Ellie Dempster

There were, I think when I got there, probably around 30.

There was, and I won't go too much into it because I know we're on a time limit, but the orphanage actually, given the government switched and went from an NGO...

It went from being government funded.

And then when the government switched, they didn't deem sex trafficking to be that bad.

And they had to go into an NGO.

So they lost a lot of their staff.

A lot of them came from Myanmar.

They all had to go back.

There was no more government funding.

They had to close down being a full-time orphanage to a half-day school.

So a lot of the kids would switch.

So one day, you know, on a Tuesday, one child would come and then the other kid would stay home and get rice and food and bring money home for the family.

And then they would switch because they couldn't afford to do both.

Wow.

So it was crazy, you know, in the mornings.

Basically in Thailand, like the monks, monks aren't allowed to own anything.

And they'll go around the village and they collect, like the village will offer food.

And everybody knows that those monks in particular donate their food over to the orphanage.

And it's crazy.

We'd go there every time and we would take what they would collect from the morning and we'd make them their lunch.