DREAM CHASER

Friends in need

CARE makes its presence felt by taking children off the street and teaching them how to earn a livelihood

SUKIE KAMOLSUKOSOL CLAPP

Buying grocery early morning at a fresh food market; a VW in Vientiane's old quarter sits well with its surroundings.
Floating lantern released to mark a milestone.	Scenic Vang Vieng is a great stopover for travellers journeying from Vientiane to Luang Prabang.

The distance from Muang Phu Khoun to Vang Vieng on Highway 13 was around 120km. Highway 13 was the main route connecting Vientiane to Luang Prabang and a lot of vehicles were travelling in either direction. It wasn't as an enjoyable ride compared to the roads further north.

Vang Vieng was basically a stopover town for travellers journeying from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, its main draw being the surrounding natural beauty. We visited this place a year ago while filming Season 1. This time we were just staying the night and would be moving on to Vientiane the next day. That night we lighted up a few floating lanterns to commemorate the completion of the first half of our journey. We stood there by the river and watched as the lanterns drifted into the dark sky.

The following day we travelled 150km south to capital Vientiane. Once down from the mountains the first thing I noticed was how all of a sudden it got really hot. I started sweating profusely and was not looking forward to the kind of weather I thought we'd be facing during the second half of our journey.

We checked into a nice little guesthouse overlooking the Mekong River in the old part of Vientiane, on the other side of the river lay Thailand. I took a quick shower and went for a stroll around the old town. Most tourists probably enjoyed visiting all the wats (temples) in Laos, I on the other hand enjoyed looking at the old French colonial structure/buildings and imagining what life must have been like back then.

Entering Vientiane, the road was wide and adorned with flowering plants and lamp posts.

On the way back to the guesthouse I stopped at an ice cream shop and ordered a banana split, a first in a very long time! That night I stayed up watching SAW III on pirated cable TV and ended up sleeping around 2am.

After only three hours of sleep I was awakened by one of our crew. Today we were to meet representative from CARE at the morning market to go buying grocery. CARE runs a restaurant/school with the aim to take children off the street and train them in every aspect of how to run and operate a restaurant. Every employee of the restaurant, Makphet, was a former street child.

Things got off to a rocky start when one of the boys from the restaurant, who was to take us shopping, arrived at the market an hour late. I found out later that he was an aspiring hip-hop dancer and wasn't used to getting up so early in the morning. Anyway, we spent an hour buying all the grocery we needed, loaded it into a Jumbo (Laos equivalent of a tuk-tuk) and headed back to the restaurant.

At Makphet we unloaded the food and carried it into the kitchen. I was trying to be helpful and volunteered to carry a huge sack of rice. What I didn't know was the storage room was on the fourth floor. The sack must have weighed about 100 pounds and I ended up carrying it on my shoulders all the way up the narrow staircase: why the heck store it on the fourth floor - I had no idea!

We spent the whole day with the children preparing food in the kitchen, setting tables, serving the customers and cleaning up. On the second floor there was a classroom where children are given lessons in English. Most of the children are from up-country, they come into the city in search of work; however, most of the time they end up on the street with no where to go. Makphet was conceived as a training ground to give these children the support and training they needed to acquire the skill to earn a livelihood.

By supper time we were hungry and decided to order some of the dishes prepared by the children. Overall, the food was pretty good, in particular the pumpkin custard. Our waiter was the hip-hop boy who took us grocery shopping earlier in the day. I asked him if he knew any Thai hip-hop artist and he told me his favourite was Joey Boy. I told him Joey Boy was once signed to our label Bakery Music, which he didn't believe, so I called up Joey and had him speak to Joey on the phone. After that he thought I was pretty cool!

By now it was getting pretty late and we decided to call it a rap. We bid farewell to the children at Makphet and thanked them for allowing us to spend a day with them. Having been up since five in the morning I was very tired and wanted to go back to the guesthouse for a rest.

However, the director told me we had some more shooting to do since he had no footage of Hui (my riding partner) and I entering Vientiane the day before. They also needed stock footage of us driving around the city. We shot the whole night and finished around midnight, it turned out to be the longest day of shooting, 18 hours total, and we weren't even going anywhere.

The following morning was a short ride to the Thai-Laos border. Going through immigration was a breeze for it took us less than 45 minutes to cross back on to Thai soil. I had mixed feeling being back in Thailand. A part of me felt good that we were back home. Yet, another part of me felt like Thailand was just a transit, a pit stop on our way to Cambodia. I knew we still had a long way to go before completing our journey and being back in Thailand was a bit premature.

However, for Hui it's a completely different story. Hui is from Phu Rua, Loei and this part of our journey was somewhat a homecoming for him. We rode from Nong Khai to Sri Chiangmai and on to Chiang Khan on Highway 211, which runs parallel to the Mekong River. The ride was gorgeous with mountains on one side and the Mekong on the other. At Chiang Khan we headed south on 201 for Loei and then west on 203 for the mountains of Phu Rua.

Riding up the mountains the weather began to get cold and as we were approaching Phu Rua, for some odd reason, I started to fall nervous for Hui. He had left home three months ago after being discharged from the army. Now he's coming home as part of a TV reality show. I wondered how his friends and family were going to feel about this. As for myself, I was looking forward to meeting his family and learning more about Hui, my riding partner for the past month.

Next week I'll tell you about our visit to Hui's family in Phu Rua. From there we continued across Isan to the Ubon Ratchathani Province where we came across one of the most stunning places on our journey.

- Dreamchaser II airs on Channel 3 every Monday at midnight. To find out more, visit the web site http://www.dreamchaserthai.com.

- An objective of the TV show is to raise funds for the Raks Thai Foundation/CARE. Donations can be made to account number 056-239616-7 of the Siam Commercial Bank's Aree Samphan branch.

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