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As South East Asian nations develop materialism and undergo cultural and life style change we have been seeing our remaining green areas in the cities and towns dwindling each year. With the developments and decision making mechanisms centered mostly at the big cities their populations have been increasing with greater rates.

Instead of working hard and smart on mental and physical education and health of the citizens, these countries rush to promote economic development without having prepared environmental standards, safety and disaster prevention standards, health standards, work skills and other quality standards, and rules of laws to protect the natural resources and fair shares of opportunities among public they open with haphazardly designed investment laws, practices and occacional announcements.  

With money, materials, high rise building, shopping centers and tourism as first priorities, the gap between poor and rich become bigger. Living expenses are very high, a lot of country resources become under the control of big private companies and privileged few. Millions of citizens in Myanmar are sharing small apartment with friends and families. A typical middle class salary worker in Myanmar can not effort to buy a small flat even after working and...

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Our small world is built of many different cultures, lives, traditions, customs and languages. Depending on your upbringing, what you have read, listened, the community and society you have grown up, the life style and ways of thinking you have learnt and practiced, etc. you will find yourselves different from other peoples in one way or another. 

We human being as self proclaimed intelligent creatures on earth have made a lot of changes to ourselves and to the world. Within us we are also having hundreds of countries and thousands and thousands of different tribes and races. We have done millions and millions of media pieces and record productions. Technology and civilizations have been built, and we are still going ahead with our thirst for self fulfillment.

In the history and at the current time there have been larger than healthy amount of unbalances in the flow of love, trust, respect, opportunities among the peoples of the world based on many factors such as past and present performances and abilities, accomplishments and products, look, media representation, bias, misunderstanding, and so on.

These huge unbalances along with other problems, time by time, have created conflicts and wars. Differences in thinking, ideology, belief, etc. should...

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This year Oct and Nov see flood, mud and land slides in many parts of Thailand in larger extent than in the past. Lives of hundreds of thousands of peoples have been affected, hundreds believed dead, agricultural crops and other production seriously damaged, health risk increased; and large amount of finance and other helps are needed to rebuild and repair the multi-dimentional damages.

Tags: disaster, flood, land slide, manmade, natural, prevention, thailand

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Many travellers both local and foreign travel on the Lao part of Mekong river between Houixai (opposite Thailand's Chiang Khong) and Luang Prabang each day. The trip is memorable with scenes and sounds of Laos country side: villages and their small farms, peoples working on the river as gold panner, fisherman, traders, and so on.

The lives on the river bank are simple and basic. However with the arrival of foreign tourists the meeting of different cultures takes place on each encounter.  Both sides see the differences and similarities.

With each properly and responsibly planned trip knowledge, experience and understanding are created for peoples of different lives.

We operate once or twice a year a small group (usually private) slow boat trip starting in Chiang Rai province of northern Thailand, ending in Luang Prabang. For the year 2010, the trip shall take place around the end of November 2010.  If you are two or more peoples, wanting to take part in the trip that you also help design together with us please email us to trekthailand (dot) net (at) gmail (dot) com.

 The group size will not be bigger than 8. The trip could start in Chiang Rai, then to Chiang Khong, and take...

Tags: 2010, houixai, laos, luang prabang, mekong river, nov, pakbeng, private, slow boat

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In the next few months we are going to add new travel plans which can serve as templates or basic for your customised trip program in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar (Burma). The existing sample tour programs in the website are also sill in use. However the number and places of multi-day adventure jungle hikes in each year will be limited. In Umphang (Tak province) and Mae Hong Son the trips can still be arranged any time of the year. In other places the trips shall be limited to few months of the year. We will announce the available months in the website.

What are new for 2010 and 2011 are option of community support features that you tourists can take part. In the past we did community supports mostly separately from the trips we ran.  Only few trips are designed to include volunteering in the remote mountain villages or relatively un-developed places.

However the most important thing that we always try...

Tags: books, education, health, laos, library, rural development, school, thailand, volunteering

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24 years ago, in a summer month, I travelled in a student group up a river in the north western Myanmar (Burma). It was a two nights river journey in a small boat on the shallow river between the low hills, paddy and ground nut fields and occasional villages of the dry land just south of the country's highest mountain ranges.

 We were on a trip to places where the students would do 2 month of volunteering in the villages during their summer break. Some of us came from Yangon (Rangoon) in a night train to Mandalay - there we changed to a pick up truck for another day long drive to Monywa. After a night in a school we joined the boats on the Chindwin river to begin our river journey to the destinations.

Along the way we cooked our food, washed our clothes and bathed ourselves in the river, and slept together in the small boat.

In the late evening of the second day our boat followed a bend in the river. It was a slow motion along a long curve. The sun had gone down behind the hills and it was just darkness and windy. At one point the boat turn a 90 degree sharp square. At that instant my eyes...

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It is 38C inside my non-airconditioned room in Bangkok at 2 pm. Everywhere people are feeling the heat of April. The usual smiles disappear from many faces on the roads and streets. Everyone looks for shades, takes refuge in air-conditioned halls of department stores and hyper markets. The warmer weather will continue to May and June and probably till July when the rain comes in its strength and volume.

We often talk about global warming and climate change but there is no feasible answers yet to combat them. New products claimed to protect you from harmful effects of climate and environment degradation sprout out time by time. People use more and more skin and body care products, more air-conditioners, more coolers, water purifiers, and it seems there is no end to the product line. Bigger scale opportunities exist for people with knowhow and technology to produce essential things that will someday become hard to get in many parts of the world, as well as means to repair our environment and medicines to fight diseases. For example clean water and air, healthy staple food, to name a few could become scarce. Twelve years ago in my small rural town water was a free commodity....

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Searching the web, books, magazines, research papers and the like, most of the available information about trekking in Thailand are focused on regular treks such as some of those you can join in Chiang Mai. They have one to three days and two nights trek programs that the operator runs daily basic on the almost the same route passing the same places and sleeping in the same hilltribe villages or camp sites. The activities along way: walking, elephant back riding, bamboo rafting are also the same whenever you join that particular trip. The places (bamboo huts) for tourist to sleep could even be those built by the tour operators, rather than the actual villagers' houses, who monopolise that particular trail.

The main changes that take place on a trek program are seasonal factors. Different seasons give you different scenes on the farms (green paddy, yellow paddy, corns, etc.) and the forest and rivers. The seasons will also effect the difficulty level of the trek as well as stuff and gear you bring to the trip.

There are many such daily scheduled treks available in northern Thailand and some other places. These are the subjects of most of the research...

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Well we are approaching songkran the Thai newyear festival also celebrated as national events in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma). It is hot and dry and many people would choose to stay under the shade with a flask of cool fruit juice.

We already have a plan for april. What about coming May and June? Where you want to go?

May will still be very hot with random light shower here and there. Three years ago in May in Khao Yai national park we had got some rains during a trek and encountered leeches. This year we don't know if there will be rain at all. Rivers were then holding some running water. At this moment they are almost dry and stone beded.

Hoping for a better, we have some choices. Here are few of them not very far from Bangkok.

1. Lam Klong Ngu national park in Thong Pha Phun district, Kanchanaburi province. The new park is known for caves and streams in the caves. In May it should still be a good time to explore these caves because these underground rivers will not have much waters. Caving may be a good experience. Three days and two nights is necessary to do a...