Over the last week we have had many wonderful things happen. We met with the nice people at USAID, which then lead us to the nice people at Wild Aid. Much of our time is spent here in Bangkok taking care of business as we prepare for the less organized countries that we will be traveling to next. Part of this business is planning some interaction with organizations that USAID supports like Wild Aid. Our plans include some really interesting things, such as exotic animal poachers that have been converted to farmers that now help to stop other poachers. We will also be meeting with some organizations dealing with human traffic, unexploded ordinance and orphans as a result of birth defects from agent orange.
I can imagine that the last couple of sentences would put negative thoughts in your heads. I won’t argue that these topics are not the most happy things to think about; however, we have learned as travel that the majority of these organizations are far from sad. In fact, they are some of the most inspiring and positive places on the planet. As the larger news organizations produce stories around the world, they tend to focus on the more sensational and hopeless stories. Obviously this is because these stories sell, but we are going to show all of you the positive side of what is happening in SE Asia. The passionate people and enthusiastic locals are making a huge difference in the world that we live in, and in the end most of these stories will leave you with a good feeling about what is happening in the rest of the world.
We have also recently been invited by some Buddhist Monks to visit their temple and spend a couple of nights there. We will stop by here on the way to Cambodia next week. They have even offered to put us in contact with some more temples as we travel if we need places to stay.
On a more unfortunate note and the larger reason for the lack of action on the website, Bouey and I have both been sick for the last couple of days. I am feeling better now, but Steve’s flu (for lack of diagnosis) is still giving him a bit of a hard time. So send your good vibes to Steve and hopefully we will both be back to 100% very soon.
