Never seen a star-shaped lamp made out of condoms?
Well, now you have.
This piece of unique interior design is nothing but a part of the amazing
decorations
- including full size mannequins covered with colorful condoms of any kind-
of a restaurant I happened to fall in love with yesterday night.
The name of the restaurant is "Cabbage&Condoms"
and it is located near Asok Station,
in a tiny street crossing Sukhumvit Road..
The curios name can be explained considering that the restaurant
is just the commercial branch of the PDA,
"Population and Community Development Association",
a ngo acting in the support to rural communities
mainly based in the north of Thailand,
for which agricultural development
and family planning are fundamental..
in two words : cabbages and condoms.
As a tourist (and as I did myself)
you will probably end up there because of the great atmosphere
(the restaurant is an open space decorated with thousands tiny lights,
condom lamps, wooden terraces and plants)
because of the curious display of condoms and sexual awareness panels
and
last but not least
the food,
which will be quite hard to choose from a very rich menu
(try the wealthy rolls in the very beginning : an experience
for your taste -not always positive- and a benefit for your body).
But in reality this restaurants reveals itself as a part of a bigger project :
the ngo was founded in 1974,
it was first active as a family planning promoter in the north,
were education and awareness were scarce because of poverty
and later on they organized their structure in order to reach more than
10,000 villages and provide them with condoms, prevention knowledge for
HIV and other diseases and helped lowering the average annual growth rate from 3% to almost 1%.
Nevertheless, HIV is still an alarming problem in Thailand,
therefore occupying most of PDA's efforts nowadays :
if you want to check out what their activities are
here you have their website,
were you will fin their projects, their history, their donation page
as well as the pictures and contacts for their restaurants
(in Bangkok as well as in other regions of Thailand).
If you happen to be in Bangkok,
this is a place you don't want to miss,
trust me!!
