Working on a turtle conservation project on the island of Nusa Penida was the last leg of my trip and definitely the one I was most looking forward to. Who could resist a couple of weeks in paradise with fascinating sea turtles?  As I approached the island by boat from the Bali mainland it looked idyllic, with lush vegetation and attractive wooden buildings. However as soon as I disembarked, I was dismayed to find myself in a rubbish filled shanty town drowning under a sea of plastic bottles. Thousands of tourists flock here every year to take photos at the famous Instagram beauty spots, but what you don’t see in these stunning photo shoots is just what the island looks like off camera. Me and my fellow new volunteers rattled along the unmade roads in an old truck, and, as I had requested a private room, I was dropped off…

Prior to going to my final project at a turtle conservation centre off the coast of Bali, I booked onto a guided tour of the mainland. My fellow  travellers were a great bunch from Ireland, Australia, the USA and Malta. It was a good job we did get on, without requiring any peace negotiations, as we spent hours squashed together in a minibus which only seemed to have one gear. Bali is a small island, so I assumed we would travel around quite easily. How wrong I was…. The traffic here is unbelievable. There are  swarms of mopeds, and, it appears that one moped is quite sufficient to carry 2 adults and 3 children, none of whom wear crash helmets. I also hadn’t appreciated that there aren’t many roads on the island, and none have been finished. The shortest journey can quite easily take hours, in a convoy of old…

As a serial traveller I am usually keen to move on after a few weeks in one country, as there are always new places to see and new cultures to immerse myself in. However this was not the case with Cambodia. I left a little bit of my heart there. Whilst the scenery and the numerous temples and sunsets were breathtaking, it was the people who truly took my breath away. As a nation they have been through untold suffering in recent history, yet they are the kindest, most honest and genuine people I have ever met. When I said that I was teaching English there, I was guaranteed a discount in taxis, tuktuks, markets and even coffee shops. Such was their gratitude to any foreigner who had come to help them. As well as teaching the Buddhist monks I taught 2 community groups every day. These classes were…

This week, to pass a quiet afternoon, I went to the APOPO Landmine Rat centre, on the outskirts of the city, and I learnt something quite extraordinary. Between 1965 and 1998 Cambodia was literally battered and bombed by civil unrest and the US bombing campaign on neighbouring Vietnam. Despite years of concerted clean up efforts there are still more than 1000km2 of unexploded landmines in the country. There are more than 40,000 amputees in Cambodia and 32 people have been killed by them this year alone. Since the cleanup operations started in the 1990s more than 4 million unexploded landmines have been cleared, but there are still around 6 million to go. The most common method to detect mines is with metal detectors which can be deadly work. A landmine clearing charity, called APOPO, trains giant African rats to use their incredible sense of smell to sniff the TNT in…

I am now in Cambodia. To be honest this is a country I was unsure about, probably because I associated it with its terrible recent history. Between 1976 and 1978 3 million people, nearly 25% of the population, were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge government. 90% of the country’s wealthy and educated elite were targeted and killed. Cambodia is steadily overcoming this trauma but is a country with nearly half of its population under 24. I think I felt subconsciously that this horror would make this a sad place. How wrong I was! From the moment I arrived at the airport I was overwhelmed by the warmth and friendliness of the people. When passing through Border Control, it transpired that I had the wrong entry visa. I feared that I would be arrested and deported. Instead a super friendly policeman escorted me to the visa desk, helped me fill…

The problem with moving between voluntary projects is that you only see a very small area of a country before moving on. I felt that I could not experience just one city in Thailand, so last week I joined a tour and travelled up through the centre of the country. I knew The Family wouldn’t approve, as they resent me enjoying myself too much, however I can write about this in my blogs as they don’t bother to read them. ‘Too many words’ apparently… I met up with my fellow travellers in a nice hotel in Bangkok. There were couples from America, Ireland and Australia. I was most fascinated  by our tour guide, Ko. He was a curious looking little Thai man with dyed ginger hair in a ponytail, dangly diamond earrings, a fake Gucci handbag, and the most feminine hands I have ever seen. He said that he was…

Thailand is known as ‘The Land of Smiles’ and I think it’s a pretty apt description. Thais are friendly people, and in every shop you are greeted with a smile, palms pressed together in a praying gesture, and a slight bow. Courtesy and respect are refreshingly prevalent qualities here. Yet Thailand is a land of contrasts; Cannabis is legal and available on the high street, yet possession of hard drugs can lead to very long prison sentences. Vapes are banned as they ‘encourage young people to smoke’, yet cigarettes are only £1.80 a packet. Prostitution is illegal, yet beautifully made up women (and men) looking for clients are everywhere. Sexpats abound. These are the old, wrinkled white men who stroll arm in arm with expensively dressed and manicured Thai girls, young enough to be their granddaughters. Whilst we might frown on this arrangement, with high poverty levels and a lack…