My name is Carrien Blue. I am the administrator for The Charis Project. We are a non-profit dedicated to the prevention of human trafficking of tribal children from Burma and the refugee villages of northern Thailand by strengthening those communities and caring for the orphans and children especially at risk. This is the beginning of a series detailing a journey into the children's home we support and meeting some of the people there.
To get to The Charis Project’s children’ home in the province of Kampheng Phet you will probably need to start by driving to an airport. You will cross 15 time zones once you leave LAX and finally land in one of the many airports in Bangkok. It’s another short flight to reach Chiang Mai, the main city in northern Thailand. North Thailand used to be a separate kingdom from the rest of Thailand. Chiang Mai was its capital.
The air will hit you like a hot, damp wall as you step out into it and you will immediately start sweating. Get used to this. Your entire time in Thailand you will be wet. Especially since you’ve landed in the rainy season.
In Chiang Mai you get on a bus. After 5 hours of driving past rice paddies, jungle, and fields green with unknown produce, you get to the city of Kampaeng Phet. Then you ride in the back of a truck with a cattle rack for another hour to get to the small town where the children’s home is.
You turn down a small nondescript paved road and there it is on your left; a long low concrete building, white painted with red trim. Someone has scrawled, “No Entrance” across the red gate with white spray paint, in English and Thai. But it stands open and the children are waiting inside to greet you.
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