Thailand: Paradise or Not?

Finally, after nearly a year away...the return to Thailand.

"I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it." -Rosalia de Castro.

I am emotionally involved with Thailand. This love affair has lasted years, with my first visit in 2006. In 4 years, living and working in Southeast Asia has taken me to the most incredibly highs, yet I've also suffered the most painful lows.

At first glance, this country is near paradise perfect: pristine jungle, exotic wildlife, smiling and friendly locals, towering limestone cliffs, remote and isolated islands, emerald oceans with vibrant corals and reefs, mountains that seem neverending, temples full of life with incense and music, monks quietly blending into traffic, sweet and spicy curries, coconut concoctions, and a pace of life that feels 100 years behind what we're used to.





Scratch the surface though, and you'll find something more in us. I've had the glamourous job, the lifestyle of envy, but such is life that nothing is ever as perfect as it seems. Thailand has brought me heart-breaking failed relationships, near death experiences, moments of insanity questioning who I am and what purpose life in this world has. I've also borne witness to a country of suffering, human poverty and enslavement; a country in need that most tourists are blind to.

Most of what I know, the life lessons learned, I have learned here.

I have trekked for days in the mountains to remote villages, I have kayaked from island to island in search of the perfect squid, I have discovered a profound respect for the power of coconut milk and hot chilis to any dish, I have spent enough time in temples with monks to understand that within each of us lies enough compassion & love to end human suffering if only we would listen to our hearts more often.







I have also worked hard to rescue and rehabilitate animals enslaved to the tourism industry (elephants, bears, gibbons), I have fought against the wildlife trade, against poachers, violent and abusive pet owners. I've sweat blood and tears to build houses, bridges, temples and understanding between the wealthy and those in remote, poverty stricken villages. I have walked hand in hand with Burmese refugees, writing down the names of those lost in the war that is tearing Burma apart; the war that the rest of the world seems to be completely blind to. I have opened my heart and arms to sick babies, whose HIV & AIDS ridden mothers were too poor or sick to take care of anymore. I have battled to free women from the sex slave industry, and I have struggled to teach tourists that ping pong shows & prostitutes are only fuel to the fire in the trafficking of innocent women and children.

I have traveled the world, come and gone, lost focus, only to realize that this is my true home now. I have made the decision to stay, as long as there is meaningful work for me to continue, I will fight the good fight. I'm afraid though. My family is so far away, and it is inevitable that physical distance creates emotional distance too. But this life, is the only I have to live, and I pray they understand.

My heart is full here in Thailand. I have taken so much, and I have given back as much as I could in return. You can too... Next time you visit, volunteer.

Head to the Northern mountains and volunteer with community development organizations in the remote hill tribe communities. Work with organizations in the fight for wildlife conservation. Discover homestays and the hard labor-intensive lifestyle in a Muslim fishing village. Head to the border, and lend a hand in the fight against the Burmese Military Regime. Teach English, educate the youth about human trafficking and the dangers of neglecting your health. The possibilities are endless...

A list of organizations I have worked with to consider:

• Elephant Nature Park Foundation: Learn about the inhumane treatment of elephants trapped in the tourism industry. This sanctuary rescues and rehabilitates Asian elephants from Thailand and Burma. There is real need to get their Surin Project off the ground, travel to the quiet Eastern region tourists seldom ever visit.
• Khom Loy Development Foundation: Work with ethnic minority groups in Northern Thailand to find sustainable ways of dealing with social deprivation and poverty. Projects focus on agriculture, water/sanitation, education, and handicrafts/income generation.
• Mae Kok Foundation: Works strictly with children of minority ethnic groups, rescued from the human trafficking industry and rehabilitated from drug and opium addiction. (The website's a bit rough, but contact details are available in 'profile'.)
• Wild Animal Rescue Foundation: Southern Thailand, works closely with sea turtle projects, Gibbon and Macaque monkey rehabiliation projects, marine rescue, and local community outreach programs.
• Bring the Elephant Home: Antoinette was first inspired by the heart breaking reality of street begging elephants in the cities of Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Now she has a foundation in the hopes of stimulating animal friendly eco-tourism and getting elephants off the streets and into sanctuaries.
• Lanna Dog Rescue: Rescue and rehabilitate street dogs in and around the city of Chiang Mai.
• Baan Unrak: Sangklaburi is a remote village on the Burmese border. A Neo-humanist foundation supported orphanage, with a focus on children and mothers in need of rescue from the sex slave industry, the war in Burma and human trafficking.
• DEPDC Development and Education Programme for Daughters and Communities: Fight against child prostitution in Northern Thailand.
• Burma Volunteer Program: teach English and report writing & documentation of human rights abuses in Burma today. Fight for a democratic and free Burma.
• Thai Red Cross Society: Volunteer for medical and healthcare services, disaster relief support, and community programs.
• Ko Yao Children's Community Center: Volunteer and live within Muslim fishing villages on the quiet island of Koh Yao Noi. Teach at local schools and promote environmental awareness, study with organic farming and sustainable fishing projects.

This is just a small sample of what's available out there...be inspired to be the change.


For more information about the war in Burma, please visit friends at Burma Matters Now...

Elephant Nature Park teaches local children about elephants & conservation...

Tree Planting in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, June 2010

Posted: Aug.2010, Written: July 2010

It's been a while I think...funny that in this country I never seem to have any down time...ever! Just came off of a two week volunteer project in the Bay of Plenty region, and it was awesome!

We worked with an organization named Kuaka, a non-profit conservation organization that has its hands in nearly everything. There were 34 volunteers with me and we shared meals and a lodge, and worked all day together. The only time we split into our smaller project groups were when we did the group discussions and journaling sessions.

So...Kuaka. In the Bay of Plenty region in the northern island. We stayed in a lodge in the middle of NOWHERE. We had to keep a fire burning in the boiler room to keep the hot water running for us each day. We had bunk/dorm style accommodations since the lodge is usually a summer camp site for kids in NZ. We know why no one would ever choose to stay there in the winter...each morning it dropped down to 3-4 degrees! Even in my sleeping bag I still went to bed shivering each night. We were surrounded by bush, the nearest civilization was a 20 minute bus ride through farm land. No phone, no internet, only a little electricity--it was brilliant!

In New Zealand there's a huge problem with possums. They've overtaken the natural environment since they were introduced by the Aussies in the late 1800s and caused a chain reaction of terrible events---loss of habitat, vegetation and native bird species. New Zealand conservation programs are basically a system of killing raids: kill the possums, stoats, rats, rabbits, deer, pigs... you name it, if it was introduced and let wild by accident, it's being eliminated by the department of conservation. A few boisterous boys thought they'd go for a joy walk through the bush the first night and try to hunt possums. I had to arrange a search party with another leader and find them in the pitch dark of the bush. SCARY STUFF! It's so easy to get lost in there, there are no set tracks or paths. We eventually found them and I yelled at them. Pretty much the only way you could die in New Zealand is from getting lost in the bush with hypothermia killing you...and they tried to do that on the first night!

Talk about starting a project with a bang! The two weeks blew by so fast! We planted somewhere around 5,000 trees: tea trees (manuka), white pine (kahikatea), flax, cabbage trees...it was a massive tree planting project working in three different sites. We were trying to create an eco-corridor. There was a section of forest being logged, until a few years ago when they found evidence of a pair of highly endangered north island brown kiwis. Now it's been established a protected area, and they're trying to re-plant the bush, remove the invasive species and encourage the population growth this pair of kiwis might bring. We planted an eco-corridor between one national park and a section of the loggers' protected area now. It was awesome how efficient groups can be in getting the job done!

There was some nasty weeding that we tackled, blackberry bush, grouse and japanese honeysuckle. The blackberry and grouse bush thorns were nasty and they got everywhere! I kept falling into pockets of them and getting thorns in VERY awkward places. The honeysuckle was a nightmare to get rid of, since we had to hack away a forest of it with saws and shovels since it was so thick!

We also got to spend some time on a Maori marae. The marae is the most sacred "temple" of a Maori village. It's where all the ceremonies and meetings are held, and it's also a community centre. We had to initiate ourselves into the Maori village, the traditional way. The "powhiri" (pronounced po-firi) is when the village elders sing you welcome into the village and present you with a gift to determine if you are friend or foe. The "were" (challenge) is a weapon, if you grabbed it you would have been killed and eaten instantly (obviously this doesn't apply in practice today), but if you sing back and offer a fern instead it was understood that you came in peace.

Once welcomed on to the marae we had to memorize and sing some Maori songs and phrases in show of respect. Then stepping into the marae we learned about our village. The marae itself is shaped to represent their ancestors: the ribs, the spine, the face, and the belly which is where we sit inside to show respect. The last night we went back to the marae and did a cultural performance exchange: they sang and taught us songs and dances in Maori and we taught them the cha cha, line dancing, and sang songs like "Amazing Grace" and "At Last". It was heaps fun!

We did a lot of cool things as a group: climbing mountains, hiking in the bush, heading to beach towns for the weekend, horse back riding in the hills, and the weather was just perfect sunshine every day. The only time it rained was once when we were in the bush setting up rat tunnels laced with peanut butter. We placed ink pads inside, and we were tracking/targeting areas where we could identify rat prints. Later on the department of conservation will go in with poison and rat traps to take them out since they're destroying the vegetation. The turned into an epic day of adventure, slipping and sliding down muddy hill banks and getting lost in the dark for a while!

Burmese Refugee Relief Work, Thailand 2010

Posted: Aug.2010, Written: Jan.2010






Well, I have officially survived the high school group. 3 weeks traveling with 22 people, all between the ages of 15-17 years old has me more exhausted than I've ever felt before!

The group was great, a great group of kids who really made me laugh every day. They were naughty and constantly asking a million questions (never waiting for the answer!) but they were inspired by everything they saw and did during their time in Thailand. I'm not a teacher, but I know that I touched the lives of each of these kids in some small way or another...so many of them started to cry as we hugged goodbyes at the airport yesterday, and better yet so many of them swore they were going to come back to volunteer again when they turn 21. Some of them really learned something new about themselves.

The kids were incredibly naive and sheltered, so they were challenged every day and pushed way beyond their comfort zones. In three weeks I could see personalities change, and personal growth from these kids which was amazing since university students rarely go through such a quick transformation. I'm proud of our accomplishments together, and looking forward to spending with with high school groups again...despite the sleepless nights and manic running around 24 hours/day!

Our time together at the orphanage was amazing, nearly 100 meters of fence construction was done in 3 days, we painted the home from head to toe (which is a feat for a 4 story building), we started construction of a new volunteer house, we did two days of gardening planting vegetables and banana trees (not as easy as it sounds!), and we did several sessions of English teaching (maths, vocab, arts)...but the real impact was with the relief work.

Feeling inspired after our New Year's meditation ceremony, I asked Didi to let our group get involved in relief work within the local community. We set out the next 3 days building roofs (grass thatched roofs) for a blind lone grandmother, and delivering rice, clothes and medical care to the Burmese refugee camps. I took small groups of 6 at time in the back of a truck to the Thai/Burmese border. We then set off with our Baan Unrak volunteer nursing staff and headed straight into the jungle. To say villages doesn't quite cut it...we were in camps. Small families and spaces cramped together, in the middle of nowhere. A lot of the babies were born to women younger than the high school kids in my group, and a lot of them having been born in the jungle were seriously malnourished and physically deformed. One young boy, 15 years old got caught in a forest fire...all of his skin from head to toe had melted off only a few days ago, so I got in to help re apply ointment and gauze...

I also watched a man die. He had been lying down for 6 months and his stools were pitch black...internal bleeding. He couldn't move, eat, sleep, or pee. For 6 months in this condition, because as a political refugee from Burma he has no rights, no access to anything! When I was there with the nurse, he took one breath and closed his eyes...then he stopped moving. The nurse said she would come back again tomorrow with a car if she can find one and try to get him to a hospital...but we both knew it was too late.

I can't explain too much more...there was a lot more that I saw and did, but it's still processing I think. Leaving Baan Unrak this time was the hardest time yet, and I still haven't come to terms yet with leaving Thailand in general....Australia is sounding worse and worse every day, and I feel like I'm trying to dig my heels in as hard as I can. How can I go to Australia and leave all this? I'm finally doing something with my life, something meaningful and I've finally found something worth fighting for--the preservation of life.

Volunteer with Elephant Nature Park, Thailand, 2009

posted: Aug.2010, written: June.2009

I've been leading a volunteer project at an Elephant Rehab center, called Elephant Nature Park. My daily tasks have been cutting grass and corn for the eles to feed (i am now a machete savante!), planting native trees for a reforestation project, shoveling shit (elephant shit, buffalo shit, dog shit, cow shit, pig shit, you name the animal---we've shoveled it!), stripping bark from Eucalyptus trees for construction use (sounds easy...but try using the machetes to strip bark in the blaring sun!), and digging trenches (1 meter wide, 100 meters long, 1 meter deep) to install an underwater pipeline to get water from one side of the park to the other.

I have cuts and scrapes all along my forearms from the grass, sunburnt arms (from the shoulder down), dirt so engrained in my nails and hair it repels soap, and am eating 4 meals of rice and noodles a day to keep my energy up! I'm a reformed Thai farm girl now !! :)

Working alongside these elephants is such an incredible and unique experience...I get to go to sleep to the sounds of elephants snoring every night. I also get to bathe with them daily and scratch their hides every time they want :) We have a couple elephants who like to hang around our bungalows. Our bugalows are built into a fig tree, so every morning around 5:30 am I wake up to an elephant face peeking through my window. Tong Su (Jungle Boy) has tuskers too, so on more than one occasion he's poked his tuskers thru my window searching my room for goodies to play with. His mahout, or elephant handler, is a new friend so he likes to let Jungle Boy give me my morning scare every day--he says it's good for me.

In a few hours, I'll be piling back into a truck with my students heading back to the park. We came into Chiang Mai for one night off of shopping, partying and eating! My group is amazing, so energetic and happy all the time! Shoveling shit is actually one of their favorite times of day, since they like to chase me around the park shooting poop bullets at me!

Tomorrow we head to the mountain top, and stay in the jungle with the Lahu hill-tribe. We'll be doing a community development project there for one week, helping the villagers build a bridge---details of how, where, and why unknown. As everything else in Thailand, the pieces of this puzzle need to fall into place at the last possible second!

July 2009: New Baby Born at the Park!

2 nights ago, Mae Dok Ngern gave birth to a brand new baby boy elephant. I woke up around 4 am to the screams and moans of the mother (loud enough to sound like a t-rex!!!) and rushed out of my bed just in time to see the baby roll out with the sac. The baby rolled out (quite ungracefully!) and was standing and walking immediately, it was amazing!

I woke up my group, and the whole morning we spent with the mother and her new born baby. Lek came rushing from Chiang Mai, and named him Chang Yim "Smiling Elephant", fitting since he's already an incredibly cheeky and naughty bugger. He's huge too! He's nearly just as big as Fah Mai, the baby girl who's nearly 1 1/2 months old now, who's his roommate...(the same baby, Steph, Maddy and I crawled into the pen with to scrub and kiss.)

Here' s the best part, nearly an hour after the baby birth the placenta came rolling out of the mother...the "afterbirth" just like a human. The mahouts grabbed the placenta, cleaned out the blood, and cooked it up. After a special animist ceremony (asking for blessings from the spirits) they drank and danced all night alongside the baby and the new mother and ate the placenta for its 'power of healing' and goodluck.

...I politely refused my piece...saying that "I simply had too much rice today".

Even more exciting is the fact that this new baby boy is the property of Lek and ENP. This baby, like Hope, will never ever ever have to go to the Pajan (the violent training process involved in domesticating elephants) and will NEVER be used for the entertainment of tourists. He will live his life as a happy, healthy, beautiful elephant.

And...MORE! Mae Malaetong (the ele whose foot was blown off by stepping on a land mine) she's PREGNANT! The vet just confirmed, she will be giving birth in nearly one month's time (hopefully with my next group too!) And again...a baby owned by Lek and ENP.

Lek seems to be successfully repopulating the Asian ele population in the North of Thailand...now we just need to get the new property up and running so the eles can be free in the jungle in a safe environment, away from the people.

Things are great!

Volunteer at "House of Joy" orphanage, Sangklaburi, Thailand 2009

Posted: Aug.2010, Written: May.2009

PART 1:

I've been in a remote/isolated town called Sangklaburi (straight west from Bangkok, on the Burmese border.) I'm doing volunteer work with my 13 kids, working at a home called Baan Unrak (translates to 'House of Joy.')

We're doing some intense manual labor, building bamboo fences, building cages for the animal sanctuary (geese are nasty buggers!), planting trees and grass, and vegetables since Baan Unrak is almost completely self-sustainable and is able to provide 80% of its own home-grown food.

Baan Unrak is an orphanage home to nearly 150 kids ranging from babies in the nursery to young adults 20-21 years old. They are predominantly ethnic minorities coming from Burma, having escaped persecution and war with the military junta. Most of these kids have been given up by their mothers who no longer feel they can run and keep their babies alive. These mothers flee the border and go to Bangkok in the hopes of dodging Thai immigration and finding work...sadly these women most likely end up in the human trafficking trade and become prostitutes working in the red light district.

A lot of the children are also 'unwanted babies'--babies with obvious birth defects and disabilities who were left at the doorsteps of Baan Unrak. Probably the mothers were too poor to be able to get the medical care their babies need, and hoped Baan Unrak could provide a better life.

The man who was helping us build a perimeter fence today is a Karen villager (ethnic minority highly persecuted in Burma.) He lost his entire family in Burma, since military soldiers got drunk and angry at his people and torched his village to the ground. His wife and daughters were raped and killed, and his baby boys became child soldiers against their will. He managed to escape and yet despite his broken heart and will, still found the hope to live. Now he's a project manager at the home, and he personally helps each new Burmese refugee that makes their way to the home (with or without children.)

The project is not just focused on the children, it welcomes with open arms adults---women who become surrogate mothers to the 'unwanted babies', women who use their handicraft skills and can weave fabrics to be sold in the cities, men who can farm and do construction work and who can become role models for the young boys.

This place truly is a place of love and care, and despite the horrific stories I learn on a daily basis, the children smile and the men and women laugh and tease each other. It's incredible.

PART 2:

Today I finally got a day off, woohoo! After 10 days of manual labor and intensive veggie farming, gardening and planting, and building bamboo fences, and building cages for animal sanctuaries with super-aggressive geese, and painting houses and murals for the baby nurseries...I'm pooped.

I had the whole day planned today, sipping my coffee, reading a newspaper, reading my book under the fan to keep the heat and flies away, and more importantly catching up in about 5 days of work online....as I was strutting to the internet cafe this morning, power was cut in the entire village (again, this usually happens once a day for a few hours.) Only difference is that today, we lost power for nearly 12 hours! 12 hours with no fans, made for miserable heat! The entire village sat their bums out on the concrete road to cool off, just like the stray dogs do on a daily basis.

Thailand, never ceases to amaze me.

Baan Unrak, the orphanage home I'm working with right now is truly a house of love. More and more, every day I realize how lucky we are to have basic things in life like love. The more suffering and pain I come across from those in need, the more determined I am to make something meaningful of my life.

Our project is a community development project, so we're involved in a lot of different projects. What I'm not doing Mom, is teaching though. The children here don't speak Thai, or Burmese...they speak the languages of over a dozen minority dialects...so specialized speech therapists from the government work here to teach them Thai, so that one day these refugees will be able to pass the Thai exam to gain citizenship and enroll in the free public school system.

I was working in the nursery yesterday, helping my students paint murals around the babies' cribs. We painted an underwater theme, with bright colors, hoping to increase morale for the babies and their surrogate mothers. These babies, all only a few months old were abandoned at the orphanage with HIV/AIDS. Their mothers, trying to cross safely into Thailand were sucked into the human trafficking industry, where as prostitues they contracted HIV/AIDS. Unable to provide for their babies (since only Thai citizens have access to the government provided free health care), they left them here hoping their children can have a chance at happiness.

I'm constantly being blown away by this place. Sangklaburi itself is magical; a sleepy town tucked in between mountains where the waterfalls form rivers, and the rivers merge into lakes in every direction...you feel almost like you're on an island. I've taken on a new admirer. He's 7 years old (we guess). His father, a Karen villager was a horrible abuser--he even branded his son's wrist with a hot iron to punish him. His mother smuggled him out, and is hiding with him at the home. He's the new guy, and he never went to school so he can't communicate with the other children yet, so he's terribly shy. For some reason, he's drawn to me.

He comes to visit me every working day, and runs down the steps to jump into my arms every time he sees me coming. He craves physical contact, always holding hands and hugging my legs every chance he gets. I've grown quite attached myself, and I know already that saying goodbye to him will be a hard blow. I'll miss his love so much, and I hate knowing that I won't be able to communicate my goodbyes to him...I don't know what I'm going to do. I think it's safe to say, that after living in an orphanage with over 150 children, I'm no longer afraid of little people :)

I already know that this season will be a huge time for me to grow as a person. My adventures as a project leader, leading community development and conservation projects are going to be priceless lesons learned about my life, and my place in this world.

Building homes in Lahu villages, Thailand Nov.2008

Posted: Aug.2010, Written: Nov.2008

In November 2008 I spent two weeks volunteering in the mountains of Chiang Rai, Thailand. A handful of us from America, New Zealand and Australia came together and despite the fact that not one of us were engineers or construction efficionados, we built a community center for a Lahu Hill Tribe community living high above the Mae Kok river.

The work was hard, grueling, and most of us were dead on our feet every day by 4pm...but the community was so warm and so inviting, and there's a high you get when you volunteer and really help people who are in need. I would do it all again, in a heartbeat.

Mornings start at 4:30 am every day. If the roosters don't wake you, the pigs, the cows, the dogs, the cats, the children, the rice pounding, the news blaring from loudspeakers from trucks driving by will. The temp has to be as low as 50 degrees in the morning, so I tend to wear everything I own when I trek down to breakfast.

Our bungalows are basic, bamboo thatched huts, with squat toilets and showers, but there is hot water!! Which is a godsend in the winter season! Our bungalows are located in the heart of a Karen village, so working elephants are a common sight as we walk to work every morning.

We walk to work, in the nearby Lahu village and our mission is to create a town meeting hall...with concrete! So, we're digging holes (dip enough for me to stand waist deep in), carving foundations, mixing cement with hand plucked river gravel to make our own homemade cement....We're building this concrete building from the ground up, and on day 3 we see that there's a lot to be done before the next 2 weeks is up! My group is made up of 9 girls and 2 boys...so we're doing our best!

Everyday the villagers come by to lend a hand, stare, laugh and mock...but in a very loving way. They have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that this crazy group of 'farang' (foreigners) have paid money to come out and do this hard work. The scenery is beautiful. Our village is definitely full of energy.

The kids come down to the river with us and play games by throwing rice paddy crabs into our gravel bags...so when we reach in to scoop out the gravel we get pinched! Sneaky punks!! The other day I caught a bunch of kids playing with a newborn dead rat. It was so gross. When they weren't looking I snatched the rat and gave it a funeral...they spent the rest of the afternoon looking for the body.

Today we had to fight off the cows and the piglets. We took some snacks to the worksite, and when we weren't looking the cows would run up to the water and drink our supply while the pigs and their hundreds of babies, dogs and chickens stole our rice. It's like a circus sometimes with all the roaming livestock.

It's hard work, the days are long, the village is rustic and the living conditions are bare...but I love it. I'm in love with my group too. They're all so fun and eager to learn.