Portraits of Thai children

Some photographs of children in Thailand taken between Phitsanulok and Chantaburi.

In this country, a large majority of children are kind and respectful and parents leave them quite free.

Smiles

About the children of Thailand.

Victim of junk food

I once saw something rare in Thailand, a hyperactive 6-8 year old Thai child (as there are many in our country) in a Pizza house restaurant.

He was jumping around and yelling at his parents who looked really tired.

I then asked the parents if they often came to eat pizza and they told me that as they both worked (they must have had a good job, very well dressed.) they ate all the time in restaurants like pizzeria, Mac Do, KFC!

So I told them about the problems of the kind of ultra-refined food that creates so many hyperactive children in the West, the importance of vegetables, fruit and how lucky they were to live in Thailand where healthy food full of vegetables, herbs and cheap food was everywhere and in abundance.

Finally, they listened to me with great interest, they didn't know how to deal with their child without thinking that his behaviour was food-related.

There are many testimonies of hyperactive children who become normal again with a healthy diet.

French teachers amazed

Another time in the north-east (Issan) I met a couple of French teachers who work in difficult neighbourhoods and who told me with some emotion about their motorbike ride.

Because of a heavy rain, they had stopped to take shelter in a school and had a terrible shock!

They were invited to attend classes by a Thai teacher and saw kids the same age as theirs, obedient, showing immense respect for their teacher, doing the wai, while theirs were causing a lot of trouble in class, insulting them and fighting all the time.

I told them how my Thai neighbour, who is an English teacher, used to receive visits from his students every Sunday morning, and they would come with fruit or other gifts and chat together in a good mood all morning.

Of course, there are also problems with young teenagers in Thailand, but mostly in the big cities and often because of the drug yaabaa (methamphetamine).

See : Destroyed lives, overcrowded prisons: the hidden cost of ya ba methamphetamine in Thailand