theme out here in the sticks) down by their jetty on the lake. It was as good a way as any to bring in the new year, so after watching the sun go down on 2009 at another spot on the lake, we moseyed on over to the Tea House and planted ourselves next to the fire and drank our way through quite a lot of whiskey. In fact, by my reckoning I consumed my entire quota of alcohol for 2009 and 2010, so the rest of the year should be fairly sober. This did not for a fun day make, when the next morning it was back to my group of eighteen high school volunteers from Australia, and setting them about various tasks such as building a fence and digging the foundations for a new guesthouse. By 2:30pm I had to call it quits, which I think is an alright effort for new year’s day anyway.
My fourth week in Sangkhla has been categorized by ridiculously hot weather. It’s supposed to be winter here and I came all prepared with a hoodie and lots of layers, but apart from a few chilly nights in my second week, it’s been absolutely stinking. Google weather tells me that the daily maximum in Kanchanaburi is in the low to mid-thirties this week, and I’m not sure how close to that it is here, but it feels very close. I must see if the shop that sells everything has a thermometer.
