Kids I have met on my Travels* R

While travelling I have met children in Japan, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Nepal and now I know a little about the lives of kids in these countries.

I have noticed that all the kids I meet are very independent. They roam the city in groups playing around, hanging out or going to shops to buy things by themselves. I see kids playing games next to the busy streets with marbles, sticks, rocks and balls without any grown ups watching over them! Kids seem to have a lot of freedom.

In the mountains of Nepal all the kids would walk to school by themselves. There I saw little kids walking to school long distances. Two boys I met while hiking told me that they walk one hour to school and two hours up the hill back six days a week.

In one of the busies metro station in Tokyo I saw three little girls early one morning. I was very impressed that they were all alone in a sea of grown ups going to school all by themselves. In Vietnam and Indonesia I would see two to four kids and one adult on a motorbike on the way to school.

One thing that is common for all countries is that kids wear school uniforms. Girls have to wear their hair braided (Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal) or in a pony tail (Laos). Boys have really short hair so they thought that my brother was a girl so we had to cut his hair short. Below are photos of uniforms in different countries:

Kids usually help around with cooking and cleaning in the house or the family restaurants/food stalls. I have noticed that there a a lot of poor kids who have to skip school to work. In Angkor Wat (Cambodia) I would see children selling little fans and origami ornaments. They were almost always girls.

In Bhaktapur, Nepal we saw a girl helping her grandpa built a brick wall. She looked much younger than me. At first I thought she was playing but after observing for a while I realized she was working.

In the places I have visited mothers don’t use strollers. They usually carry their babies on their back in a scarf sling or on the hip. In Nepal the little babies have black eyeliner around their eyes (to protect them from evil eyes), a bindu dot on their forehead (beauty mark) and the boys have earrings on both ears!

Except for Japan all the rest of the countries we visited are poor. Kids that are my age are two heads shorter than me because they don’t eat nutritious food. Some don’t have shoes and some have dirty clothes. In Laos most kids lived in little shacks with no electricity. Many kids don’t have clean water to drink and get sick often:( But one thing that kids in other countries have is playtime outside with other kids. They don’t have fancy toys but they have a lot of friends. Everywhere kids seem very happy! Many speak basic English and are very friendly. I prefer to watch their games than play because I am shy.

I have learned a lot about the kids in other countries. Next destination is India.