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Father Ray remembered with weekend long tribute
Buddhist
monks said early morning prayers on Father Ray Day.
Renowned
Catholic clerics celebrate mass in honor of Father Ray.
Mayor
Itthiphol Kunplome, watched by Sagna Kijsamrej and Father Peter,
opens the days events at Central Festival Pattaya Beach.
Pattaya
Mail publisher Peter Malhotra remembers Father Ray.
(L to R)
Jin Srikasikorn, Dennis Stark, Rev. Peter Srivorakul,
Premprecha Dibbayawan, Pratheep Malhotra, Deputy Mayor Verawat Khakhay,
and Rev. Worawut Saraphan proudly pose for a photo with Special Inspiration
Award recipient Tanaree (Nong Nui) Fungpinyopab (front row), chief
receptionist at the Redemptorist Center lodge.
Elfi
Seitz receives a certificate of appreciation from Bobby Brooks,
Warden-US Embassy, on behalf of Pattaya Blatt.
Mayor
Itthiphol Kunplome presents certificates
of appreciation to Central Festival Beach Road.
Performers from the Father Ray Drop-In Center prepare to wow the audience.
Derek Franklin
By 1974 Pattaya had grown from a small fishing village
into a place of rest and relaxation for US military personnel fighting the
war in Vietnam. Dolphins were regularly spotted in the bay, Tiffany’s Show
was just starting up and an American priest by the name of Father Ray
Brennan accepted a little baby into his care at the local Catholic Church.
A candlelight procession followed the memorial mass for Father Ray.
When Father Ray died twenty nine years later on the 16th
August 2003, his work had grown to include an orphanage, a children’s home,
facilities for street kids and schools for blind children and young disabled
adults.
His funeral was the biggest Pattaya has ever seen,
attended by thousands of his children and students, all arriving to say a
final farewell to the man whose devotion gave the underprivileged of society
a chance of a better life.
The Father Ray Foundation has continued the work of
Father Ray, both in his name and in his vision, and each year the children
and students, workers and supporters join together on Father Ray Day to
remember his life and celebrate his work.
All donations are gratefully received.
On the morning of Sunday the 8th August several buses
from the Father Ray Children’s Home, a convoy of minibuses, pick-up trucks
and cars from the Father Ray Children’ Village and two coaches from the
School for the Blind arrived at the Redemptorist Vocational School for
People with Disabilities where they joined the wheelchair bound students for
the biennial ‘Big Photo’. More than eight hundred and fifty of Father Ray’s
children sat or stood still while the cameraman snapped away.
A week later Father Ray’s children held a show at the
Central Festival Pattaya Beach department store where they entertained the
public with a selection of traditional and modern song and dance routines.
The blind students gave a wonderful performance of traditional Thai music,
whilst the boys from the Father Ray Children’s Home showed their combat
skills in an exhibition of Muay Thai. The wheelchair dancers received a
standing ovation, and everyone agreed that the toddlers from the Father Ray
Day Care Center looked their cutest. The audience sat in silence as they
watched a performance from Tuxedo Magic and they were astounded by the
movements of the Beat-Boyz break-dance troupe.
Miss Thailand World 2009, Pongchanok Kanklab, took the
stage alongside well known Thai celebrities Nadis Suriyawongse, Sonia
Couling and Cindy Burbridge for a special charity auction of designer
handbags in association with TV 360 Degree and Channel 3 Family News.
On Monday the 16th August, the anniversary of Fathers
Ray’s passing, two religious ceremonies were held. At six o’clock in the
morning at the Redemptorist Vocational School for People with Disabilities
nine monks from a local temple arrived to receive alms. Students, volunteers
and teachers gathered to make merit and receive a blessing on that special
day.
Twelve hours later at St. Nikolaus Catholic Church on
Sukhumvit Road a memorial mass was held. Attended by more than one thousand
people the mass was celebrated by Father Somphong Tewtrakul, Vice Provincial
of the Redemptorists in Thailand. Once the mass was over a candlelight
procession made its way to the final resting place of Father Ray where his
children sang the song ‘You’re An Unsung Hero’, the words of which were
specially written and dedicated to Father Ray.
In August 2011 Pattaya will once again celebrate Father
Ray Day, but until then the Father Ray Foundation will continue to provide a
caring home and an education to those in need. From that one baby who
arrived in 1974 more than five thousand people have received help and the
Foundation stands by its vision that it ‘never turns a needy child away’.
More information about the Father Ray Foundation can be
found at www.fr-ray.org or email [email protected]
Free
haircuts are provided by Jutamet Beauty School.
Father
Ray Day Care Center perform one of three numbers.
Dancing
partners from the Father Ray Day Care Center melt hearts with their smiles.
Miss
Thailand World 2009 and Black Belt Taekwondo fighter,
Pongchanok Kanklab gives a martial arts demonstration.
Lighting
a candle for Father Ray.
The
Beat-Boyz break dancers amazed the crowd.
Students
attend special prayers at the Vocational School.
The rock
band from the Vocational School for People
with Disabilities entertained the crowds on Walking Street.
Miss
Thailand World 2009 teaches the children how to take care of themselves.
Dancers
from the Pattaya Orphanage ham it up for the camera.
More
than eight hundred and fifty of Father Ray’s children sit or stand still
while the cameraman snaps away.
Kate’s Project and food drops
Eva Johnson
“Bringing a little sunshine into the darkness,” is the
slogan of Kate’s Project and the emblem they have chosen is that of a sun
coming out of a cloud. It makes me think of a Buddhist saying I heard: “The
sun is always there even if it is covered by clouds, just as happiness is
always there, you only have to see past the unhappiness.”
A three year-old tugs at her shirt and makes faces at us.
It all sounds so good and so easy, but how is life
really, honestly, if you are a kid living in the Pattaya slums? What are
your chances of finding a better life than that of your parents? What are
your needs and how does the charity of those who are more fortunate reach
me?
When I talk about this with Noi, the coordinator of
Kate’s Project - an organization founded by the Irish couple Roisin Hall and
Andrew McCaroll in 2006 and focused on helping the poorest and most
abandoned in the slums of Pattaya - I soon get the feeling that the problem
is far more complex and difficult than the often sunny descriptions given in
pamphlets and on websites.
“It is difficult to change people”, says Noi, not one
time, but again and again. “That is why we try to focus on the children.
Through education they will get new and different values and skills that can
enable them to break the patterns of their parents.”
When we arrive a smiling young woman immediately shows
Noi the navel of her infant child. It has finally, after months of
infection, begun to heal.
Not that the project never tries to help the whole
family: Kate’s Project has relocated families to rented rooms with running
water and sewer, donated materials to start micro businesses, built water
tanks and helped to develop skills and crafts that can provide income.
“Sometimes it works,” says Noi, “but many times it
doesn’t. Being successful in business is hard; not all people can manage it,
even if they really want to and the enterprise is small. That is why our
main focus is on the children. Our aim is to break that heritage.”
In January 2009 Kate’s Project was able to, through
various donations, acquire a house on Soi Siam (East Pattaya) and to open
The Centre of Hope, a focal point for the poorest families to meet and
receive advice, health care and education. Also, Noi makes regular visits to
the 70 or so families in the area that are part of the project, inquiring
about their needs.
Grandpa
Prasert knows that the future lies with Ta.
“Right now (early April) the needs are enormous, as
schools will start again in May and everyone has to have uniforms and school
equipment for the next term.”
Noi makes notes of all requirements and then allocates
the funds she has (of which the PILC donates 50,000 baht every year). Around
150 children are awarded scholarships, which include all costs for attending
school as well as lunch each day.
Kate’s Project also works with the Fountain of Life and
the PILC on the joint Food Drops Project: PILC donates the money (9000
baht/month) and does the shopping, the children at the FOL then pack the 40
food bags containing rice, noodles, canned fish, oil, soy, fish sauce, and
finally Kate’s Project distributes them. Each month 15 families are chosen
on a rotating basis to come to the project and pick up a bag. The rest of
the food bags are given to the Child Protection Centre (10 bags) and the
Bahn Pak Rak Peun AIDS Home (12 bags).
Food, education, health care; those are the pillars of
Kate’s Project.
“It is hard to do much more,” says Noi as we are driving
towards one of the slum areas she often visits. “We try, but it is really
hard.”
In case you have missed it, let me repeat again that I am
quite new here in Thailand (6 months soon). Yet I have travelled all over
the world and lived in many countries other than my own and what always
puzzles me when I am confronted with real poverty is why on earth don’t they
tidy up a little around themselves, why this mess? I know this might sound
blunt and that it might not be politically correct, but the empty bottles
scattered on the ground, the trash, the heaps of garbage, the rotting
mattresses, all of this - not the shacks built of gathered wood and
corrugated steel - is for me the most significant image of poverty. Not only
here, but anywhere, in any country. There is nothing romantic about poverty.
It doesn’t make people better or more noble and less complicated. Let’s face
it. Poverty is just not nice. It is an ugly, awful thing. It is a hard,
tough life. And children grow up with it. All the time.
Okay, so this said, the area Noi has taken me to consists
of six houses. As in many of the slums the residents’ main income is from
recycling plastics, paper and cans, as well as collecting wood and burning
it to charcoal. Two of the families have children.
When we arrive a smiling young woman immediately shows
Noi the navel of her infant child. It has finally, after months of
infection, begun to heal. A three year-old tugs at her shirt and makes faces
at us. She tells us that she is originally from Surin, near the Cambodian
border, but that, like many others, they came to Pattaya “because this is
where the money is.” Inside the house lies her husband on a mattress on the
floor, sleeping (it off). It is eleven o’clock in the morning and most of
the other residents are around.
“Sometimes they have jobs, sometimes they don’t,” says
Noi and shows me the two water tanks that Kate’s Project has built. “They
are not in use anymore,” she tells me and, I am sorry to say, it never
became quite clear to me why, only that after the owner of the land levelled
the shacks to the ground - which tends to happen about once a year - the
people rebuilt their houses in slightly different places and the water tanks
were no longer used.
“Now they go and get water and bring it here,” says Noi,
“or use the water in the stream nearby, which is about the most unhealthy
thing they can do. It is hard to change people. But we try.”
Grandpa Prasert is sixty and he and his wife have a
problem they want to discuss with Noi. Their 7-year-old grandson Ta still
does not have his identity papers, and even though he has been allowed to
begin school anyway the head office will soon demand the necessary
paperwork.
Ta is such a good student, his grandpa tells us, the
school wanted to give him a scholarship, but then they couldn’t because of
his non-existing papers. What should they do? Can Noi help them? The boy’s
father is dead and his mother ran off with another man just after Ta was
born.
“Can I adopt him?” asks Grandpa Prasert. “I really want
to.”
Noi tells him she will make the necessary enquiries and
get back.
“But it is difficult,” she says to me. “It takes time and
costs money, especially if you make a DNA-test to prove family ties, which
would be the best way for Ta to get his identity established.”
On the up-side Ta is able to attend school, for now. He
is a good student and he makes his grandfather very proud.
“I would like to take him home to our village in the
Kampangphet Province over Songkran,” he says. “I don’t know if we will have
the money for the bus, but I will burn a lot of charcoal and then we will
see. I want to show him where he really stems from. He has never been up
there.”
I think Grandpa Prasert knows that the future lies with
Ta. He speaks of him as if he really is set on helping his grandchild to a
better life. As is Kate’s Project, which works to give children like Ta
education and visions of how to shape and change their destiny.
A destiny different from their parents.
The sun is always there, say the wise. Yes, of course.
But if by that one means the possibility of the young to have a better life,
they sometimes need help to disperse the clouds.
The area
Noi has taken me to consists of six houses.
Charity Club of Pattaya releases photo update
Peter
Rottmann with the donated clothing, TV and wheelchair.
Christina Boden
On a recent trip to Pattaya Peter Rottmann collected
clothing, a T.V. and a wheelchair, which were donated anonymously. The
wheelchair was for a little 14-year-old girl in Isaan, Ganjanang
Dianprakhona.
The Panitram Family received some of the clothing and the
TV which will help keep the 5 children entertained!
The Charity Club will also be buying a walker to help
8-year-old Maetawi Silanun and some kind of chair for 10-year-old Sinapan
Nop. Sinapan has the same condition as another child that the Charity Club
cares for, 14-year-old Sittipong.
The Charity Club will be raising funds at the next
Charity Dinner in October for the Children in Isaan for the Prosthesis
Foundation in Chiang Mai.
Anyone who would like to donate adult and children’s
clothing, shoes, toys and blankets please contact the Charity Club:
[email protected] or by phone at 0895454185 (Christina) and
0897441040 (Malcolm).
10-year-old Sinapan with her mother & father.
14-year-old Sittipong.
14 year
old Ganjanang Dianprakhona.
Nit
Rottmann (left) the Charity Club’s Isaan representative with Mrs Panitram.
8-year-old Maetawi.
Royal Cliff Beach Resort deserving
of Best of Awards of Excellence 2010
Dr. Iain Corness
The Royal Cliff Beach Resort has been at the forefront of
wine appreciation circles for many years, with the Royal Cliff Wine Club,
under its president Ranjith Chandrasiri, approaching its 10 year
anniversary.
(L to R) Allan Sherratt; Liz Shepherd; Dorothy Quine; and Alan Quine. At
the back is Ian Brown.
However, the gala dinner during August was to celebrate
the fact that the Royal Cliff Beach Resort had been awarded another world
first with five of its restaurants receiving the prestigious New York Wine
Spectator Awards for 2010. What made this even more incredible was that this
was the third consecutive year that these five restaurants were award
winners, making the world leader and deserving of the “Best of Awards of
Excellence.” The restaurants were Caprice, Larn Thong, the Grill Room and
Wine Cellar, Rossini and the Chrysanthemum.
The members and guests were met first in the Panorama
Room, with a Villa Cornaro Prosecco Extra Dry, from Veneto in the heart of
the prosecco area of Italy. It was certainly dry and in my opinion, one of
the best reception wines we have had recently.
Kanikar Ottesen chats with gentleman about town Peter Cummins.
The wines for the evening were sponsored by the Wine Dee
Dee Company with its Chairman Anirut Posakrisna in attendance, and Sri Siam
Wine with its smiling sales manager, Sarantorn Srinoi on hand to advise.
The five course dinner was, as usual, selected by the
Royal Cliff executive chef, Walter Thenisch, and again, as always, each
course was an entirely new item. Walter never repeats himself.
With the dinner in the Grill Room and Wine Cellar, some
of the guests availed themselves of the opportunity to actually dine in the
cellar itself, surrounded by the Royal Cliff’s wine selections.
The first of the gourmet courses was a freshly shucked
oyster with lime and lemon pearls, Alaskan scallop with tomato-chive topping
and seared yellow fin tuna on wasabi cream. This we had with Champagne
Moutaudon Brut Classe M, a very special limited production champagne
produced by the fourth generation of the Moutaudon family.
The second course of cured Tasmanian salmon was taken
with one of Peter Papanikitas’ Stonefish wines, this time a Chardonnay 2008
from Margaret River in Western Australia, and it was superb and enjoyed by
everyone. If you are lucky enough to see a Stonefish wine in your local
suppliers - get it!
With the next course we were led into the red wines, with
the first a Sensi Sangiovese-Cabernet Toscana Testardo 2005 which was drunk
with a slow roasted duck dish.
The main course of an Australian Angus beef tenderloin,
wrapped in Parma ham and in a filo wrap had two wines with it, the Sensi
Mossiere Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG 2005 and a Hugo Casanova Don Aldo
Founder’s Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2000 from the Maule Valley in Chile.
This latter wine was the gold medal winner and overall trophy award at the
Bangkok Wine Show, with Ranjith Chandrasiri one of the judges, so he knew
just what a good wine this was. The Hugo Casanova was a very popular choice
and is another one to look for.
The final course was the desserts, and the diners were
presented with a Jasmine tea chocolate terrine and other sweet tasting
sensations, eaten with a Tenuta San Giogrgio Bizzaro Manzoni, Moscato Dolce
NV from Veneto, an interesting rose wine.
Reluctantly, the members and guests finished their wines
and made their ways home. It had been a memorable evening, in which several
of the guests had experienced severe traffic problems because of the long
weekend holidaymakers and the fireworks displays, but all were in agreement
that the Best of Awards of Excellence 2010 Celebration Dinner had been very
well worth it.
If you would like more details on the Royal Cliff Wine
Club, you may contact the president Ranjith Chandrasiri by email on
[email protected].
(L to R) Chan Vathanakul; Ria Hesling; Kanikar Ottesen; Nualanong
Thenisch;
Chitra Chandrasiri; Judy Hoppe; Panga Vathanakul; and Suphaporn
Robinson.
(L to R) Walter Thenisch, executive chef of the Royal
Cliff Beach Resort; Anirut Posakrisna, owner and chairman of Wine Dee Dee
Co., Ltd.; Ranjith Chandrasiri, deputy general manager RCBR and president of
the Royal Cliff Wine Club; and Patt Srinoi, managing director of Wine Dee
Dee Co., Ltd.
RCBR Executive Chef Walter Thenisch (left) with
Anirut Posakrisna (2nd from right),
chairman and owner of Wine Dee Dee Co., Ltd. and his executive team.
Smiles from all who thoroughly enjoyed the fabulous
wine dinner.
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