Ao Luk Village Project: Bang Tong
Friday, 22nd of August, GVI Expedition Members and staff visited the village of Bang Tong located in the Na Nuea sub-district of Ao Luk.
Arriving early at Wat Ban Tong, a famous Buddhist Temple, the GVI team joined with 50 students from the local primary school. Together they divided up into groups and helped clean up the temple grounds. 
After a short drink break everyone moved to a nearby shelter where EMs led an hour of English games and activities for the school children to participate in.
At 10:30 am everyone proceeded to the temple to witness the monks take their morning meal. Together they listened to the monks chant in Pali, the language used in the Buddhist religion. Following the chanting and blessings of the food the monks recieved their food and began to eat. Once the monks have eaten those listening are free to partake in the plethora of food offerings fixed by the resident nuns as well as visitors and local people who offer food to the monks as a means of making merit to achieve good karma. There was a wonderful spread of rice, curries, Thai sweets, and fruits, enough to feed hundreds.
After lunch, GVI teachers, students, and the teachers from the primary school traveled to a nearby batik centre. Batik is a method of fabric painting originating in Indonesia in which wax is used to draw pictures and creating white space on the fabric. The fabric is then painted in order for the areas without wax to be filled in. This particular center has a large group of housewives and local people that work to create the fabric which are then used to be made into shirts, skirts, trousers, pillows, etc and sold. GVI's EMs had the opportunity to try their hand at batik by painting their own fabric hankerchief. The school children also worked together to paint one large piece of fabric. The artists at the centre helped to create the designs and they all came out beautiful.
At 10:30 am everyone proceeded to the temple to witness the monks take their morning meal. Together they listened to the monks chant in Pali, the language used in the Buddhist religion. Following the chanting and blessings of the food the monks recieved their food and began to eat. Once the monks have eaten those listening are free to partake in the plethora of food offerings fixed by the resident nuns as well as visitors and local people who offer food to the monks as a means of making merit to achieve good karma. There was a wonderful spread of rice, curries, Thai sweets, and fruits, enough to feed hundreds.
After lunch, GVI teachers, students, and the teachers from the primary school traveled to a nearby batik centre. Batik is a method of fabric painting originating in Indonesia in which wax is used to draw pictures and creating white space on the fabric. The fabric is then painted in order for the areas without wax to be filled in. This particular center has a large group of housewives and local people that work to create the fabric which are then used to be made into shirts, skirts, trousers, pillows, etc and sold. GVI's EMs had the opportunity to try their hand at batik by painting their own fabric hankerchief. The school children also worked together to paint one large piece of fabric. The artists at the centre helped to create the designs and they all came out beautiful. 
1 comments:
I'm jealous of the snazzy new GVI shirts, as modeled by Jack and you.
I hope all's going well. I wonder if the high-five trend's still in place over there? It was kind of a big deal.
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