This post is a little belated, but its been a busy week with no new phonelines on the horizon for Mae Salab:(.
December 5th is Fathers Day in Thailand, being, as it is, The Kings Birthday. In tribute to The King, at the start of his 82nd year,the Chiang Mai Royal Flora Exhibition opened its gates for free for a period of 10 days from the beginning of the month.
Keen to afford the children at Stratton House as many opportunities to be involved with local culture and celebrations as possible we decided to take them to the Exhibition site on Saturday the 5th in order to join in paying respect and sending best wishes to His Majesty, The King.
The King has not been in the best of health of late; he actually left his Hospital bed in order to be able to address his people on this important day. Doing so he made a very welcome call for unity amongst the Thai population. He stated that his health and prosperity would be assured if his people could settle their differences and return the country to stability. Lets hope his words are heeded.
It was decreed some years ago that the colour Pink was an auspicious colour for ensuring the health and welfare of The King and there has been an apparent surge in the purchase of pink shirts of late as His majesty struggles with his health.
We left Stratton House at around 6pm, knowing that the fireworks display should start at around 8-8.30pm. There have apparently been fireworks every night and my friend Ally is fortunate enough to live close enough to view from her balcony at home. Maybe we should have asked to go there.
We hit the traffic queue for the event shortly after turning left of Hang Dong Road. And there we sat for quite sometime, inching forward, caught between wanting to open the windows to get some air and wanting to close them to keep out the stench of exhaust fumes threatening to choke us as we waited.
After what seemed like forever we eventually reached the traffic lights on the Canal Road, only to see the traffic being forced left to U turn into a virtually static queue. Celebration or not I had had enough, boiling up in a car full of aggitated kids frustrated at being cooped up. The only clear road was the right turn onto the Canal Road heading into Chiang Mai City , so that’s the way we took. I hadn’t given up totally. Meaning to find a spot to park up where we could still at least view the pyrotechnics I suddenly remembered the back roads that lead off the Canal Road round to the back of the Royal Flora and up to Wat Doi Kam; where I used to look out for the dogs when volunteering for Care For Dogs. Within a few minutes we were parked up near the side entrance to the exhibition.
The Royal flora is an impressive and beautifully landscaped and manicured site and on this night was host to thousands, filling every available viewing spot. There is a wonderful Temple building to the rear of the site and it was to the Temple ‘grounds’ that we headed. By this time the firework display had already begun and the skies were also filling with paper lanterns. It had been worth the hassle to get there. The children sat and watched the display for a while but soon bored of it when spotting the animal statues in one of the many garden areas. Once the display had finished we wandered around the site that I can imagine would be a wonderfully relaxing place to be when not so packed with partying folk.
There were rumours that it will eventually be turned into a public park…I hope so and look forward to it.
We can only hope that there is as bigger surge to address the realities of Thailands present problems.
We hope you enjoyed your day your Majesty; Long Live The King.
More photos(fullsize) please visit our photobucket album here.
As art and craft is already a popular activity at Stratton House we decided to give the kids a chance to produce some homemade Christmas cards.
These products will soon be available in our, soon to open, online shop, under the heading ‘Because You Care’. All profits will go in to 
So now Stratton House Childrens Home in Ban Mae Salab, 2km off Highway 11, turning left for Banthi at the Banthi/Sarapee intersection, has now been open for nearly 2 weeks and is presently looking after 3 disadvantaged children from Chiang Mai/ Lamphun areas. So far so good with all the children settling in well with a pretty rapid rapport with their House Mother, Wassana.
Having just opened the Stratton House Childrens Home I was unsure of what we would do for Loi Kratong. In the end we split the evening between a quiet village celebration in Mae Salab and a run into the centre of the Old City in Chiang Mai where Boon helped our first child, Jack, join in this colourful celebration close to the Three Kings Monument.
The skies were filled with many hundreds of paper lanterns similar to the one we sent up.
Well things are just about all ready at Stratton House Childrens Home. Just in time for the arrival of our first placements next weekend. The last week has seen us busy sorting out the kitchen/ dining area, the last big job before we could get started.
Maybe the colourful dining area made him feel at home.
Moving ever closer to opening the facility to children in need, here in Chiang Mai, we are proud to say that we are now getting more and more help from the local community who are showing a wish to support our project. For the past three days we have been visited by an electrical work crew from a nearby village who have given their services free, fitting wall fans, a heated shower and generally checking the safety of our electrics.
Our work preparing Stratton House Childrens Home has progressed well and was further helped by a visit from our Australian friends, Heather, Luca and Chloe from our Faa Gamma Fund Raising Team. We would like to thank them very much for their donations of clothes, bedsheets and games and for their physical help during their visit. The photo shows the fenceposts that our visitors funded and helped to start preparing, here they are in various stages of being painted.You can see full details on 
At long last all is in order for our Foundation project to go ahead and yesterday we secured the rental property for the first Childrens home.