What goes on in your mind if you suddenly see a hyperactive, orange tiger and a big, fat, pink hippo battling it out (within their movement range) with breakdancers on a street corner in Bangkok? Right, you think you’re on an LSD trip but actually you’ve just bumped into our Hugs for Thailand fundraising campaign.

Hugs for Thailand was our second strike after Wipe the Tide following the unprecedented energy of Wipe the Tide that has swept across Bangkok city through November.

Inspired by the Free Hugs campaign we needed to fill the time between the Wipes to satisfy our hunger for fundraising and companionship, something easy to organize to show that we can come up with more ways of doing fundraising, thus we stuffed Sanju, Noor and a bunch of others into animal costumes to bring about the hug relief. We first started off without any costumes relying solely on a massive charm attack which worked well despite concerns that the rather reserved Asians would refrain from hugging you.

But the only ones who rolled out the barbed wire were a few stern-faced foreigners raising their fingers with a determined NO! They may had spent few too many Baht on those famed TukTuk shopping roundtrips and took it as another scam attack!? Anyways, let’s forget about those party poopers and keep in mind that Thais are considered the Danes of Asia, kind, joyful, open minded and seasoned with a great dash of Sanook (fun) hence showing up with the right team, the right message and spreading your arms for a genuine hug sanookwill be ensured and contributions are being made.

Thus we didn’t bother stopping, we hugged on, changing our boring daily wardrobe to something wild, something straight out of the jungle book, thus we had to unleash tigers, hippos, the cuddly, crazy wildlife into the streets to spread love and fun and what love and fun we spread especially with those kids.

The 30+ degrees (even in the evening) turned those costumes into a steam saunas but our panda platoon hugged on regardless, joined breakdance sessions, crashed a party of football fans, every meter of the walk was made for some odd and fun scenes and burst with positive energy and interaction between strangers ending up in nearly 100,000THB raised.

Hugs For Thailand — 2 from Amornthep Sachamuneewongse on Vimeo.

The usual barriers between us and them were torn down by this energy and the realization that we should stand in for one another in difficult times. Whether we hug one another, speak words of encouragement, walk the streets with signs and donation boxes, wipe windshields or convince people in supermarkets to add an item to their shopping basket, for as long as we are able to connect those who turn ideas into action and those who give when an opportunity arises, then there is hope.