‘I haven’t dressed up this handsomely for so long,” said Chaiporn Vathanaporn, an 82-year-old man who has been living on the streets for more than 17 years. He spoke last month at an event where he was honoured with a Prachabodhi Award, recognised by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security for his charitable deeds.
After years of sleeping on footpaths and going days without clean clothes on Ratchadamnoen Avenue, the old man who the media has dubbed “a fallen educated man turned homeless” said it was his choice to be a wanderer, not because he had nowhere to go.
“It was always my goal to not have a house after retirement,” Chaiporn said. “I wanted to do good works before I die without clinging to anything, so I did not buy a house.”
Three years ago, Issarachon Foundation, a charitable body that takes care of homeless people, found Chaiporn near Sanam Luang and discovered the anomalous qualities that somehow distinguish him from his “street roommates”. First things first, the man boasts a master’s degree from the US.
The story of how a US-educated Thai man has ended up dossing down on dirty streets at the very end of his life has all the tantalising ingredients of a TV drama.
Born on September 21, 1932 in Phrae to parents who owned a small private school, Chaiporn enjoyed a carefree childhood along with his seven siblings.
He received primary and secondary education at The Prince Royal’s College and Montfort College in Chiang Mai and secured a diploma in public health from the University of Medicine, the former name of Mahidol University, which was the most prestigious institution for his field of study in the country at the time. Chaiporn kicked off his career as a sanitary district clerk under the Ministry of Public Health shortly before going back to school to embark on an undergraduate programme. He graduated with first-class honours and a gold medal.
Chaiporn resumed working at the department of venereal disease. He married, but the relationship overflowed with bitterness.
At 35, Chaiporn secured a scholarship from the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) to study a master’s degree in America. He attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1967-1969. When he got back, his wife, who he had left in Thailand, agreed to a divorce.
Chaiporn soon remarried to a woman introduced to him by a friend. He quit his job and became the chief administrative officer at a state enterprise. As having a decent job was blissfully complemented with a good wife and daughters, he seemed to be heading in the right direction. But suddenly, desperate to inject sizzle into his humdrum life by means of drinking, he started to consciously screw everything up.
“I wanted to use my life as an experiment,” Chaiporn said. “I had everything. I had a college degree. I wanted to do something new. I wanted to know how I was going to turn out.”
Chaiporn immersed himself in alcohol for a year, at the expense of his family. By the time he realised the price and asked for a second chance, it was too late for his wife to forgive him.
Moving to another province in the hope of redeeming himself, Chaiporn thought that there was no point in seeking sobriety anymore since he was alone. He described his life during that time as like “living a dog’s life” as he was both drunk and lost.
Chaiporn switched from a job as a manager at a missionary foundation to a job as a freelance translator, writing abstracts in English for graduate students’ research papers, before resettling down as an officer for the Ministry of Public Health in Chiang Mai when he turned 50.
After having spent over a decade away from his family, in 1987, when Chaiporn was 55 years old, he divorced his wife. He also became sober after a doctor gave him a serious health warning. Approaching his retirement, he was a man getting back on his feet after years of being cast adrift.
At 60, Chaiporn decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life as a humanitarian. For five years he worked for free at his sister’s fruit farm in Lamphun.
“I thought it was not convincing for a person to be very altruistic,” Chaiporn said. “I had to be able to say that I had helped my family before I helped others.”
In 1997, Chaiporn made it to Bangkok, planning to be a volunteer at Suan Kaew Foundation. However, he was enthralled by political conventions being held at Sanam Luang and decided to settle there.
In the blink of an eye, he found that he had been living on the streets in Bangkok’s old town area for 14 years until he came to media attention after the Issarachon Foundation found him in 2011.
After that, Chaiporn was invited to work as a translator for a non-profit organisation that nurses homeless people, Baan Mit Maitri. He got a chance to pick up where he left off as a charitable man, resolutely insisting he would not accept a salary, or even free meals. He reasoned that his monthly 9,000 baht pension was more than enough for his humble lifestyle.
This year, the organisation Chaiporn works for nominated him for a Prachabodhi Award, which honours people who have carried out good deeds. It later resulted in the shabbily dressed old man putting on a suit for the first time in a long time to attend the award reception ceremony held at Prince Palace Hotel.
When not working, he is always out and about travelling around the city to his favourite haunts — usually public libraries — and comes “home” to have a good night’s sleep at Ratchadamnoen at the end of the day.
Chaiporn looks in fine fettle for his 80s but he might only have months to live due to recently being diagnosed with stagefour metastatic prostate cancer. Always hanging on his neck is a card that shows a picture of him in a graduation gown.
“I hang a ridiculous thing on my neck like this to show who I am,” he said, smiling. “If I don’t show it, they will assume I am a beggar, which I am not, apparently.”
