My top 14 Phuket pics

Tourism, nice beaches, long tail boats – that is what comes to our minds when we think of Phuket. It’s true, it is a fantastic piece of earth. But it is a place where also ‘normal life ‘ takes place and some things happen that are not nice at all. Here my personal favorite photo…

Visit to Phuket town and a printing machine for eternity 

  It’s a rainy day in Phuket and when we walk through the streets of the old town many taxi drivers offer a trip to somewhere. Well, in the low season it might not be easy to gain some money… We just have refused again when we stop in front of one of these old printing…

Kho Phi Phi – a paradise for realists

  There is no paradise on earth. You should know.  But an idea on how it could look you can get when you visit Kho Phi Phi in the low season and you don’t stop at the ferry pier where the day tourists come and – of course – Kho Phi Phi’ habitants have discovered well…

About butterflies, good women and fatalism 

   We enter a small secondary street at Patong, the famous beach in Phuket,Thailand. Patong is known especially because of its red-light district. In front of us there is the Good Shepherd vocational center, a location for Thai women and girls, working in the red light surroundings, to learn better English, to study for a…

Bangkok: immigration,  better life and the luxury of a burger 

  Bangkok has a lot to offer. It has amazing temples, monuments, skyscrapers, a colorful life, the tourist roads, vivid markets and the refreshing express boat rides on the Chao Phraya.  No doubt, for tourists a great city.  What about the normal life? What I like a lot is that the basics for a living are…

A visit to the gypsy village

  Probably, in the main season a considerable number of tourists come here. It’s just a little bit out of Phuket town and maximum 30 km, but a “world”, away from one of the most visited beaches in Thailand and the modern hotels.  But today we are alone, the only European people, farangs, in the sea…

Happiness does not mean to be rich – a travel to Phuket

The next weeks I will stay in Phuket and Bangkok. Touristic destinations, nice landscapes, dream beaches, swimming flower markets, colorful world, diving, fun.  Holidays! But there is another world, too. Have you ever heard of the slums of Phuket? The environmental issues? The poverty in the homes for children and battered women?   Not good…

The magic bus: play and change – a successful social enterprise India

Matthew Spacie, founder of the Magic Bus, has set up a livelihood program for the poor children living in slum areas that really empowers. Because it matters and because it is based on the people living there. Because it starts from where the people are, what they think, how they live and where there are starting…

My 14 “Incredible India” moments in 2014!

Originally posted on The Shooting Star :
As I swayed on my hammock, hearing the gentle waves of the Pacific Ocean in Costa Rica, India seemed pretty far away. But I only had to traverse the crevices of my mind, to recall the solitude of the Himalayas, the serenity of the backwaters and my serendipitous encounters over the…