Last Boxing Day was the third anniversary of
the Asian Tsunami. Most of you will recall that the rugby club and its friends
raised £6666.00, the sum equivalent to half a million Thai Baht. The money was
personally handed over to Mrs Ungsongtham Hata Prateep, founder and
Secretary General of the Duang Prateep
Foundation. (DPF). The DPF is a small charity dedicated to helping homeless
children in
The DPF was planning to build an orphanage in
the South quickly following the Tsunami. The orphanage is now built, a
two-storey building and they tell us that our money paid for the ground floor.
There is a plaque bearing the club’s name and for visitors there is the
challenge of finding the NRUFC plaque, proudly mounted on the wall somewhere in
the building.
The Orphanage is called the Ban Tharn Namchai Orphanage and
houses the children from the Bang Niang District,
particularly from the Ban Nam Kem village. The
Orphanage welcomes visitors particularly from our club and of course while you
are there they will extract a quid or two for ongoing expenses. To get there
you fly for 40 minutes from Bangkok to the tourist airport of Phuket, then drive north along the coast about 60km into
the Phang Na province.
On this route there are reminders of the
disaster, including a Thai Navy Patrol Ship planted on the hill side by the
giant wave, which is now a Military Exhibition and in Ban Nam Kem village street there is a large fishing boat preserved
as a memorial by a gang of Scandinavian Teenage volunteers.
I receive regular Newsletters from the DPF
composed by an English representative, Nick Holloway. Nick was present when we handed over the
money and recalls playing for Dorking RFC against
We hope to provide a link from our website so
that the Newsletter can be accessed, please take a look and you will see that
our money was put to good use. If you are planning to visit please get in touch
and I will happy to help out.
Barry Thompson