Jim Thompson House, Night Light International and Wedding stuff

Thursday

We spent most of the day shopping for a new camera lens. We ended up trading in the kit lens for the 18-200MM. After that we made it to Jim Thompson House/Museum and the Bangkok Cultural Arts Center. Once again, no pictures allowed inside the House. We took a good bit of pictures around the garden and on the property of the Jim Thompson House. It was very interesting. Apparently, Jim Thompson was an architect in NY before he was drafted during WW2 and sent to station in Thailand. He fell in love with the Thai culture and especially Thai architecture. His house was built using mainly Thai architecture but with a little Western twist here and there. He ended up settling in Thailand, making a fortune for himself through the Thai silk trade. He disappeared while taking a walk when he was on vacation in Malaysia when he was 61 years old. Noone knows what's happened to him even until today.

Friday

We had an appointment to meet and tour the Night Light International Ministry. Their work consist of helping women who are working in the redlight district called Nana get out of that profession by teaching them jewelry making skills. Nightlight provides them with an alternative employment, in jewelry making. They also deal with some of the women who's been trafficked. They told us that the Thai women who are working in this trade in Thailand are not trafficked, they can leave at anytime but they don't because they just feel like they don't have a choice and they do it to feed their family. However, there are women who's been trafficked from Central Asia and some from Africa into Thailand that they've help. They have a small unit within the ministry to help trafficked women. They can only give them a safe place to stay and help them get back to their home countries since these women are not Thai, thus Nightlight cannot hire them. They currently employ about 80 Thai women, all coming out of the redlight district, to make jewelry. You can support their ministry by buying the jewelry online since they can't pay their employees by donation, only through the jewelry sales. However, donations can be used for facilities,teaching programs, building and such. It's the beautiful and holistic approach to helping these women help themselves. Brian and I were both impressed.

We spent Friday evening at the wedding rehearsal for Neung and Care's wedding. It was a really long rehearsal!! We grabbed dinner and then went home to crash. It's been a long week!