I think it's clear that I've not been too organised on this trip, but up until Khao Lak i'd usually have a relatively solid plan, or at least back up plan when I arrived at a place. Here however I was a bit lost. I rocked up in Khao Lak with no plans for accommodation or even anything to do while I was there - it's a beach town and I was feeling pretty beached out.
Kelly had told me about a volunteering opp at a place building climbing frames, gardens, school buildings etc but when I called them up they said they had no projects on and didn't need volunteers. I'd also come across a website through theirs (though I've since been unable to find the path I took!) of an orphanage-run bakery which had a number you could ring to visit. I gave them a buzz although I wasn't convinced of the legitimacy of the website, but they told me they had two volunteers there already and so were full.
I sat looking at my papaya shake wondering where I was going to stay (all the other accomm was in the region of 800baht a night :s) and what I was going to do with myself in the four days before my liveaboard diving trip.
I think my karma credit from 2010 kicked in again and I got a phone call from the random orphanage saying they'd make some space, but they were about 20min out of town and couldn't pick me up.
Now in all honesty my spidy senses weren't tingling, there were no alarm bells going off even when it became apparent that the cab driver had never heard of this orphanage or it's location. I had to call them again and hand her the phone. I was only 15minutes later as we were winding our way up into a jungle covered hill that I began to wonder what on earth I was doing heading into the middle of nowhere with a person who spoke no English to meet a strange man whose number I'd lifted off a dodgy website and whose English wasn't much better than the cabbie's at a place none of the locals had heard of....hmm.
They might look cute most of the time but these guys have attitude!All my fears subsided as I arrived to meet some very smiley Thai fellahs at a colourfully painted group of buildings next to a small cafe where there was banana bread and tea waiting for me... let's be honest, if it had been a prison I'd still have been chuffed so long as there was banana bread and tea.
Home & Life orphanage should probably do a little work on their marketing! It's amazing here. There's a mini organic farm with papaya trees, mangosteen, lemons, beans (of some sort), corn, coconut trees and erm, other things. They run a small bakery with(ish) the children and a little cafe which gets visitors mostly in the afternoon as the kids get home from school. There's 26 kids of varying ages from 5-17, all victims of the tsunami but all massively cheerful and very adorable. When they got home from school the day I arrived they all lined up to say "Sawadee ka, my name is ---, I'm --- years old". Incredibly cute!
A bit of background: After the tsunami hit, support from the government and charities flooded into the key towns and tourist traps but many of the smaller towns and secondary victims were left to fend for themselves. People who lived in the surrounding hill towns but worked at the coast lost their livelihoods when their boats were destroyed or often were just too terrified to even look at the sea again. Loss of livelihood (often along with a parent) has left many families struggling to feed themselves and six years on they still haven't quite made ends meet. Many families simply fell apart as happened for most of the kids living at Home & Life. Most of them aren't what we would conventionally call "orphans" as they still have parents around living in Phuket or other towns nearby but they simply can't support the children on their own. Boom, Bim (identical twins) and Beer, three energetic young girls were left in the care of their mother who could only get together enough food for each of them to have one meal a day, and couldn't find the money to buy them their school clothes. One of the boys' mothers was forced into prostitution in Phuket and would come home late at night drunk, abusive and unable to provide food or attention for him. One girl lost her father in the tsunami and was found up a tree a few days later where she'd climbed to escape the wave only to be attacked by a monkey hiding in the same tree. The most recent addition is a lovely little boy aged about 12 who they first met when he appeared from down the road and came to play with the children here from time to time. He'd sometimes show up with bruises and they were worried about him until one day he appeared on the doorstep with a bag and asked if he could stay. He'd lost his father in the tsunami and his mother had no time to take him to school and would leave him at home with her abusive boyfriend. He hadn't been to school since the tsunami (almost six years) until three months ago when Home & Life took him in.
It's incredible how well behaved the 26 ragamuffins are under the jurisdiction of just six adults (minus volunteers). They're all immensely helpful and I've only seen minor scraps and play fights. As a volunteer I've helped make dinner, wash the girls' hair, do maths homework - try explaining to a child by charades that a pie with one tenth shaded is 0.1 and not 1.1. Gawd that took a while but we got there in the end! - baked and packed three or four hundred muffins, cookies, and loaves of bread for the market, laid cement floors (hours of working to get a smooth even surface only to have the kids all write their names in it!), painted boards, buildings, posters and much of myself, and visited the kids' school to take a few lessons. It's also handy to have fluent English support around when other tourists visit the cafe!
Interesting teaching methods in our classes.
Baking cookies
One of the best ways to get cement off - river mud fightsAfter an exhausting evening trying to teach one of the older girls ukulele I nipped into Phuket to get her one (I think I may have made a best friend for life) - since then Roots, the father of the orphanage has had to confiscate their uke and keep it in his room to get some peace. I very quickly learnt the Thai for "gently gently" as the boys all seem to want to get the uke to play thrash metal like some electric guitar.
14 year old Benz
Jom rocking outOn my last night before the liveaboard (also one of the other volunteers' last nights) we had a leaving party, eating from these awesome contraptions that fitted over the top of a mini barbecue in which you could stew veg in a soup whilst simultaneously cooking meat on the grill above. After this we pumped up the cheesy Thai music to digest by jumping around with the kids.
Soupy grill meal... "moothai"? 
I've since returned here for more fun with the family but more on that later...
