RE: Postcards from Thailand #32: If You Pay Peanuts...
You are viewing a single comment's thread:
Touching base on your talking about monkeys retrieving coconuts and rich westerners lecturing poor Thai farmers on their practices: I think that westerners kind of need to change their perspective because such as when I was living in Chiang Mai and all the world was coming down on them for the crop burning season and how terrible that is for the environment. It is true that it is terrible for the environment but there is no viable alternative for these poor farmers. It's easy for us to sit back and say "why don't you just use a piece of equipment that was designed for that???" without even stopping to thing that a combine, the likes of which are used in the USA, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fire is essentially free. If there was legislation banning crop clearing with fire all these farmers would have no choice but to break the law, risk going to jail, or simply give up farming.
The riding of elephants is dying out due to international tourism pressure and this is a good thing. Before I left Chiang Mai I noticed that nearly all of the elephant trekking parks had transitioned to elephant washing parks or simply elephant watching parks.
This is exactly why real travel broadens the mind and gives you new perspectives and insights.
Another example would, of course be the closing of the tiger temple a few years back.
It always amazes me that in the UK, bananas cost roughly the same in the supermarkets as they do in the markets of Thailand!
Really nice to see tour name pop up and I hope life is treating you well still in Vietnam. Best wishes :-)
I was unaware they had closed that. Thank goodness because that place was an animal abuse nightmare and perpetuated by monks of all people.