Monthly Archive: June 2010

"Mum! FEET!!!"

"Mum! FEET!!!"

It is amazing how fast children adapt to and internalise the conventions, taboos, the social norms and etiquette of another culture. And not just by...

At the Orphanage

Our first volunteering stint as a family brought us to Baan Kingkaew orphanage, a home for orphaned children aged from three months to six years...

Sweet Charity? On Volunteering

Sweet Charity? On Volunteering

I have an aversion to the idea of volunteering overseas which dates back to a hospital bed in small town Mali. It wasn’t the extended...

Elephant at an easel, using his trunk to paint. Mae Sa camp, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Elephant Artists

Elephant artists? Painting elephants? Now, like baby pandas, that’s something you don’t see every day. The pachyderms of Maesa Camp work with an incredible concentration....

Seeing the Light

There’s a brilliance about the light in the medieval temples of northern Thailand. It glints off mirrored mosaics, gold buddhas and gilded towers, off gaudy...

Z petting sleeping baby tiger, Tiger Kingdom, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

A Tiger Petting Zoo

A petting zoo — with tigers? Truly, only in Thailand! But few children would pass up the chance to pet, stroke and cuddle a real,...

Ecotourism? My *rse

Monday morning sees us in Chiang Mai, for centuries capital of an independent state, sometimes Siamese, other times Burmese, now the hub of northern Thailand....

Scarlet three-petalled flower with large black seeds suspended below. Nam Ha forest, Luang Namtha, Laos.

Spirits of the Forest

The sheer complexity of the ecosystem in protected, mature forest, from lichens spinning their symbiotic webs across old bark to the chaos wild pigs wreak...