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.