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Published: August 22nd 2007
Dr Sem, the Foundation founder
The 96 year old founder was previously Minister for Health in the 1980's, and before that, as a surgeon, performed several Siamese twin separations.Prior to taking off to South America, Neil spent a week in Northern Thailand as the first in his planned quarterly visits to assist the Sem Pringpuangkeo Foundation, a charity fund for educational support for orphan children affected by AIDS in the far northern regions of that country.
The area around Chiang Rai, where I was based for the week, is superbly lush at this time of year, as it receives regular rainfall. Much of it is quite mountainous (thus the presence of the hilltribe villages), and a lot of it is heavily covered by trees (of which teak and bamboo are common species), while those areas not covered by thick bush and trees are almost all used up on producing crops - rice on most of the flat lowland areas, and corn, tea, coffee and tropical fruit trees being the major crops in the more hilly regions. This is not an affluent part of Thailand, and many of the homes are primitive by western standards, but the people here are very resilient and most hospitable to outsiders. There are no shortage of dogs, chickens and cows wandering freely both in the urban areas and countryside!
One item of
Typical Chiang Rai countryside
This area is very mountainous and is currently very lush, with good crop growth in non-bushed areas particular fascination up here is the incredible allegiance to the king by the Thai people (eat your heart out, Liz!). Not only does his face pop up in every office building and many billboards scattered around the countryside, but alternating Thai flags and yellow royal flags flank hundreds of kilometres of road (they must have made millions of the things), and every Monday and Friday, more than half the population wear special yellow shirts to work with "Long live the King" emblazoned on the back. I'll let you guess why they don't say "God save ..."!
My main role on this particular visit was to orientate myself with the work that the SPF does in this region, and offer any suggestions for improvement. As such, during my week here, I spent most of my time doing the rounds of the various schools, health clinics and families, accompanying the relevant SPF area coordinators and with my own interpreter, who in fact is a graduate of the Foundation and has chosen to work for them and put something back in return for their support to him over the years.
On each of the visits to the schools, they really laid
Akha Tribe dancing
The Akha is the most prevalent tribe in the region serviced by the Foundation out the red carpet treatment (they must have thought I was John Howard!), and in most cases, apart from getting the opportunity to chat with those pupils that are part of the Foundation, I was treated to a number of impromptu concerts and exhibitions of Thai dancing by the children. In one school, they actually shut down all classes for an hour (the kids didn’t seem to mind too much!) as all the teachers gathered around me to practice their English!
The visits to the various homes of the Foundation children was really quite humbling. Most homes were pretty primitive and almost all the kids visited (12 homes in all) have either lost both parents, or father has died and mother has HIV, and they are generally cared for by grandmother (given that grandfather also likely died of AIDS). We saw very few men on our visits, and it appears that a combination of hard drinking, smoking, sex and drugs takes its toll in the region. Many of the grandmothers were in their 80s, and as well as having to bring up the children, they had to go to work to financially support them. The majority worked in either
Another countryside view
This shows how the rice fields combine with other crops the rice, vege or fruit fields and earned around 2,000 baht (AUD70) per month.
For me, probably the highlight of the trip was the day spent up in the hilltribe region where we spent half a day at each of an Akha and Lisow village. To access these villages required 4WD vehicles, as the rains had made the dirt roads quite treacherous. While I had previously visited this region as a tourist about 10 years ago, there is a huge difference between the very ‘stage-managed’ view you might get of such villages via a commercial tour group, and that that you get when you see them as part of a local visit group as they go about their normal daily routine.
On my one day off, my hosts took me up to the Golden Triangle area (three way border of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar), where I spent an interesting hour at the Opium Museum (no free samples, I’m afraid!), saw relics of the old capital city (700 years ago) of Chiang Saen, then popped over the border for an hour or so of shopping in Myanmar (as you would!), at which I saw much of the clothing we
Sample home of Orphan Child
While they all have electricity now, not many have running water, and the interiors are generally sparsely furnished. have purchased for our South American trip available for less than a quarter the price!
Should any of my good readers here be interested in supporting a child in the Foundation, it will only cost you the princely sum of around AUD200 per year (tax deductible, so not much more than a net AUD100 for you high-rollers!) and as well as having the satisfaction of helping out someone less privileged, the Foundation actually encourages foster parents to visit their kids and check out their operation. So you can combine this with you next holiday to Phuket or Koh Samui. If you have any interest, you can check out the website on ‘www.semfoundation.org’ (I wrote this website for them) and give me a call if interested.
Hopefully our next blog contribution shall be from Joan and myself from Quito in Ecuador in just over two weeks.
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Jill Fitzhenry
non-member comment
Such a simple life
Great pics, especially the children - they are just beautiful eh? Read with interest your commentary (such an interesting week!) and noted the "normal" family rarely includes a mother and father. I look forward to reading about the next adventure......enjoy!