Sangkhla buri and The Children of the Forest.

Hello all!

I am back in Bangkok for just today. I just got back last night from a little town up in the northwest of Thailand called Sangkhla buri. It was incredibly nice getting away from the big smelly cities and into a small town of about 5000 people or so.

The entire reason I went to Sangkhla buri was to join the head people of the Amicus Foundation. www.amicusfoundation.org for those that are interested. Anyway, the main people of the Amicus foundation are Mary and Matthew Kelly. They are Linnea's mother and step father. So, they are trying to raise money for the foundation, which builds schools and other buildings, and more or less helps out the children of the forest here in Thailand. The Children are either Children that are orphaned or have a single mother. Anyway, it's an amazing foundation that is doing some really important work.

So, today is Monday. Which would make it Thursday when we drove out there. It was about a five hour drive, and The bridge over the river Kwai was on the way. So we stopped there for lunch. The Lunch spot is a gorgeous floating restaurant. It's right on the river with a great view of the bridge. All in all though, the bridge wasn't spectacular. Tons of tourists on it. I just wanted to jump off of it really. We asked some people if I could, but they said it probably wasn't a good idea because they were preparing for a reinactment of the bridge being destroyed. So apparently fireworks were under the water, or something like that.

When we got to the resort, we found a beautiful place. We stayed at this little hotel with seperate little houses for the rooms. All very plush. It was overlooking the resevoir that had floating houses in it as well. Then there was this gorgeous wooden bridge that also crossed over the resevoir onto the Mon side. The Mons are just another religous affilition. So you have primarily buddists on our side, and mons on the other side.

After Waking up on Friday, we traveled to the first school. This was a school that was about a 5 minute drive into the jungle. And this is where we spent the majority of our time. I took a few hundred pictures, that I'm trying to sort through today. So, mom, expect a CD of pics soon! :) We spent the whole day touring this village/school area and it was such an incredible experiance. The kids loved us at first site, they are completely self sufficiant, and only two buildings have electricity. That night they put on a show for us as well. They had practiced dancing and singing and performed it infront of two parked cars that had thier headlights on.

The next day we drove to the border of Myanmar and Thailand. And of course, I forgot my Outside Bozeman magazine! Stupid stupid stupid! Regardless, after touring another small village that was officially in Myanmar, we headed to the coolest village of all.

We had to off road for about 20 minutes. We got about 5 miles into the deep, deep jungle. Then we hiked for another 10 minutes. So we were way in. The Amicus foundation funded a school at that place. The kids were very shy there though, and didn't speak Thai. No electricity whatsoever, they harvested their own rice, made their own food, and lived this way their entire lives. Some of them had never been to a city before, and they were about 60-70 years old! On our drive out, we then saw the most amazing jungle spider ever! It was about the size of my face! And I thought it was going to eat me whole! As we were driving, I saw this spider about 10 meters away and had time to warn everybody to duck to miss it. (Oh, yeah, we were riding in the back of a pickup truck). The spider body was black with bright orange, sharp legs that were each probably 10cm long! I'll look for the type online, and see if I can post a picture at some point.














That night we came back to the first village, and watched more kids perform. They had dances, music and singing. And then they invited me to juggle and perform magic. Let me tell you, this was probably my best audience ever. Given, my regular routine didn't necesarily work due to the language barrier. But to give an example, after juggling apples, all the kids were hording oranges that night from their dinner so they could practice juggling too. Also, one of the tricks I performed was tearing a 100 baht bill in half, then in quarters, folding it up, and restoring it to normal. Considering these kids live on probably about 100 baht a month (A little less than three dollars) they were devestated to see me ripping up this bill! Plus I couldn't explain what was going to happen! They just say me ripping up A LOT of money! Crazy people! But when that bill got restored, they erupted into cheering, laughing, and applauding. Just for that reaction, it has made my entire magic "career" worth while! It was also the first time the kids have seen magic of any sort. It really made me wish I could've brought some of my larger stage tricks that aren't as reliant on language as card tricks are.














Well, the next day, we drove back to Bangkok, and since then we've been running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get things done before we take off again tomorrow.

By the way, I took all the pictures on this blog except the ones I am in. . .Hope you enjoy them! They are some of my favorite photographs that I have ever taken!