Decorating the toilet block

Today we set about making our designs for the toilet block permanent. We each got designated areas of the walls to work on. Maisie, Charlotte, Abbi, Grace and Beth worked on the four girl silhouettes and three trefoils whilst Anna, Louisa and El worked on the flowers on the back wall. Florence meanwhile brought her elephant to life and Louise and Hannah painted the tree onto the front and side walls. Then Maisy painted the front wall with some more flowers. 

We all finished by putting green handprints to make the leaves on the tree- even the Thai leaders and kitchen staff took part!

Whilst the paint was drying on the walls we filled in the disabled pathway with sand to finish it off. Finally we were able to stand back and see what we had helped to create for the Thai girl guides.

The painting team !

 After many, many, photos we headed back to the girl guides centre in Chiang Mai to get ready for the Lanna dinner and show. 

Anna and Lou 😄

Campsite Project

Breakfast was at 7am, we were rally getting excited to what was to happen in a few hours, we were off to the Rai Chern Bamphen Campsite! This was the time we would be undertaking survice tasks that involved painting and paving! 

We arrived by Tuk Tuk, and we were shown around the most beautiful campsite ever! 

There was green grass, tree canopies and lovely guess rooms - with mattresses just off the floor. We also had a tour of the site before being introduced to the toilet in which need some serious TLC. 

The first thing we did was put a base layer of paint which went on the inside and outside of the toilet block. 

This layer of paint included white paint and gloss. We left this to dry and started on the pathway. The path way involved some serious hard labour in the sun; going back and forth with buckets of sand and stones. 

This was to create the base for the slope, we had to level this off, using some string to work out the gradient. (Very old school!) Soon enough we were ready to lay the stones, in fours we completed the task in hand.

 Finally, all we had to do was give the outside and the inside of the toliet another coat of yellow paint. 

Feeling accomplished, we finish the day of with a campfire. This involved lots of songs such as Campfires Burning and other Guiding Classics. Also we got to taste the lovely kebabs that were presented to us to cook on the barbecue. 

We finished the night we smores and a good nights sleep.

 - Grace, Florence and Hannah. 😀

Chilling in Thailand

After a lovely lay-in we had our breakfast, chips again🍟! We spent the morning catching up on our swims🏊 wondering around Chaing Mai🚶and reading 📔we had lunch 🍱and prepared ourselves for the afternoon boat trip! - Room 229 Maisy B, Anna and Charlotte xxx

After lunch, in which Abbi and Lousia both suffered the wrath of chillies! Hot, hot, hot! We clambered onto the boat and cruised down the river for 45 minutes.

 After a few attractions were pointed out, we then arrived at the farmer house, where we all enjoyed watermelon 🍉, pineapple🍍 and some interesting tasting juice 🍹 Some of us also opted for a waffle, which was very tasty! - Abbi, Hannah, Maisie G xxx

On the return, we took photos and enjoyed the view! Dinner was pretty good, with rice, pork and veggies! After a full tum and juiced up we finished off a bit of reading and various other activities. We decided as a collective, to head to the market to do that last bit of shopping! - Lousia, Grace and Florence 😊

We revisited the Chiang Mai night market, spent some time shopping - great atmosphere, lots of people and food. A lot of us decided to have a super cool ice cream to finish the night before a nice stroll back to our Chiang Mai home. - Beth, Louise and El 

Here are photos of our ice creams - the best we have ever tasted !!!

THE PROJECT 👭

We kick started the day with tree planting. We were each given a lemon tree to plant with some of the young Thai Guides and we got lovely and muddy!

Back inside to meet and greet the 40 girls who had come along for the day, the girls we had met in the Hill Tribe village gave a traditional performance wearing similar items to the ones we had witnessed being mades 2 days previous. Throughout the morning, many of us had the opportunity to join in and try on these clothes and attempt (and somewhat fail(!)) to recreate these beautiful dances.

The girls ran some activies for us all including: making sweet sticky rice packages which were either steamed or grilled; creating aromatic flowers out of plant leaves; and having a go at some of the embroidery.

Next, we took the reins! We thought it would be apt to show the girls where we're from to give them an idea of where we are in relation to them. We coloured in maps of the British Isles showing North East England and also had world maps where they could see how far away Thailand and England really are. We made miniature Union Flags and also Horse Guards cut outs too for them to take away.

We then broke for lunch and started the First Aid activities. The girls rotated around the four stations we had created which were:

-Tooth Brushing and Handwashing (El, Abbi and Maisy)

-Recovery Position and Shock (Anna, Beth and Hannah)

-CPR (Louise, Maisie and Grace)

-Bandages and Slings (Florence, Charlotte and Louisa)

At first the language barrier was difficult, but through many actions and a little bit of translation help, everything went really well! Particularly for the tooth brushing activity, it was great to be able to provide the girls with advice (and toothbrushes!) as the majority had never seen one before in their lives. Many found it funny, many found it strange, but all found it useful and hopefully will put this into practice in life at home.

After this we started to make friendship bracelets which the girls were able to take home to finish. Which led onto our final activity, that revolved around Sex Education and we ran a fun game (including sweets!) that both explained the importance of safe sex and how HIV can be spread. 

The grande finale included Abbi, Maisie, Lou and Lou doing their Senior Section promise, whilst the rest of us remade ours at the same time. The day was concluded by a round of Thai and English Taps (the song we sing at the end of a guide meeting).

Buenos noches from Anna, El and Beth, back in Chiang Mai 🌙

Quick Saturday Post

Woken up by a confused rooster, we travelled to the White Tenple in Chiang Rai. 

We have reached an agreement that it was our favourite temple so far! The sun was out, spirits were high, and the temple shimmered in the morning sunshine.

From there we were taken on a mad mystery road trip where we visited a tea plantation,

 the Northern Most Point of Thailand 

(the Myanmar/Thailand border) and The Golden Triangle. 

This was where Laos, Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand all met, forming the triangle where poppies grew and opium was produced.

Goodnight for now, as we anticipate being shaken early tomorrow by that pesky rooster! 

Beth, Anna and El X

The Hill Tribes

On Saturday afternoon, we visited the Hill Tribe village from which some girls would be coming on Sunday for the day of activities.

We were greeted by 4 bubbly girls who weren't as confident as other girls we've previously met but were very proud to show us around their home village. 

The majority of us hadn't seen a hill tribe village like this before and it seemed miles apart from Chiang Mai. It had a very profound effect on us.

The village was very basic, with houses mostly made from tin and wood, yet it felt like there was a tight community spirit. All of the homes had outside toilet facilities, however many houses did have satellite dishes and access to electricity which some of us didn't expect.

We saw some ladies doing traditional embroidery which was beautiful which they loved to share with us. It would take 2 months to produce a very intricatley designed piece (albeit very small) of their local dress!

There were many chickens, pigs and dogs freely roaming the area, which the hill tribe families would use for food and for trading.

It's upsetting to think that girls like the ones we met today, could be persuaded to move to inner areas such as Bangkok as they're told that their quality of life will improve - when in fact they will be taken advantage of and exploited in the industries such as the sex trade.

Now we've had a real taste of the kind of lives some of the hill tribe children have, it's helped us to fully comprehend how important our activies on Sunday will be. We're really looking forward to sharing our activies with these girls and many others from local schools in the area.

El, Anna and Beth X

To Chiang Rai and beyond!

Today was the day we ventured into the wilderness of Chiang Rai. After about an hour of travel we stopped at some hot springs. We all had a quick paddle in the bathing bit and then tried some small eggs that had been boiled in one of the pools. We all 'enjoyed' the smell of rotten eggs. Then it was on to another temple. This one contained a museum of different amulets that had been found. There were thousands! This temple had been derelict and had been restoring it since 1900s. Before lunch we had a quick stop at a lake that the princess is interested in. This has meant that nobody disturbs the fish there and they have grown to be massive. We had fun feeding them! 

After our favourite lunch so far we went off further into Chiang Rai and visited a site that was on the border between Chiang Rai and Lampang, where there was a real gold Buddha statue inside a temple. Alongside this there was also a museum in which they had collected lots of old clay pots that had all been handmade and painted, this was really interesting as it was nice to see history preserved in a way for people to look at today. 

For dinner we went out for a South Koren buffet which was very interesting! but also very fun! We tried to cook our own food, the key word was 'tried'. But we carried on and achieved little nibbles of food and over we all had an enjoyable time. 🍉🍳🍜

Finally, we headed to the Chiang Rai Girl Guiding centre, we are now currently in a little humble home for the next few days; which have nets above the beds to keep up safe from pesky bugs and the rain which has just started to patter on the roof. 

Love, Maisie, Hannah, Anna, Grace, Charlotte and Florence. 💙