World YMCA Change Agent Global Gathering 2 - Day 3 & 4

It’s hard to come to terms with the fact it is now Friday and it’s been a whole week since I left home. Although I am missing many parts of life in Wales I really hope the final 5 days slow down.

I left the second blog at a point where I was about to join a party provided by students from the local University. It was an event everyone enjoyed accompanied with Thai cocktails and a band playing some global tunes – the only downside being Justin Beiber included in that list. Another night of having the nest intentions of going to bed early diminished… but I can sleep when I’m back home, right?

Day 3

After two solid days in the conference room, Thursday 25^th gave opportunity to visit outside of the YMCA hotel as part of the programme. Our 100 plus population split up in to a dozen minibuses and by 9am we had arrived at another branch of Chiang Mai YMCA – Sao Hin YMCA.

The morning focused on environmental issues at Sao Hin, specifically the fantastic teaching they provide to the community about the many different types of producing energy and how we use it, and importantly education on how we can reduce our energy levels to make our habitat more environmentally-friendly. As we cascaded through the classroom style exhibits I thought about how cool this would be for young people to experience and noticed a number of Change Agents reacting as it is the first time they have been made aware of the damaging impact our reliance on electricity and oil has become.

Following a typical delicious and filling lunch we then drove 45 minutes to Maesa Elephant Camp. I’m still unsure whether I seen my first ever elephant at Berlin zoo two years back instead of yesterday but one thing is for sure and that’s I have never had the pleasure of being so close to these majestic animals. The sea of red shirted change agents felt similarly going by the exciting atmosphere and selfie production. After about half an hour petting the giant trunks the elephants were lead to the stream to be washed by the trainers – called mahout’s – before being led to the showground.

What followed next was a hot topic of discussion on the way home. What we had seen so far was in no way untoward so to have a circus-type show divided the opinions of some. Over the space of an hour up to a dozen elephants completed a number of impressive stunts including placing hats on their mahout, taking penalty kicks, trunk hula-hooping and even painting using a brush and easel! I did have a keen interest in one of the paintings had it been in my price-range as can you imagine that as a conversation starter with guests over:

“So tell me about this picture?
An elephant painted it
…
no, seriously.”

One of the final acts was for a member of the crowd (namely Mario from Italy) to play darts with against one of the older elephants. Although some shocking arm-work by the Italian meant he took a while to take the lead, it did take some purpose cheating by the larger mammal to claim victory, to the joy of the hundreds in attendance.

Once I had arrived back I immediately did some research on the well-being of the elephants at the camp and felt relieved that I was correct in feeling comfortable enjoying the experience, and before we set out for dinner both the YMCA staff and hotel personnel assured this. My question of why do they ‘have’ to do a show was suitably answered by the reason that if the show wasn’t part of the experience, attendance and therefore funds would drop and ultimately they would cease to be able to preserve the animals. The website out of interest is http://maesaelephantcamp.com/.

I’m aware that I haven’t mentioned food in over three paragraphs so I’ll fast forward to dinner which was at one of Chiang Mai’s most popular restaurants, the Kantoke Palace. As we removed our shoes and sat down a starter of onion soup and pineapple cocktail were served immediately. After this came the main – or eight to be precise – that included curries, fried chicken, pickled vegetables and that British classic; pork scratching’s. This was devoured by everyone on the table before the entertainment started. We relished eight traditional Thai dances which were entertaining not only because of the fact it included extremely loud drum banging, colourful costumes, playing with knives and the first ‘pantomime’ two-human-bodied animal I have seen for 15+ years.

The final minibus ride of the day gave us opportunity for the food to digest as we travelled to another market this time in the newer part of town. There were literally hundreds of stalls vying for custom and I contemplated how risky I should be with the gift I bring back for the better half… and there wasn’t a Pandora shop in sight!

Surprise surprise I soon noticed now legend of these blogs; Aussies Steph and Bec in a small bar in the middle of the market so joined them for an innocent beer to end the night. By the time another 6 people joined the congregation we had an audience of Jordanians, Lithuanians and Spaniards not only being entertained by a live band, but firstly yours truly dancing to “Uptown Funk” and Stewart from Scotland delivering three brilliant karaoke ballads that had the rest of the bar – whoever they were, in raptures.

Day 4

Perhaps thanks to my tiresome sharp moves the night before, I woke up today the freshest I have in a week and even caught the end of breakfast. Today’s morning show team included Icelandic Change Agent Isak and it would come as a shock to nobody that the energiser was the ‘Icelandic clap’ that was brought to fame at this year’s Euro 2016 tournament. I made sure that the English participants joined in (why wouldn’t they?) before the day’s workshops covering health and employment kicked off.

The workshop that I attended was delivered by Emma and James from Australia concentrated on physical health and exercise. Not exactly right up my street but as I knew Emma was a personal trainer would be good to get some tips from her at the very least.

We discussed why it’s difficult to eat healthy in various countries and I alluded to us Brits usually rushing or skipping lunch during a busy days work and that it’s almost impossible to go out socially and eat/drink healthily. I for one have never seen a celery stick in a cinema (then again I’ve never looked!).

What was interesting was that in Oz they do not follow the 5 fruit and veg a day rule. Instead it is recommended that people have 5 veg and 2 fruit a day… which when you think of it is quite different to our perception of healthy intake.

After lunch (Thai green curry again if you’re wondering) I attended 2 workshops on Employment. The first was brilliantly delivered by Joumanna and Lara from Jordan. We discussed how family influences young people’s career choices and whether this could hold someone back or is a case of simply a parent having their child’s best interests at heart. A video produced by Lara interviewed several young people in Jordan and sadly a case such as a young girl wanting to be a lawyer was an uphill batter just because of the fact she is female. What rubbish. We went on to discuss how YMCA’s can help young people in to employment along their chosen career path. This is something I’m really proud of Newport YMCA for. Our casual caretakers are more often than not young people with little or no qualifications from the local community. When they leave working at the YMCA for greener pastures they have a variety of experience in working with young people, hospitality, conferencing, caretaking and catering.

The second session was led by Alex from Victoria YMCA and concentrated on how global demographics are changing and what this means for young people. She admitted that she finds it difficult to speak to decision makers on the basis she is young and female (and I bet bloody good at her job). Let’s hope our generation do not look down on young people when we are in these situations as every generation will bring something different and fresh to the table.

I can’t quite remember how it fit in to her presentation but one highlight was the work that Victoria YMCA delivers to refugees and asylum seekers. Every year they provide 180 people ten weeks of free swimming lessons and from these they go on to employ 32 as staff and pay for ten to achieve an education. Isn’t that fantastic? And similar to what is happening throughout YMCA’s worldwide.

So, after a quick rest and 1,486 words in to this blog post we are going for dinner and popping out for a few hours tonight. Tomorrow morning we will leave for our community participation programmes that I detailed in my first blog on Monday. I’m really looking forward to this albeit whilst the mosquitoes are starting to work through my bug repellent! 

Catch up on Sunday evening if all goes well!

Chris