To mark National Children's Day, Muse sits down with four prominent women to examine how their upbringings made them who they are today
Importance of school
Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul became the minister of tourism and sport last September after leaving her post as the chairwoman of Toshiba Thailand. The minister may not have extensive experience in the field but she has built up a reputation as a capable leader known for her stance against corruption. She has been entrusted to coordinate between stakeholders in both the private and government sectors.
Kobkarn had never imagined being in politics when she was growing up. She was a shy girl that from a young age studied at Wattana Wittaya Academy, a boarding school.
“Beyond my family, my school moulded me,” she said. “Wattana focused on teaching about honour and there was one lesson that always stuck with me.”
In sixth grade, Kobkarn and her group of friends cheated on an exam when the teacher left the examination room. It was standard procedure for teachers to trust the students in this way.
“I wrote the answer on a piece of paper and crumpled it and kicked it over. We had two rows and we kicked the paper back and forth. We were giggling the whole time,” she said.
“By the evening, my friends and I were talking and I started crying. I felt guilty that we had violated the trust the teacher had placed in us.”
The gang owned up to the teacher, who punished them by making them sew round-neck sleeveless shirts in the home economics room, something they hated doing.
“Wattana also taught us how to live with others,” she said. “Our seating arrangements during meals were fixed for the entire year. The senior picked the seating. Someone was in charge of distributing the rice, and at the end of the table, the juniors distributed the desserts. If there wasn’t enough food to go around, someone could go ask for more.
“There was always three dishes — if you didn’t like it, you still had to eat it. But sometimes if there was a favourite dish and you wanted more, you always had to consider whether everyone in line behind you would get to it.”
She carried forward the big lessons she learned from these small incidents with her and applied them to her work. After graduating from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island School of Design, USA, she got a job as an assistant to the project manager in interior decoration at Mah Boon Krong Center, aka MBK. There, she acted as the middleman between architects, interior designers and contractors. She worked to correct inequality in the workplace, beginning with poor working conditions. She was dedicated and worked until 4am. She felt like she had a new mission in life.
“Now, people ask me why I always have to go to the sites. They tell me ministers don’t do that,” she said. “I know certain information never reaches management level. No one will call you up because they can’t gauge how you would see the problem.
“For me, the work requires an understanding. I don’t want just statistics. I think workers at all levels think differently. Hotels and spas don’t think the same. We can’t answer to everyone’s need but we need to at least understand what is actually going on.”
- Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana
Designing her future
Most little girls like dressing up — a normal development as they start exploring what it means to be female. For Patinya Kyokong, owner and designer of brand Patinya, dressing up her dolls was not only a hobby, but her lifelong passion.
“When I was young, I loved drawing paper dolls and designing clothes for them. I guess the inspiration was my mother, who always dressed so beautifully and had an amazing fashion sense,” she said.
Ever since she was small, whenever people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, her answer never faltered — she was to become a designer. Thankfully, her family were fully supportive of her passion. She often went fabric shopping with her mother and helped her design clothes. Her grandmother, a seasoned dressmaker, was the one who taught Patinya how to use a sewing machine.
Before she turned 10, she was already making proper clothes for her Barbie dolls. Not just loosely stitched-up fabric leftovers, but perfect fitting, well-designed, proper dresses.
Even her most dangerous childhood stunt was linked with her passion for fashion. When she was around four years old, she became fascinated with beads. Her aunt, who was great at embroidery, made beautiful handicraft items using little colourful beads.
For an unknown reason, little Patinya felt the beads would look good on her nose. She experimented with it, and accidentally pushed a bead into her nostril. That bead, not surprisingly, became stuck. No one in her house could help her remove it, and she was taken to the hospital.
“That goes to show how crazy I could be when it came to beautiful, fashion-related things,” she recalled with a laugh.
Patinya said she was a quiet rebel with strong self-confidence. Whereas other girls would go play with friends, she liked being alone, drawing and sewing. She knew what she wanted to do, and would not be swayed.
“I always believed in myself, sometimes to the point of aggression. Over the years, I realised that while my confidence could be good for my career, it was also a double-edged sword that could hurt people’s feelings. I’ve cooled down a lot now,” she said.
Today, in addition to running her clothing brand, she is also Marie Claire’s fashion editor, and occasionally a guest speaker about entrepreneurship. Patinya feels thankful that she always knew what she wanted to do with her life.
“I have friends who still don’t know what they are meant to do with their lives,” she said. “Some end up doing something just for the money. I do my jobs — whether as a designer or a fashion editor — because of my passion. Every minute of my work brings me joy. I guess, in a sense, I’m lucky to have a passion that happens to make money.”
- Napamon Roongwitoo
Feelings of not belonging
As a kid, model and actress Cindy Bishop used to look at herself in the mirror and ask: “Why do I have to look like this?”
As soon as she was 13-years-old, however, she started making money by herself through modelling. She was Miss Thailand World in 1996, and now, almost 20 years later, is still one of the most well-known and respected Thai models, gracing countless catwalks, as well as numerous television series.
Born in Bangkok to an American father and British-Indian-Thai mother, she spent most of her childhood in Pattaya when there was hardly a foreigner there. Throughout her younger years, the 35-year-old always struggled with her sense of identity.
“As I remember, I was the only foreigner there,” said Cindy. “I was the only blue-eyed kid there. I felt Thai but others didn’t think so. When you had to go through that as a kid, it was very challenging and it defined you. I have never felt like I fit in anywhere. I’m here but my parents are foreigners. When I went to the States, I felt like a tourist.
“I used to feel really mad. The people there never saw ‘farang’ before and I would turn back to them and shout that I’m not farang and that I’m Thai.”
It was only later when foreigners set up international schools in Pattaya that Cindy began to have exposure to the international community. She began to feel more at home when she moved to Ruamrudee International School in Bangkok during her high school years and that’s also when she began her career in the entertainment industry.
Her father was one of the first to set up a scuba diving business in Thailand. She was an avid diver from an early age. The very first commercial modelling job she got was all because of that skill.
But those childhood days of self-questioning and sensing she did not belong have made Cindy who she is today.
“Since I couldn’t fit in, I decided that I had to build myself up,” says Cindy. “I didn’t have to care about trying to fit in anymore. Being an only child has also made me very independent, and has made me become confident. I’m always trying to improve myself. As a model, I learn that being different is why I’m still here in the business today.”
Aside from a modelling, acting, and TV hosting career, Cindy, now a mother-of-two, has also been a fashion designer and founded skincare product line “Mama’s Secret” for mothers both before and after pregnancy. Cindy said she was inspired by her father’s sudden switch in career path.
“He used to work in engineering but then he got bored of it so he quit,” she said. “With scuba diving, he started out from zero. That was so outside of the box, and that made me realise that I don’t have to follow anything. I can do whatever I want to do in this world.”
- Kaona Pongpipat
Youth built on firm foundations
Pimpan Diskul Na Ayudhya had wanted to be a petrol station attendant when she was a child. She wanted to work the fuel dispensers. She also wanted to mix concrete — she saw the process when her house was being renovated. Pimpan also wanted to be a cashier, scanning barcodes and pressing buttons.
“Those were my big dreams,” she said.
From those dreams, Pimpan is now the director of the Knowledge and Learning Centre at the Mae Fah Luang Foundation, where she has worked tirelessly for the past decade or so. The Mae Fah Luang Foundation began as a royal initiative to fight deforestation and opium production by creating an alternative livelihood for locals. Three decades ago, the foundation created the Doi Tung development project, most famous for the Doi Tung brand of coffee and handicrafts.
“In the past four or five years, it has become apparent that something needs to be done for the children in Doi Tung,” she said. “The youths are fighting, but it’s kind of like students from technical schools fighting each other. Kids from one village would ride their motorbikes by another village and pick fights.”
Pimpan has organised youth camps in Doi Tung for both local children and children from Bangkok.
“The problems among youths we encounter here are not specific to Doi Tung. It is universal,” she said. “The younger generation doesn’t know the Princess Mother [who founded Mae Fah Luang Foundation], didn’t live through the difficult times their parents had. They have electricity and water. They have the forest. Their parents are spoiling them because they want to give them what they themselves didn’t have.”
As a mother-of-three, Pimpan is greatly concerned with the development of children. She grew up in a large, tight-knit family. Her father was a devout Buddhist. He used to take her to give alms to the monks early in the morning. She remembers going to meditate in preparation for her entrance exam to college. Yet she believes taking a child to the temple to learn how to become a good person isn’t enough.
“Doi Tung makes for the best classroom. There is the forest. There are teachers. There are botanists,” she said.
At Doi Tung, the children from Bangkok learn to put their education into context.
“They walk in a forest, pick up an earthworm gently, plant a tree with care,” she said. “They can learn to be more compassionate this way, through experience.”
The local children of Doi Tung, on the other hand, learn to be proud of where they are from.
“There is a billboard with pictures of a regular teenager and an image of another teenager whose face has been whitened,” she said. “Children these days wear skinny jeans, and bleach their hair. They have Korean or Japanese names. They want to become football players. Beyond teaching children to read and write, the Mae Fah Luang Foundation wants to equip them with analytical skills and the ability to assess values.”
- Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana
