Illustration by Chatchanok ‘Pink’ Wongvachara
Unless you want to spend your days buying fake sunglasses, eating non-Italian pizza and paying for the usage of a crowded beach, try Thailand with sustainable travel programme Ananea. We believe in it.
It’s quite decadent to travel 8’143 miles for just the one week, but when you’re helping as part of some eco-development programme, you can ease your remorse. A charitable organisation to support in this land of plenty is the Volunteers Without Borders Foundation (VWB), set up by tour operator ‘Track-of-the-Tiger T.R.D’ as a channel through which the tour industry establishes and promotes responsible tourism. One such project is a KUONI-funded Sustainable Agriculture Centre on a farmstay in northern Thailand, a 30-minute drive from Chiang Mai. The variety of eco-educational volunteering options is vast: from assembling bikes to be given to the poorest pupils living far from their schools to sharing managing skills with local craftswomen. We two DASHers were mostly teaching English at a primary school in the province of San Pa Tong. For a start and after a long, yet upgraded journey, we were guided to the Eco Resort Hotel Chiang Mai, a fantastic place to spend a first evening in the heat. A large pool and air-con made our night, preparing us for exciting days ahead.
Read the rest of the story by NoéMie Schwaller and Harald Weiler in the A/W13 issue of DASH Magazine, available for purchase here.
