Voluntourism

Elephant Nature Park, Thailand, exceeded expectations. It was my first ever voluntourism experience. I disapprove in principle of paying to “volunteer" and, though this was at the upper limit of my budget, it came highly recommended so I gave it a try. A 7 day week costs just under $500 CAD and gets you pick up from the ever so charming town of Chiang Mai, shared accommodation, three fantastic meals a day, about 2 two hour work periods per day, about 2 educational or cultural experiences per day, and lots of free time in between to read, relax, socialize, or hang out and watch the elephants. The park is located in the jungle of northern Thailand and has 76 rescued elephants (one whose leg was broken while logging, another that was blinded while being beaten during training, a third that had stepped on a landmine…) who are there to live out the rest of their lives in peace in a garden with sun shades and mud pools and a river to play in. They wander freely during the day each accompanied by their own mahoot (because the park has no outer fences) (spending most of their time eating) and have large enclosures where they sleep at night (spending much of the time pooping). As volunteers we would work the first two hours of the morning mucking out these enclosures, piling pickup truck beds high many times over or working in the elephant kitchen preparing their food for the coming day. They they mostly ate corn stalks but this was supplemented with fruit and veg, whole pumpkins and cucumbers and watermelon for the young ones with teeth, and peeled bananas and cooked rice and yam for the older ones. 76 elephants eat a lot. Everyday.

Elephant Nature Park does everything exactly right. They started the “saddles off” movement and are actively spreading the idea that tourists don't need to ride on elephants to appreciate them. They provide employment for 700 local people so families don't have to move to the city. And whoever is in charge of the marketing is a genius. There are 80 weekly volunteers each week (45 regular ones like me and 35 pre-vet student wannabees padding their resume by analyzing poop, for example, instead of scooping it) and 80 daily visitors each day too, who tour around in groups of 10 and get to feed the elephants their afternoon snacks. And they're always booked solid. And all these tourists mean money, of course. The person in charge of logistics is also a genius as the daily dance with tour groups swinging by to visit different mini-herds within the park is flawlessly choreographed, each group feeling it has been alone in the wilderness and has had the perfect schedule. Even the evening lineup of entertainment was an excellent mix of movies, lectures, music and dance. I'm pretty jaded, it takes a lot to impress me, but I was impressed.

(And, as I have been told six photos are plenty, here are my favourite six.)

Cambodia

AKA Underwhelming?

I had a month and didn't want to rush and so I chose just one country to visit and I chose Cambodia. (Partly because it was right next door but mostly because Steph had just been there.) And I loved it. Traipsing around temples, travelling from town to town by boat, biking the backroads, even walking the endless southern beaches… it was totally lovely (and insanely cheap). Almost without exception however, the other tourists I talked to overwhelminigly described it as underwhelming. Vietnam is more vibrant, they said, Loas more laidback, Myanmar less touristy, the beaches are better in Indonesia, the food better in Thailand, the temples pale beside those of India, and well there's nothing like the hiking in Nepal… Everyone seemed in agreement that they could easily just have left Cambodia right off their itinerary. Wow. Well. Maybe. But I was more than happy here and don't regret my decision to come. At all. From the allure of ancient Anchor in the north to the hustle and bustle of markets in the capital city to the idyllic islands in the south it's all been awesome. Underwhelming? What are they thinking?

(Unfortunately, as I was travelling without a camera and am not always quick to pull my phone out, I don't have pics of a classic Cambodian house, floating on a lake or up on stilts, or family, five on a motorbike with no helmets and the driver texting, or even the roadside, usually strewn with garbage. I don't have pics of the markets, hundreds of stalls selling everything from live seafood to giant golden buddhas, or the tuk tuk drivers, or even the many many friendly children who always waved and shouted hello as you passed. I was on one of those take only memories, leave only footprints type of vacations. (Next year I say, as I've said before, I'll be armed with recording gizmos and gadgets galore, but this year I was just here to experience.) (But I do have one or two.))

Cambodia is warm and wet and fertile, it has flat land perfect for growing rice and fields full of fruit and lakes and rivers teeming with fish, an abundance which easily fed both past and present civilizations.

I include a screenshot of hostel prices in Siem Reap. There were pages and pages with a price, not a booking price, a total price, of $2 CAD/ night. How this is economically feasible, even there, I cannot fathom. My habit is to always choose the cheapest accomodation possible, just on principle, but here I booked up, picked somewhere convenient, with AC, and a nice pool, and a buffet breakfast included and so most places my bill was $5 USD/night.

Sacred pig in Buddist monestary

Brutal day visiting killing fields and museum

Beautiful bike ride past endless orchid farms

Last Cambodian tiger

Fishing boats

I walked 8 km along this beach and then, because it was so lovely, turned around and walked it again in the other direction. Underwhelming? No way!

Angkor Wat

“The good, the bad, and the ugly is a simple way to sum up Cambodian history,” my guide book states, “... but no matter how ugly things got, the Cambodians built Angkor Wat and it doesn't come better than that.”

The Killing Fields (1984) is of course the quintessential movie about the Khmer Rouge period but it was the demi-god Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft:Tomb Raider (2001) who put the area back on the map for millions of tourists and hence created employment for many tens of thousands of people.

I hadn't realized that there was more than one temple. There are dozens.They were built by a series of very successful kings about 1000 years ago. “Ancient Angkor used up far greater amounts of stone than all the Egyptian pyramids combined, and occupied an area significantly greater than modern-day Paris” according to Wikipedia. They were deserted at one point and completely overgrown with huge trees. When re-discovered by the Europeans several hundred years later some of the temples had all the overgrowth removed and were at least partially re-constructed while others remain still effectively untouched.

You can spend days traipsing happily round them. I know, I did.

Some of the temples are HUGE. Buildings within buildings within grounds and walls and an outer moat. The sheer volume of landscaping, let alone quarrying, is absolutely mind boggling.

There are intricately carved walls some 3 or 4 meters high and hundreds of meters long...

... they tell stories of the kings' lives, tales from mythology, or just depict everyday life. 

The trees which grew on the temples unchecked for hundreds of years are beyond picturesque... (Could someone please explain to me why I'm travelling without a proper camera!)

(Yup. I'm here for scale.)

... but the trees also created huge amounts of damage. 

Resident type #1.

Resident type #2. Families already living in what is now UNESCO park are grandfathered in, with restrictions. Kids do school either 7-noon OR noon-5 and usually spend the other half of the day working. 

Resident Type #3: Several monasteries have permission operate within the park boundaries. 

And, of course, gazillions of tourists visit!

Angkor Wat wasn't really on my bucket list or even my radar. I just ended up there by mistake. But I recommend it. Highly.

Phuket with Ben

AKA Embracing our Inner Tourists

I'd always assumed that one day I'd sail to Phuket and see the amazing karst landscape from the deck of a boat but now that I've given up crewing it seems less likely that that will happen. So, since I was so close, I figured I'd just go. I asked Ben if he'd like to join me or if I should make the trek after he’d left. He said he'd be happy to come with. He's very amiable that way.

Flights, an hour and a half each way, less than $40 CAD round trip, took about 15 minutes to book, and a hostel at Kata Beach about as long. And we were off.

We were only there a few days, and it's not really our kind of place as it's VERY touristy, but we decided go with the flow and embrace our inner tourists.

We had an excellent time. Here is a short list of a few of our wins:

• We arrived well after dark but nonetheles went out and had a great adventure exploring the beach the first evening.
• We played a dinosaur themed mini putt in a park so fantastic I wrote up a tripadvisor report, something I very rarely do.
• We hiked to Karon beach for an ocean swim. The beach was, in it's own way, as good as Burkes. I cannot offer higher praise. We had so much fun swimming we managed to end up with serious sun burns!
• We walked into a super classy hotel for a cooling swim in their pool. And french fries and beer at the swim up bar. (OK so we were still being ourselves.)
• We visited even more of the tourist district… walked till we were exhausted.
• One evening we found a lovely little bar full of character where Ben drank beer, I, margaritas, and we played pool for hours.
• I wanted to see the famous, and very touristy, James Bond Island so we booked a full day tour. Because it's low season we were given 60% off the ticket price without even asking and then the tour was fabulous including, among other things, awesome kayaking through dark bat infested caves in one island and majestic cenote-like openings in the cliffs of another.
• We watched The Man with the Golden Gun and were horrified at the 70’s morals throughout it but loved seeing all the places we'd been.
• Phuket Island was bigger than we'd anticipated, and hillier, and more congested, and given the immense amount of time we'd put into planning our venture (joke) we found ourselves crisscrossing it more than once but we could only offer praise to the minivan transportation system and all the drivers we had.
• Ben found exactly the item he'd been commissioned to buy by a friend. (He also bought himself a bouncy ball and a pokeball and a dino egg toy!)
• And, of course, we continuously ate excellent food: thai breakfast soup and deep fried squid and sweet luscious pineapple and endless other delights…

It was a great couple of days!

Wait, what, is this the Barron Canyon?

Dinosaurs...

... and dragons ...

... and bowls of breakfast soup!

Yipee!

Bangkok with Ben

Flying.

I flew from New Zealand to Australia and then right across the whole of Australia.

Unbelievable.

The coastal cliffs and sprawling city of Sydney quickly gave way to rolling green hills, to a swath of flat brown farmland and then, then...  

Then hours and hours and hours of ecru, ochre, orange, and red scrublands, huge endless empty dry drainage systems, outlined with small intermittent scrubby bushes, cutting across an inconceivably vast barren land. Looking down it seemed incomprehensibly inhospitable, alien, and enormous, the very occasional dirt roads or short sloughs of beige water going nowhere, the land so red at times it was crimson. Real life abstract modern art patterns painted with a palette of warm and neutral colours on a flat canvass measuring thousands of kilometers in every direction. Amazing.

Eventually we fly over the mines at Burrundie, over Darwin, and out across the Timor Sea.

And then across Indonesia, the countless thousands of Islands spotting the Banda Sea, Molucca Sea, Celebes Sea, and finally the South China sea. I wanted to write about the green of these islands, of their white beaches, the turquoise water surrounding them, the blue of the ocean, and how these colours and textures contrasted so greatly with the Australian outback but actually the second part of the trip was pretty cloudy so I didn’t see that much.

It was like this for hours!

Bangkok with Ben.

I did the aforementioned flight in order to get to Bangkok to hang out with my oldest son, Ben. I don't think I've ever done a week away with just him before. It turns out we're excellent travel partners.

Eschewing the regular tourist traps we almost take the wrong river boat by mistake (180 baht for just a few stops) but manage to get the locals’ one instead (15 baht for miles and miles) and we travel it far enough that the locals ask to take selfies with us! We end up at an endless market where we sample durian fruit (delicious but so smelly it's banned from public busses) and bbq’d meat on a stick (yummy pork slivers, and something that might have been chicken and tofu balls, and another one that was even more indecipherable, maybe goat tongue?).

One day our goal is to get to the top of a modern skyscraper that intrigues both of us. We fail in that quest but happen across a Hindu Temple, climb to the 9th floor of an apartment building and swim in the infinity pool we find there (yes, in a white bra and knickers, again, will I never learn), and go out to a Thai movie.

The next day our quest is to find a bar like the one we saw in the movie. We eat street food till we're bursting; small spicy omelettes, sticky coconut rice baked in banana leaves, roasted sugared pineapple, and more skewers of unidentifiable meats. We briefly consider battling the busfulls of Chinese tourists swarming the imperial palace, because we're sure it's fantastic, but choose instead to test the things on offer at 7 Eleven, like small pots of coconut milk floating with black beans and seaweed jelly, and then get lost in Chinatown, go out to lunch somewhere where no English is spoken, and end up with seafood soup that was not at all what we thought we'd ordered but incredibly interesting and so cheap it's practically free.

And it is, for both of us, another perfect day.

The building we couldn't climb behind one we visited on the way.

Apartment pool!

River boat.

Me, Ben, and Steph.

Snacks we didn't eat.

Fautaua

(You'd think that by now that I'd be good at booking flights. But no. I'm not. I'm too indecisive. My modus operandi goes sort of like this: look up prices, wait a couple days to think things over, decide something, realize prices have gone up in the last few days, panic, start the process over. It often results in me staying longer than I'd intended to. So then I feel I ought to do something. Today I hiked Fautaua Valley.)

Fautaua Valley AKA Flowers, Ferns and Falls

Step 1. Recommended. Put on bikini or at least colourful undies. (I didn't do that.) Take food and water with you. (I did do that.)

Step 2. Recommended. Buy a pass at town hall. You only have to visit about 6 offices to find the right one, and, though no one will ever ask to see it, it only costs $6 and it's the right thing to do. (I did do that.)

Step 3. Take Avenue Pierre-Loti to get to trailhead. I walked right from my hostel, which took about an hour, but you can also drive or take the local bus.

Step 4. Hike the narrow gravel road along beside the river. The vegetation is lush and verdant, a plethora of greens caressing the eyes, and the air is heavy with the fragrances of various flowering trees. This also takes an hour.

Step 5. Cross the bridge to fairyland.

Step 6. Hike the steep rocky and rooty path up past bamboo stands and enormous ferns and all manner of weird and wonderful plants to the lookout. Beware the tiny coloured lizards that scurry away spooking you on occasion. One more hour.

Step 7. Go past the lookout, turn right at the stone wall, and gird your loins. The next section down to the pools is very steep and very slippery and just a little scary.

Step 8. Swim (even in white bra and panties if that's all you've got), eat your lunch, and enjoy!

The forest was lovely, cool and dark with flowers strewn about.

There was a rope along this part of the path because it was practically vertical. Also slippery. It was a long rope. There were several sections like this. Fun!

One of a string of pools above the waterfall.

You could slide from pool to pool...

... right to the very lip of the falls.

Bonus: Once around the loop.

Tahiti is made up of two volcanoes joined together by an improbably small flat low isthmus. Unlike the Hawaiian islands which tend to be very wet on one side and very dry on the other Tahiti is almost uniformly lush and verdant. Many moons ago the Polynesians had quite isolated communities in the valleys that cut up from the shore but now there is a narrow strip built up almost continuously along the coast and the interior is left wild and wonderful. That's an oversimplification of course, some streets do lead off the main road, especially near the capital, but almost everything, houses and churches, shops and schools, cows and coconut plantations, tin-roofed shanty towns and five star resorts, is squished into a thin band between the ocean and the rugged green hills. Travelling the road you feel you've seen it all. Certainly no trip here would be complete without a quick trip at least once around.

There are different ways to accomplish the loop. If you have $100 extra and can drive confidently in foreign places you could rent a car. That would be the best plan. (I fail on two counts.) Alternatively with $100 extra and the patience of a saint you could take a tourist day tour. (Again I fail on two counts.) If you're lucky you meet someone else who's rented a car and will let you schlep along. (Didn't happen this time.) Or you could hitchhike - though 120 km is quite a long way for that. Another option is to do the circle on the local busses. They are pretty beaten up, with the seats ripped and torn, but that just makes them feel (if I can say this without being too racist or elitist) more authentic. And they have one great plus, they're cheap, less than $10 for the circuit. But it's also an agonizing choice for those of us who list indecisiveness as our best quality. The busses don't run on a set schedule. They leave endpoints between 5 am and 5 pm when 80% full, likely about once an hour, but it depends. So when you start the circle in the morning, you have to have at least some idea how often you're going to jump off, because each stop may, or may not, include a long wait for the next bus after you're done visiting. Is it worth getting off at the the blowhole? the three waterfalls? the one dirt road that cuts right across the island? the lovely little museum you remember from last time you were here? and oh, oh, oh, look at that amazing craft fair! (Though, please, don't get me wrong, I freely admit that any day this is your greatest problem is likely to be an awesone day.)

It rained the day I did the loop, and I had to wait more than once for the next bus, but I'd forgotten how interesting it is to stand huddled under the bus stop shelters and chat with the other people waiting (a grandmother, two teens, a pineapple farmer who invited me to stay on his ranch for a week…). Usually when I'm travelling I have far too high a ratio of interaction with other tourists VS locals, and I can attest, I have first hand experience to back up this statement, not many tourists do the loop on local busses. (I wonder why not.)

Fakarava

The 3 day sail to Fakarava was horrible, fluky winds and choppy seas and dark nights with nasty squalls all the way. The captain got a very bad rope burn on his hands during one panic situation and the other crew took a large chunk out of his foot during another and all three of us were continually seasick, basically just endlessly nauseous and unhappy.

Fakarava is a large atoll. The huge volcano which was there millions of years ago eroded completely away in the very distant past and all that is left is an impossibly tiny thin shoelace of coral marking the place where it once was.

Fortunately it's the classic perfect cruising destination. As soon as we arrived we were happy to be there. From the moment we sailed through the pass into the calm water of the lagoon, dropped anchor, jumped into the water to snorkel, and then took a cold fresh-water pre-nap shower it was all absolutely lovely.

Today the population is about 800 happy and (relatively) prosperous people. The atoll is blessed with amazing pink sand beaches, world-class bucket-list quality diving, and a pass deep enough that small cruise ships can enter. Like many other atolls there is one single flat road leading from the airport, along through the town, and beyond. The town has a church, two small stores, and several dive shops, restaurants, pensions (BnB’s), and artist’s galleries. On the day of the week that the cruise ship arrives it's decked out in its best party frock with music playing, bicycles for rent, and handicraft stalls lining the street. You can buy beautiful (and very expensive) pearl necklaces from the local black pearl farms or intricate (and very cheap) seashells necklaces made by the local women. Everyone is out and about. On other days it's calm and relaxed and just super chill, midday is too hot to get excited and so locals and yachties gather in the late afternoon at the different waterside eateries to nurse a beer and check their email and then sit back and trade stories as the sun slowly sinks into the sea, maybe even stay for supper ($10 for a huge plate of meat or fish, fries, and salad).

First stop Rotoava AKA Heaven on Earth.

Our boat, along with about a dozen others, anchored a couple of minutes dingy ride from town. Every boat was different, some with young families others with old sea salts, some who had been there forever others who were on their way round the world. It seemed there were more languages spoken than boats! While there we biked the road, snorkeled to our hearts content, and even went on a SCUBA dive during which we saw several huge manta rays, hundreds and hundreds of sharks, and about seventeen gazillion fish. The captain spent hours and hours repairing the damage caused on the short trip over and Daniel and I, when we weren't needed to help him, wandered the town, swam, read, played scrabble, and took naps. It was wonderful.  

Second stop Hirifa AKA Heaven on Earth.

After a lovely relaxed visit in the north we sailed one full day inside the lagoon (a wonderful combination of wind but waveless water) a lovely relaxed sail with the spinnaker pulling us south past plenty of pearl farms and the occasional interesting mansion, and towards evening we anchored in a sheltered corner at a place called Hirifa (which must be Polynesian for Paradise) where we were the only boat. We walked the deserted beaches and swam over fine white sand and in the middle of the night the stars not only filled the bowl of the sky but were reflected perfectly below on the mirror-smooth water of the bay. It was wonderful.

Third stop Tetamanu AKA Heaven on Earth.

Eventually, as our time was running out, we motored a couple of hours over to the south pass and hooked onto a free mooring ball. Tetamanu was capital of the Tuamotus many years ago before being destroyed in a hurricane. Now all that remains is the old church, a couple of small low key yet upscale resorts, and two diving outfits. Here the trick is to dingy out through the pass to the edge of the ocean just before the tide turns and then jump into the water with your mask and snorkel on so the incoming tide carries you through the pass and into the lagoon sweeping you gently alongside a steep coral wall with fish fish and more fish all around you, and sharks, and rays, clams and conchs and crabs, and all manner of other amazing underwater life. The water is crystal clear, the only problem deciding in which direction to gaze at any given moment as there are awesome wonders in all directions, and the only thing missing David Attenborough’s voice-over explaining the ecosystem. Wow. It was wonderful.

The three day sail back to Tahiti from Fakarava was a mixed bag. Some days we flew a sail called a code zero, bigger than a genoa but smaller than a spinnaker, and zipped along at 9 knots (very fast). Most nights the squalls were relentless with the wind repeatedly jumping almost instantaneously from 12 knots (a good strong breeze) to 42 (a nasty blow) and we spent our shifts nervously awaiting these. (When a squall arrives, usually with a shifting wind direction and heavy driving rain, you have to act FAST, in the dark, to furl the sails into tiny triangles and monitor the direction of the boat and be ready to loosen the sheets to let wind spill if a particularly brutal gust threatens to knock the boat over. It's great fun.) Daniel, there to have his very first sailing experience, certainly got a lot of experience!

Water so clear it seems almost not there. 

 Easier to take pic in calm Hirifa bay than in squally night sea.

Boat on anchor at Rotoava.

Squall on the way - but at anchor during the day.

Post sail drinks.

The only really big mistake I made on the whole trip to Fakarava was not taking my youngest son along with me to keep me company and make a visual record of the wonders of the atoll.