Day 4 Reflections

Hello! We are Avani, Clive and Yan Zheng,

So today was the last day we spent in Chiang Mai. We went to the Royal Sufficiency Centre, Paper Umbrella Factory and Central Airport Shopping Mall.

The Royal Sufficiency Centre was built to educate the public on the new philosophies of the King of Thailand. It features the importance of self sufficiency. So, the King gives a plot of land to people so that they can farm, rear, craft, in order to support their family and earn some income. This plan is to encourage the people to be independent and self sustaining. What we think about this plan is that it is very fair as everyone has a way to live life without having to worry about the daily essentials. Unlike Singaporeans, the Thai people are really satisfied with their lives, whereas we always compete with one another, causing society to become colder and colder. What we can learn about this is to be independent and not to rely too much on other people. The King also set a good example of how to be a good leader, by being a very selfless person and putting himself into his people's shoes. He also strives to serve and improve the lives of the people in Thailand.

The Paper Umbrella Factory is a place where the locals can hang out and produce paper products such as paper umbrellas, fans, notebooks, canvas paintings etc. This helps to supply and extra source of income for the locals and their families. It requires a lot of skill and patience to create these pieces of art even though their tools are very simple and not much of the work was automated. All of the products were handmade and we were really impressed by the system they put up to create the paper products. From this we can learn to have patience while doing projects, such as the architectural ADMT project that we are about to take on in Term 3 where we will be making models of buildings which we will have to design on own.

The Central Airport Shopping Mall, was the last place we visited. I, Avani, found this shopping mall a very enjoyable place because it was the last place we are going to visit in Chiang Mai as a group, and there we were able to taste the Thai food they eat here, in Thailand!

In conclusion, we enjoyed ourselves a lot today, learning about the Thai culture :)