Baan Unrak Travels: Singapore & Malaysia!

The Baan Unrak traveling troupe has safely returned home with great stories from their first adventure abroad!

THE JOURNEY:

I was invited to spend the past 3 weeks as a care-taker for 18 kids (ages 7-17 years old) from the Baan Unrak Children's Home. We traveled from Bangkok to Singapore and Malaysia, showcasing yoga and dance performances. I also helped Didi participate in talks and meetings about social welfare development, promoted fundraising for our Home, and helped to sell a range of products from our single mother's project Weaving Center.

Didi Devamala asked me to help lead her children abroad knowing that she would be called away regularly for important meetings and conferences. That left me with a new catch phrase for the kids, 'Who's the boss?!'

More importantly, it left me with 18 passports, 18 invitation letters and important travel documents, endless customs and immigration forms, organizing flights and transfers (with small panic attacks whenever one of the small children left my line of sight), leading sightseeing trips on our free time, setting wake up calls for morning meditation and picking fights with the big children about curfew 'lights out!' each and EVERY night...the days were long, filled with: cooking, cleaning, walking, running, screaming, laughing, and loving (especially for the small children who were homesick nearly every night.)

The journey was incredible but exhausting. We had no money for spare creature comforts, so we traveled humbly. We were invited to sleep in yoga centers in Malaysia and Singapore (on the condition that we vacated each day they had a class scheduled); and we kept a strict regimen of cooking and cleaning so as not to impose on our hosts' hospitality. Sleeping on the hard wood floors every night with only a thin blanket did something funny to my back and shoulders, and I think I've earned a few more grey hairs in my top-bun than I originally expected...For me, traveling in this fashion was a challenge as well. When I travel, I'm used to splurging here and there for a cup of coffee or extravagant meal; however I didn't want to flaunt my money in front of the kids and I didn't want to buy anything I couldn't share with all 20 of us...so I learned a few lessons myself about truly traveling without expense.

However, seeing these kids on a plane for the first time in their lives...was something special for me. I had to teach them how to buckle and unbuckle the plane seat belts; how to use the airplane toilet (they were afraid of the noise!); how to navigate through an airport and find their gate; how to pack and prepare for a trip abroad each travel day; how to 'pop' the pressure from their ears when the pain became too much! On the second flight back from Malaysia to Bangkok, they were seasoned pros already...and I was one proud Care-Takin' Mama.

SINGAPORE:

In Singapore the kids performed for long-time donors and friends of Baan Unrak, and they got to visit some incredible sights: the Merlion, the Discovery Center and Snow City, Singapore Zoo and Night Safari, the Jurong Bird Park, a boat trip around the bay, a cruise down Orchard Street, and a beach day at Sentosa Island complete with a night showing of laser lights, song and dance! These kids were so lucky, on my first trip to Singapore I couldn't do any of these fun things because the entrance fees were too expensive...lucky for them to have such generous sponsors, and lucky for me to get to tag along!

MALAYSIA:

In Malaysia, the kids participated in a yoga and meditation retreat for 3 days and had great audiences for their performances. On their free time they visited the iconic towers of downtown Kuala Lampur, little India, Chinatown and surrounding sights. They spent a total of 11 days abroad, and packed in as many activities as they could!

THE RETREAT:

The retreat was organized by the Ananda Marga community (Margis) who are made up of followers of the Neo-Humanist philosophy worldwide, the very same philosophy backing the Baan Unrak Home and Foundation.

Every year retreats like this are organized in different corners of the world, and the purpose of each retreat is to have a collective gathering to embrace spirituality, and to hold meetings for the Didis and Dadas (nuns and monks of the order) to meet and review each other's volunteer projects and discuss issues and social development plans in the regions they are based in. I was fascinated, meeting these Didis and Dadas and learning more about the philosophy. In my next post I will be sure to load more photos and videos of the retreat and share more about what I have learned of Neo-Humanism over the past few weeks.

AT THE END OF THE DAY...

The most rewarding part of the trip has been seeing a sense of pride develop and evolve in the children as Thai citizens; and as they compared life abroad to their own humble upbringing they felt a renewed sense of appreciation for many of the values they were brought up with at Baan Unrak.

I have also developed a renewed sense of hope in mankind's capacity to give selflessly. So many people came together to support this trip for us and everyday people spent hundreds of dollars making sure we were fed, well taken care of and entertained during our stay. Most of the people who helped us had never met these kids before, and some people only heard a few words about our project before they were inspired to hand over wads of cash for Didi...It was really something else. Our kids truly touched the lives of hundreds of individuals, merely by their presence.

More than once people came to me privately thanking me for the work I was doing...this made me uncomfortable and I felt undeserving to be honest. I never thought of what I was doing here as a truly selfless act; it was very much my own selfish love that brought me here to live with these kids...however, I did feel energized that there were so many people I came into contact with over the past few weeks who were in awe and support of what I was doing with my life... I must admit their words filled my heart with something I must have felt missing and needing right now. Not glorification...but exoneration from my conscious debt to 'modern mass' society.

THANK YOUS:
This trip was the trip of a lifetime for these kids, and none of it would be possible without the generous support of our friends: our friends in Singapore and Malaysia for being such welcoming hosts and sponsoring all the fun activities for our children; Patrick Dering of Bangkok for his generous donation which carried us all the way through our journey; Chusak (aka Taraka Nat, a child from the Baan Unrak Home who had the great task of networking a relationship between the Home and Thai AirAsia); Krittawat and Mother Ladda (who were able to put us in touch directly with AirAsia); and Mr. Tassapon Bijleveld the CEO of Thai AirAsia sponsoring our tickets, for supporting our mission and providing this awesome opportunity for a very special group of children!

If you would like to see more photos from our trip abroad, check out my Picasa Web Album: Baan Unrak Travels!

Namaskar,

Stefanie

Stay tuned for the next post about the ins and outs of an Ananda Marga Meditation Retreat.