Jill and I stayed for just under a week, and then returned to Singapore. (While Arnout, Christian and Jakob were the leaders of this operation, there were many others, like ourselves, who were there for a few days at different times: Hans, Yang, Alesha, Steve, Bill, Ellie, Allan, Krista, and others.) Once immediate relief efforts were taken care of, the group started moving towards longer-term projects, such as helping with boat building. If you want to know more, you can visit these websites.
Meanwhile, Jill and I decided on a different long-term project: we would see what we could do to help Neung and her family. We started making plans to return to Thailand after a couple of weeks. But then events intruded. My father died, and so we had to return to Europe, and immediately following that we had work obligations in the United States. We didn't get back to Singapore until the second week of February, and we had no idea if we would even be able to find Neung again.
Still, we got on a plane, rented a car, and drove back up to Nam Kem.
They were no longer in the camp.
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