RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards)

This past week I attended RYLA, it was a camp with most of the inbound exchange students and then any Thai students who know about Rotary and would like to go can sign up for the week long camp.  Before I even made it to RYLA which is on the coast I spent a night in Pattaya and I had the opportunity to see a show, it was called “Tiffany’s”.  It was a lady boy show as they call it here in Thailand, in other words most or all the actors were men who have had sex changes.  It was a very good show and the costumes and sets were amazing. 

Well after this very interesting evening, the next morning we got up to go to the Thai military base in Sattahip where RYLA was being held.  To go along with it being held at a military base, it was run in a military style, as in every morning we had to line up before the flag and stand a certain way.  In was very interesting to see how a camp in run in Thailand, because everything was very structured and there was no free time really, where as in Canada you are used to having a bit more freedom, so it was definitely an insight into the Thai culture and the way they like order and structure in everything that they do.   The best part of it being held on a military base was they we got to see part of the Thai Air Force and Naval base, which foreigner are never usually allowed to see so the exchange students at RYLA were very privileged to see this.  We got to go in some on the planes, have a helicopter demonstration and explore an aircraft carrier.  We also went to a sea turtle conservation center run by the Royal Thai Navy, here we got to see huge sea turtles and well as set baby ones free into the ocean, so much fun.

Well these were some of the activities outside of our main camp that we did, when we were at our camp, we got to swim in the ocean and on the last day we did a morning of team building activities, as in crossing a pond, using only ropes and getting the whole team across or filling a tube with water that had hole drilled into it.  So all in all it was a fun week and it was great to meet so many Thai and exchange students during the week.