Thailand - Introduction Week

Schedules of Gold Programme - The First 4 Weeks.

This will be exciting beginning of your even more exciting stay in Thailand.

During this period you will get to know the authentic Thailand.

This was the blurb from the front page of our programme of activities as issued by Greenstay Co. Ltd. We had an introduction week, a cultural week, a trekking week & a beach week all planned for us.

We were based at The Lemon House (no idea why it was called this - there were no lemons to be seen & the place was not painted yellow! The company also owned The Brown House & The Blue House which mysteriously didn't match their descriptions either) in a village near the town of Singburi, 140 kms north of Bangkok. We haven't managed to find out the name of the village yet, despite determined attempts! Our room was in a walled courtyard in pleasant gardens. Just across the road we could sit, trying to catch any hint of a breeze, at the side of a river - a rather muddy & cloudy river, as have been all the rivers we've seen in Thailand. The dead dog & plastic bags of rubbish we saw floating by might have something to do with it!

Our introduction week began with an informal welcome party where local children, dressed in traditional costumes, demonstrated Thai dancing & music, giggling at our efforts to join in. We walked around the village, pulling ourselves across the river on the walk-on, walk-off ferry to visit the local temple & school. The children & staff were all in uniform. We discovered that they all have a different uniform for each day of the week, including one day when the boys turn up in Scout uniform, while the girls wear a Red Cross uniform (staff too!).

We had Thai language, cooking & massage lessons. We went swimming & to a karaoke lounge. We watched palm fruit picking & made bracelets from coconut shell beads strung onto waxed coconut fibre.

We visited temples:

- Wat Phikun Thong, site of the largest seated Buddha statue in Thailand & a very spooky & lifelike waxwork image of a pre-eminent monk, Luang Phae, who died about 7 years ago. Locals bring in breakfast, lunch & dinner for him daily, in case he feels peckish, apparently! It was also the site of the most graphic paintings depicting the consequences of bad living. We hadn't previously associated Buddhism with notions of hell fires in the world to come, but these were dire warnings of never-ending torture & damnation. Good living was depicted as bringing the rewards of floating about on a heavenly cloud amongst gardens & angels - which looked rather bland!

- Wat Phra Non Chaksi Worawihan, home of another huge reclining Buddha statue, this time the biggest in Thailand.

- Monkey Temple, shrine of San Phra Kan, where monkeys swarmed all over the modern temple & the ruins of earlier Khmer temples dating from the 13th Buddhist century. (Thailand operates a calendar starting from the year 543 BCE when Buddha entered Nirvana/died. 2007 is the Thai year 2550.)

- Wat Phraputhabat, known as the AIDS Temple. The abbot here has instituted a programme of care for AIDS & HIV patients which is unique in Thailand. There is still a great deal of fear & misunderstanding of AIDS in the country. At Wat Phraputhabat those in the 1st stages of illness live in one room houses in the beautiful grounds below the hillside temple. They are encouraged to work - some have stalls on site selling various goods. For those in the terminal stages of the disease there is a ward devoted to their care. A forthright & practical set of guidelines indicated the emphasis on giving respect & good care to all the patients. The strangest experience there was our visit to the "Life Museum" which was a display of mummified bodies of victims of AIDS set alongside photos of them in life & biographies stating how they had contracted the disease. Children were infected by their mothers, women by their husbands & by paying clients, men by sex workers. There was even a lady boy infected as a result of being a sex worker. We had felt a bit squeamish about going in but found it poignant & moving. It was set up not so much as a salutary warning but more as an affirmation of the Buddhist emphasis on all life being a process of decay, which was an interesting insight in itself.

We were also introduced to Thai history, ate Thai food (including rice & veg for breakfast), visited a Thai market & a Thai shopping centre & had plenty of Thai free time. We think the introductions went well.