Bakery Girls go to the Beach

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On Thursday I took 18 of the bakery girls, 6 security personnel, and 8 boys from the boys prison to a local beach. The girls have been begging me for weeks to get the permission from the prison director and plan the excursion. Many of them have not been out of the facility in years. It was really fun to be able to give them this small gift and see how much joy it brought to them.

We took a small amount of money from the bakery funds to pay for food and drinks. It took about 20 minutes driving up and down the beachfront before a suitable place was approved by our security. We were in an isolated place that really wasn't that beautiful, few trees and on the industrial side of Rayong but that didn't seem to discourage anyone from having a wonderful day.

The girls swam in there shirts and long shorts or pants. Afterwards we all enjoyed a lunch of spicy pappaya salad (Som Tum), fried chicken wings, sticky rice and basil and pork. For dessert we had coconut cooked over a fire inside a bamboo leaf, really tasty.

The day was almost perfect, one of my favorite girls-Som was unable to join us because she has been put on probation until January, she would not tell me what she did, she was ashamed and soooo sad to miss the beach outing. I forget all the time that these girls are prisoners, look at their sweet smiles, it's hard to imagine isn't it?