Visit at a very special family

Two weeks ago, just before I left Thailand with a lot of new experiences and unforgettable impressions in my heavy luggage, I had the chance to visit the Southern Thailand Orphanage with who Andaman Discoveries is working together.
This place is located between Phuket and Khao Lak and was developed one year after the tsunami to shelter children in need.



Beside the loss of many people, the Tsunami also unsettled a lot of families who then had to struggle for their survival. Root and Rasa, a loveley couple in their fourties, recognised the need of many innocent children and founded a prodected home for them. A place of love, trust and encouragement. Started with 20 children, the orphanage now is home to 26 individuals, some of them siblings between 5 and 17 years who got the wonderfull chance to enter a welcoming home with many new brothers and sisters.
And this is exactly how I felt when I visited this center – it seemed like a big happy family where every single child has found a place to feel loved, comfortable and confident.

The first thing you see when arriving at the orphanage is the sign of their own backery: Especially during the high season, this makes a little income for the foundation and baking a valuable activity for the children to be thaught. Unfortunatly, the bakery was closed when I arrived but I could try their cookies which were so yummy you could taste the love with they where made.
Then, entering the area of 5 small buildings with a big vegetable garden, I felt straight away the peace and calmness of the place – everywhere you see beautiful flowers and paintings and surrounded by the comunity- and sleeping rooms is a little green area with a swing.

The children just came home from school when I arrived and were about to have dinner together in the outside area. Afterwards, each one tidied up their own plate and then run out to go playing with their brothers and sisters.
Later in the evening, routine was to come together in the community room to do their homework and play. This was when I had the chance to interact with the kids and found out how open and happy they are towards the volunteers who come and stay for a couple of weeks so several month. As the foundation doesn't have a lot of money for employees, it is very important for them, to have volunteers to engage and play with the children.
Before I went to bed, I read the 'welcoming book', where the story of each child is written beside their picture. I was very touched to see, how 2 people can change the life so dramatically for all those children and, for a change, fell asleep with the warm feeling of trust in the good of the people.

If you are interested in this project or want to help/volunteer, check out this link:

http://www.andamandiscoveries.com/volunteering-thailand-orphanage-story.php

Nutrition Project

Oh my God, the time has passed sooo quickly..! I can't believe that today's my last day at work here at the office of Andaman Discoveries in Kuraburi. I am so happy to have had the chance to come here, meet all those great people and see the amazing projects which really make a difference to so many people in the area. I have learned so much about community based tourism, volunteering and responsible tourism and still, at the same time, had the chance to contribute my part.


One of the projects I was working on, was writing and sending out a proposal to raise money for the children at the Burmese Learning Center to offer them one healthy meal per day, as at present their nutrition is very bad. I've visited the Learning Center twice and lost my heart immediately - those kids have hardly anything and are so grateful for having the chance to go to school. Also, they LOVE to have foreigners there to volunteer with them, so if anyone is interested in teaching some basic english to those children, please check out the infos on: http://www.andamandiscoveries.com/volunteering-thailand-burmese-story.php

So, now I am asking you kindly to spread around and donate whatever you can for those children - it really means a lot to me!!!!

To read more about it, here is the link for the proposal:

http://www.andamandiscoveries.com/pdf/child-nutrition-project.pdf

For donations, please go to http://www.andamandiscoveries.com/reservations-payment.php and put in 'lunch' as reference.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Thai - American wedding and honeymoon

Last week, our boss Bodhi married his loveley fiance Tu and we were lucky to be able to join this happy celebration at the beautiful Greenview Resort just 10km south of Kuraburi.

It was really the perfect combination of a beautiful buddhist thai ceremony in the morning and a very touching american, conducted by Bodhis mother, in the evening. A bunch of amazing people from all over the world made the celebration a great one, lasting until the morning hours with lots of dancing, laughter and (re-)unions.

The week after the wedding, Bodhi had organized an amazing trip to serveral great spots in the surrounding area to show the beauty to his friends and family. I was very lucky (and still am very grateful) to be able to join this trip which turned out to be one highlight after the other, going from one paradise to the next. First we went to Ban Lion, where we learned about the Tsunami and the rehabilitation of the village, visited the beautiful Golden Buddha Beach and made our own tie dye. Then we spent 2 nights on floating bungalows at the amazing Cheow Lan Lake where it was perfect to explore the edge of the rainforest by kajak or just jump into the satin like water. The last 2 days we got to hang out on Railay Beach where midnight singing in a cave, a quite tricky rock climbing excursion and a jump of a rock was included in the program. Always, the weather, the food and the accomodation was fantastic and one or another party was going on in the evening...

I am very glad that I had the chance to meet all those amazing people who really made that trip an event I wont ever forget in my life.

Seagrass and Paradise

Last week, I went together with the people from IUCN (who have their office in the same street as Andaman Discoveries and who we work closely together with) to do some seagrass-monitoring.

That was very interesting... we spent hours on looking in a square, deciding how many % of which seagrasstype there was. Good, there could have been more going on in those squares BUT the surrounding was just stunning!

Last weekend, I went to Railay Beach with Andrew as it was his last weekend and he wanted to see more of Thailands beauty and I HAD TO join..

No need to say a lot, I guess, the pictures say it all - what an amazing spot. Even the liaison with some nasty jellyfish could not spoil this experience.

Meetings and Beaches

Last week, we had a team-meeting-day with all the staff from Andaman Discoveries. This was great as hold in a beautiful natural surrounding close to Kuraburi.




On the weekend, we went to Khao Lak, which is only 1 1/2 h south of here. We had the beautiful beach and Resort just for us as now in the rainy season, there are hardly any tourists.. Well, it didn't rain the whole weekend! :)
















Yesterday, Laura and her visiting friends were cooking french dinner for us, which was amazing...! Yes, thai food is one of the best ones on earth, I agree on that and I love it. BUT, french is hard to beat and a change in between is just a treat.

Homestay and Jungle

Last week, I had the chance to go to Ban Talae Nok, a close by village with who Andaman Discoveries does Homestays. I was staying over night with a very friendly family and again felt sorry that my Thai is not yet good enough for any type of proper conversation.. But we still were able to communicate - no language was needed to see how much I enjoyed the food and their hospitality. Also, P'Tui, AD's director was never far away for any translations, staying with Janice and Andrew, the volunteers who spent the whole week there.

We were quite busy making postcards from handmade recycling paper, planting palmtrees and mangroves and we even painted a sign for the women's soap goup. But there are also other activities to do like fishing, weaving nepa palm rooves, learning how to cook thai food or making natural soap - depending on your interest! At an intercultural evening with the local kids, they had a great laugh listening to my repeated thai words before I learnt them to sing "Tirol isch lei oans" (a famous patriotic song from Tyrol, Austria, where I am from) which also was quite funny! :)

Also we had the chance to jump into the ocean at the beach nearby which was wonderfull after getting all dirty in the muddy jungle where we got the mangroves and palm plants from.

What a great experience to get to know life in a small authentic village while helping the locals!

For the weekend, we went to the close by National Park Khao Sok in the jungle where we did rivertubing and relaxed in a beautiful resort surrounded by rainforest and its animals!

Sooo nice...

Weekend activities

At the local secondary school, they had a special english-weekend and asked us to participate. We did and had a great time practicing pronunciation, introductions and playing hangman. As they dont get to talk to foreigners very often, we were treated like rockstars. Lots of screaming and excitement! Well I now see how being treated like that can be a reason for trying to become one! :)
By the way: I used this opportunity to teach the kids where Austria is located. AUSTRIA. NOT AUSTRALIA! Maybe next time, when they meet someone from Australia, some of them would say:"aah, Austria!" I'd love that.












We also went to a river with waterfalls and pools full of crystal clear water to swim in... This was just what we needed after a hot, sweaty day!! wonderful.





























.

work and play

One of my friends just asked me, wether I was working at all as my blog more seems to be from someone who's on holiday... Well, YES, beside the fun english conversations I also do work in the office to do some marketing outreach and translation into german. No pics about this, would be boring. By the way, people here in the office FORCE me to say I m german sometimes as they think nobody knows Austria anyways... how's that?!! Well, then I go and call Karen english and its all fine. She's scottish.





















Today I had the chance to go back to the burmese school to play around and teach them planting cress (yea I know, HARD work..!;). These kids are amazing, honestly I am already deeply in love with them. But cuddling, dancing, playing badmington, finger-wrestling and clapping games with around 70 happy faces can certainly be exhausting in a humid and hot climate like we have it here! For security reasons, we are not allowed to post pictures of the burmese kids full faces, thats why unfortunatly I cant post most of them. (some of you might see them back home though!)

Exploring the surrounding

19.06.

Karen needed to do a visa-run so Andrew and me went with her to Ranong at the border to Myanmar. While she was busy with going to the island and back again, Andrew and I have been pampered with a long oil massage in a spa nearby... the proper thai massage which I certainly will do another day, knowing that it is very good for your body but not always that enjoyable as it can be quite intense.
Back "home" in Kuraburi, we got Janice to go out for dinner with us, ending up in a restaurant/bar eating, drinking, dancing and having a good time with the locals (we were the only foreigners) until 2:30 in the morning. We met the most gorgeous little girl in the entire world teaching us how to dance to thai music and were spoiled with fresh raw mussels and funny fried spicy things. What a day..!

20.6.

In the afternoon, we got 3 boys with their motorbikes to bring us to the nearest beach, Ao Koei. Just as we were leaving, it started to downpour so heavy that I was a little worried wether my driver would know the way so well to be able to find it blind. But once we arrived at this dramatic deserted beach, it stoped raining and we spent nearly an hour in the bath-like-temperature water jumping around like loonies. On the way back, Tam, Ton and Tu (in Thailand, everybody has nicknames, thank god, as the proper names we would never be able to say) brought us to a nearby little nationalpark where a tiny path through the mangroves led us to another fantastic empty beach.

Could you ever ask for a better weekend...?!