More than 100 children in a Vietnamese orphanage have new clothes and school textbooks thanks to customers of a Lawrence manicurist.

Nikki Tran, 21, a nail technician at Nail Citi and Kansas University pharmacy student, returned to Vietnam recently for the first time since she left the country as an 8-year-old.

Nikki Tran, 21, a Kansas University student from Lawrence, front center, passes out candy to children at an orphanage in the Dong Nai province of Vietnam as her aunt Anh Le, third from right, and two Buddhist monks help. Tran distributed goods purchased with ,600 in tips raised from her customers at Nail Citi.

Tran took with her $2,600 she raised in tips at Nail Citi, 2540 Iowa St., to give to an orphanage in the Dong Nai province. She used the money to provide a picnic feast for the orphanage’s children, as well as to buy them rice, school textbooks and clothes.

“Everybody should feel lucky over here, because over there they don’t have much,” Tran said Monday.

Tran made the trip with her mother, Tracy Le, and sister, Yen Tran.

Le’s husband, Lan Tran, fought for South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In 1989, the family came to the United States, settling in California, then following Nikki Tran to Lawrence two years ago when she decided to attend pharmacy school at KU.

Nikki Tran, now a U.S. citizen, decided to raise the money after hearing her mother and friends talk about poverty in Vietnam.

She was stunned by what she found orphanage officials found a baby girl abandoned in a nearby field while Tran was visiting, and many of the children worked on a nearby farm in addition to their studies.

“I didn’t want to cry in front of them,” she said. “I had to go outside and take a five-minute break.”

Tran said the trip changed her plans; she now hopes to use her pharmacy degree to do international work.

And she said that the generosity of customers at Nail Citi helped her realize the blessings of living in Lawrence, which sometimes suffered in comparison to her old home in California.

“It makes me feel like I’m in a good town and that people really care,” she said. “I have a different perspective on Lawrence now a small town’s not so bad.”