St John's Ambulance Volunteers land in Thailand

COUNTRY: Thailand
PROGRAM: UniBreak Groups
PROJECT: St John's Ambulance Volunteers

We are a group of 11 St John Ambulance Volunteers from Australia and to be honest, most of us have never even left the country. You can imagine the mixed feelings of excitement and nerves the volunteers felt as we stepped onto the Thai Airways plane. After our long flights from Australia, we finally arrived in Bangkok! The hot, humid weather we experienced in the middle of the night was a real change from what we are used to in Australia. We waited anxiously for the bus to take us to our hostel for the night – Suk 11, which had a traditional village look to it.

Before our 8 hour bus ride to Mae Sot, the volunteer group explored the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, one of the world’s busiest cities. Cho Cho introduced us to the street market experience, temples and a prestigious palace. The group of international volunteers found ourselves travelling through the city on the Sky Train, travelling down the river in wooden boats and exploring the streets in Tuk Tuk vehicles.

Mae Sot was a completely different to Bangkok, but we quickly grew to love it! Our first day on placement was long and tiring, but the excitement managed to keep us going. We began our orientation about Burmese culture, traditions and their struggles as refugees in Thailand.

After a traditional Burmese Lunch, the volunteer group were off to meet with the Social Action for Women who actively work to support Burmese women and orphaned children. A lot of their work is towards the prevention and treatment of HIV. We also met with a group of local Burmese interns, who we will be actively collaborating and volunteering with in order to create health based presentations for local migrant schools. This was a real eye opener for us and we were even given the opportunity to visit one of the shelters for orphaned children.
After dinner were lucky enough to experience the Dansaune Tai festival!

We were surrounded by fireworks- from every direction in the crowded streets and even had the opportunity to cast floating lanterns into the sky, float flower boats in the river and light our own fireworks!

We started structuring out health projects on day two. We were divided into five groups with the topics: disease prevention, general sanitation, physical exercise, first aid and sexual health. This took up a majority of the day and we managed to learn more about our new Burmese friends.