BLOG

Category Archives: Travel

Wordless Wednesday: World’s Largest Floating Bookfair: Logos Hope

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Click to Enlarge

I actually had a video of the inside of the ship but I accidentally deleted it. I feel really bad but there is nothing I can do about it.

Related video:

The Great Elephant Escape by Antoinette Van De Water

Title: Title: The Great Elephant Escape
Author: Antoinette Van De Water and Liesbeth Sluiter
Genre: Memoir
Source: Library
Set in: Thailand
Challenge: East and SouthEast Asia
Rating: 4 out of 5

My thoughts:
I had very low expectations from this book but it ended up surprising me. The Great Elephant Escape  is about a German woman Antoinette who volunteered in an Elephant Park in Thailand and ended up organizing a ‘Bring the Elephant home’ campaign. Antoinette loved elephants and empathized with their situation in Thailand. She wanted to do more than volunteer and that’s when she came up with the project. The book  chronicles her and her teams journey through Thailand with the rescued Elephants. The goal of the project was to make people aware of the plight of the elephants.

Today Elephants in Thailand are mainly used for begging and tourism purposes. There are Elephant shows, Elephant rides and the works. But there are also elephants that work in the logging industry. Violent measures are usually used to train them and they are often not treated well. With deforestation, the elephant owners have little to feed their elephants, so they have to resort to take them to the cities to beg or use them in the logging industry.

Antoinette begins her project by raising money which seems a lot more difficult than she imagined. A lot of things that could go wrong did go wrong during the planning of this project. But as the project progressed there was also a lot of support and awareness created about the Elephants and their plight. The author takes you through Thailand with her and lets you experience the frustration of dealing with the Thai bureaucracy, the sorrow of seeing the plight of these majestic animals and the happiness of finally doing something for them.

The writing if not very literary is good enough to pull you into the book without any distractions. Antoinette seems like a genuine person who poured her heart and soul into this project. I highly recommend this book to those who are interested in memoirs or Elephants.

Wordless Wednesday: Phuket, Thailand

My Wordless Wednesday posts have never really been wordless and this is no exception.

We just returned from a super awesome vacation in Phuket, Thailand so I thought I would upload some pictures here as well. I’ve been to Thailand twice (Pattaya and Bangkok) and although I had fun, both the places failed to impress me. But Phuket is an awesome place which is perfect for families, couples and even friends. There is something for everyone. Before I turn into an ambassador for Phuket, l’ll just get on with some pictures from the trip (You can enlarge the pictures if you want to)

We did canoeing, ATV, saw a couple of temples, visited the James Bond Island and also had some night fun at the infamous Bangla Road.


ATV


Buffet Hall at the Fantasea Show


Palace of Elephants,the Fanasea show Hall


Canoeing Tour (They take you in a boat and then take you in and around the Island in Canoes)


I got to Canoe for a while :)


and ofcourse Beach


And…I also got a permanent tattoo. My husband was more worried about the pain than I was. It was painful, yes, but it was also very exciting. I always wanted a tattoo and now I have one :)


Exploring Phuket

Simon Cabret

I did ride the bike for almost an hour on the streets of Phuket in search of a bookstore too. I got Mango Rains.

I will be putting up more photos in the future Wordless Wednesday posts.

Wordless Wednesday-Cemeteries: Kuching, Malaysia

I love cemeteries; I am fascinated by them. They make me feel calm, of course only when I visit them during the day. This is one of the many cemeteries we came across while driving around Kuching, Malaysia. I had never seen anything like it before but it was all written in Chinese. But each gravestone is so gorgeous. You have to enlarge to see it.

I’m back…

We were supposed to return on 17th but my husbands work got postponed, so we came back yesterday instead. I’m so refreshed. It was such a good change.

We visited quite a few places at weekends. Srilanka is sooooo hot this time of the year though. We did a little of both, luxury traveling as well as backpacking. Both were fun. We visited a few Buddhist temples,

visited the elephant orphanage,

did jet skiing, held a croc

and river cruised.

Colombo is not as developed as I thought the capital of a country would be but its understandable since there were important things like the war to concentrate on. Now that the war is finally over, Srilankan’s can enjoy a peace and freedom. Still, there were a lot of policemen and Army people on the road. every time we went out we were stopped for random checking. It surprising how you get used to it after some time.

I read 4 books, reviews of which would be coming up soon, I hope.

I was pleasantly surprised by the large number of bookstores in Colombo, there is one for like every 5Km. I bought 3 books, 2 of which are by Srilankan authors.

My MIL is visiting us for a month, she’ll be coming tomorrow, so I guess I’ll be busy but I might get time to blog and comment. Hopefully.

I missed the readathon, I’m sure it must have been fun. So how have you all been?