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...