Ruamkatanyu Foundation

A couple of times a year, my fiancée and I make a trip down to Chinatown, and we nearly always stop by Wat Hua Lamphong and the Ruamkatanyu Foundation on our way. The Foundation is a Thai-Chinese charity that purchases coffins and prepares funeral rites for those who cannot afford them.

Buddhists would call making a donation at this foundation an act of merit-making (doing good deeds to accumulate good karma), and for me, it's a good deed and it's something that I enjoy doing.

We usually make a small donation (100-200 baht). Then, we're given a receipt and a little pink slip of paper. The paper is pasted onto one of the empty coffins with a glue made from water and rice.

After that, you take the receipt to burn in the small Chinese-style shrine in front of the foundation.