Maya's Account of the Wat Donjon Temple/Orphanage

To see my tabblo of photos from the Wat Donjon Orphanage, click here.

Chiangmai, Thailand
Before going to serve dinner at the orphanage we (meaning our family and the Australians that were with us) were all blessed by the Father Monk. He was sitting cross legged several feet above the ground clothed in the same orange fabric I will forever more associate with monks. Surrounding him and all around the room was a amazing variety of statues. There was everything from British soldiers to statues of Buddha to Ganesh. The most remarkable of the statues however was not elaborate nor placed so it would stand out more than anything else, yet the carving was remarkable. It was made out of some sort of light wood and depicted a elder monk. Though he seemed to be looking straight ahead when I looked directly into the wood carved eyes I could have sworn he was looking at me. The wrinkles surrounding his eyes were amazingly realistic. Anyway back to the blessing. Skylar went first walking on her knees (as you aren't suppose to be taller than a monk when being blessed). He wrapped an orange, yellow, white, red and gold cord around her wrist twice and than tying it so both loops were in the knot said a few things in Thai I could not understand (this is very common) and cut the end of the cord still attached to her wrist. After a few seconds silence Skylar placed her hands together and bowed her head. Father monk than placed a large white oval shaped fan on her head and said a blessing in Thai which I also could not understand. Then it was my turn with the same process which only differed in that it had a slight pause in the beginning as Peppe told him I was twelve and he did not quite believe it. The rest of our group did the same and then we were off walking through a not very nice scenery to get to the area where 500 orphans ate, slept, went to school and carried out their daily lives.

The walk was very muddy due to the fact that that it had been raining heavily every evening as it was the start of the rainy season. The ground to the side strongly resembled that of a garbage dump. But unlike in the U.S. there were several hogs chowing down. The boys and girls eat in separate areas the girls closer to the temple ate on picnic benches. The boys on in a cement covered area. But kids don't change and though i wanted to help the girls they needed absolutely no help what so ever. The boys had more atmosphere however as line by line they went up to receive a very nice meal by their standards of steamed basmati rice and a sort of soup mixture of vegetables, spices and chicken. As they did this, they sang and chanted. The discipline was absolute. The lines were perfectly straight and no one started eating till everyone else had their meals. When they started eating it was absolute silence. The only sounds were the clanking of silverware against their tin plates and the occasional scuffle if someone got up to get seconds. After many rounds of this it was time for the real treat of the day... ICE CREAM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The most popular flavors didn't differ much from the most popular flavors in the U.S. the hits were Strawberry and Chocolate. I think I'll take a moment here to describe the attire of the orphans. They had obviously been sent and brought clothes from all over the world as the T-shirts bore logos from spider-man to Converse all stars to soccer jerseys with advertisements for Emirates. These kids usually were fed just rice and veggies for dinner so we had provided a special treat. On any given day the orphans consume 100 kg. of rice. After every speck of food was gone we were sung good-bye in Thai that I couldn't understand except for the end when they said in English "Thank you very much." I left feeling good to have done something but a tad guilty that while I was traveling the world these kids were living parentless in an orphanage. I'm going to take a quote from J.K. Rowling here by saying "They looked reasonably well cared for but, there was no denying this was a grim place in which to grow up."