"Stand up! Asian Women" (3)

[New experience]

　　This was our fourth day in Bangkok. We had a valuable chance to probe into the social problems in Thailand. To experience the real life in Bangkok, we even learnt some simple Thai for emergency needs.

Flower market
　　In previous days, we seldom had gatherings after dinner. All of us just went back to our rooms and worked on our own businesses. The fourth day in Bangkok offered us the first chance to gather with other participants in different way. We went out from the classroom, joined together and visited the street of flower market at night.

　　Ms Siriwan Santisakultarm, the President of SIGNIS, Asia, said that crowds of people would gather to sell fresh flowers in the street every night. Since most of the flowers would give the full bloom in every morning, sellers forced to sell all the flowers before dawn. Therefore, at every midnight, this ordinary street turns into a brightly coloured "flower market"!

　　It was really hard to imagine the street liked that at midnight as if it was in Sunday morning, there were too many people! Many of the sellers were kids, suddenly, questions came up in our mind…don't they have go to school in the morning? Do they get sufficient sleep? Siriwan explained to us that child labour was still one of the main social problems in Thailand.

Poor elephant
　　When we kept walking down the street, we saw a huge black object incessantly moving backwards and forwards on the street. We walked closer and finally discovered that the huge black object was an elephant! This was the "beggarly elephant". It walked around and begged for food from the tourists. The lawless person exploited it to seek profit by selling the elephants' foods to them.

　　Siriwan told us that elephant was a symbol of royal family long time ago. The image of elephant was noble and scared. Time changed, people no longer respected the elephant. Many of them even made use of elephant to earn money. If it couldn't attract tourists to buy enough food, they may starve to die…

　　The situation of the "beggarly elephant" was worst. We saw it seeking food from the pile of rubbish, and it cried. What could we do to save it? If we bought the foods from the seller, the exploitation cases will be never ended, but if we didn't, elephant may die because of lacking food!

Our first group assignment
　　This was our third lesson. Our teacher was Dr. Clotil Lee from Korea. Dr. Lee taught us how to use science technology and media to transmit the message. To understand the power of media, she divided all of the participants in groups and produced a one-min documentary. This was our first group assignment!

　　In order to cooperate with other participants, both of us were arranged in groups separately. Starting from the forth day in Bangkok, we eventually understood our participants more…