Baan Dada Perform at Kanchanburi

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[youtube=UOlQ2juw4ZU][youtube=jtvsJPNjMMM][youtube=oSnXT3D-j7Q]

The next part of my trip was a couple of months volunteering at Baan Dada Children's Home. Baan Dada (Sanskrit for Brother's Place), is an orphanage in North Western Thailand, right on the border with Burma. It's in the middle of pretty much nowhere, with Huay Ma Lai (the nearest village) not even being big enough to get on the map. The closest town is Sangkhlaburi, half an hour away where the kids go to school. There are two 'Dadas' who work round the clock for the kids, and currently 5 volunteers including me. Overall there are 58 kids from both Thailand, and Karen and Mon hill tribes in Burma. This means that many of them are refugees and don't have the legal papers to say that they were born, and so until recently many of them were denied education in Thailand as the government wouldn't acknowledge that they existed. Dada has finally managed to secure enough paperwork (through forging or buying it off parents whose children have died) to get them all into school, but not many of them will ever be able to be adopted, and so the people working here have an ongoing battle to raise enough money through donations to keep the home running, and the kids in school. This is getting even more expensive now the kids are getting older as the Dadas now have to support several kids in Uni or Tech school, as well as running several community projects e.g. vaccinating local kids and pregnant women, and building a technical college. As part of trying to raise money for their home, the kids are involved in various money making schemes such as selling bookmarks, cards and posters, from which 80% of the profits go to the home, and 20% to the kids who made it. Also several of the older boys have created a band and the younger kids do performances of traditional Karen dancing and yoga, and so they travel into Sangkhlaburi sometimes to play at the Guesthouses to earn money, and on Christmas day they went to Kanchanaburi - the nearest city - to play for several days at various guesthouses. Donations can be made at www.baandada.org - anything you can spare would be greatly appreciated by the kids here!

The first place they were playing, and also where we were all staying, was Jolly Frog backpackers. I arrived there late afternoon after the tour to getup to Kanchanaburi, and met up with Gaelen, Veronica, Emily, B and Nory, the other volunteers. We first looked around Kanchanburi a bit, and went to the ultra-cultural Thai icon of Tescos Lotus. Then we met up with Dada 1, Dada 2 and the kids when they turned up at 6pm, 4 hours late, and fairly disorganised, but just in time for their performance at 7. Then we ordered dinner and watched the performance, which was shorter than it was meant to be as the boys forgot the drum paddle, so the littler ones couldn't do their music, but it was still good. The older boys played some thai music, followed by the younger girls doing a Karen dance, and then another very clever dance where they used poles lined up in a square on the floor. 4 girls sat around he edge knocked the poles together to create the beat, whilst the others danced about, jumping in and out of the gaps in the poles when they were created. Then we headed off to "bed", which was little more than a sleeping mat on the floor and a sheet, but only 20B (40p) per night so alls good - and possibly better than the real bed as Emily and V found bites and ants in their blanket.

The next day we were up around 8, and hired bikes for the day to go down to the River Kwai bridge and the markets nearby. We spent quite a while there, looking at fun things such as tiny mannequins that when you pulled the case off, an oversized penis sprang up, and searching for some of the ultra-cool loose fitting trousers that everyone buys here for V. When we finally got bored, we cycled back up the street to a massage shop where we got a foot massage. It was not you normal massage however, and basically involved sticking our feet in a big fish tank whilst they ate the dead skin off you. It was incredibly weird and ticklish, and not at all relaxing as the poster claimed. V couldn't do it at all and kept screaming and ended up just putting her heels in as she was too ticklish.

Then we got lunch and used the internet at a cheap bookstore, before headed back to JollyFrogs to help prepare for the evening's performance. We had more time to prepare this time, so me and Dada 2 made signs and donation boxes and other stuff to generally advertise Baan Dada and make money. The kids all helped out, and considering kids in England aren't generally allowed scissors until about 5 years old, it was slightly scary to watch a 4-5 year old little boy cutting paper and boxes with a massive knife! Then we helped get the kids ready, and watched the performance with Gale, Em and V. It was much better than the night before as they had a working drumkit so they could all perform. They started with the older boys' band, then the little ones' yoga performance, the younger boys' band, Karen dancing, younger girls' band and a yoga performance from 2 of the older kids, before finishing the night with the older boys playing for about another hour.

After a bit I went to help sell things at their stall, and we met some guys who persuaded us to go out - after we got dinner at a vegan place. We ended up at some little bar that sold sheesha for about 100B, so all the guys were doing that, and then went to another place which served dreadful cocktail buckets and taps of beer. They kept showing off their new tattoos - one guy had song lyrics and one had got "Born to Bender" on his stomach, and wanted to get "Asia Bender 2010" on his arm. He won't be regretting that at all. The other one was wearing a bright pink cap, in theory to make him look different and interesting so that he could score. In reality it just made him look like a prat. Eventually after 3 of the guys had both tried to hit on all 4 of us, we got bored and left.

The next day me and Gale got minibus to Sangkhlaburi or "Sangkhla" as cool kids say, whilst Emily and V stayed at JollyFrog for another day as they were too hungover to make the 4 hr trip back. We got to Sangkhla at 7.30 ish whilst dark, which unfortunately meant the Songtheaws weren't running and the price of a motorbike taxi went up to 250B each, so we ended up getting a motorbike to P guesthouse for the night got a Songtheaw back the next morning. Songtheaws are basically pickup trucks with a metal frame welded on to create a roof, but no windows, no door at the back, and definitely no seatbelts - something you kindof miss when going at 80k round a bend that I would have taken at 50k max. We did, however, get to Huay Ma Lai alive, and made the half hour walk to Baan Dada to settle into the volunteer house and await the kids' return.

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