From her trip to our projects in Thailand, Dutch staff member Janou shares some good advice.

Although I am a staff member of the Dutch office, I never did voluntary work abroad as a Gap Year or in a later stage of my life. It was always on my wish list, but I never made the time. And being a mum now I put travelling / volunteering abroad at the bottom of my wish list.

Laurens, my husband, and recruitment manager of the Dutch Office, spoke always so passionately about his 10 months as a Projects Abroad volunteer in South Africa that my only recommendation to potential volunteers is: Please travel while you still can!

Luckily my wish came anyhow.

In January we got the amazing chance to visit our projects in Thailand. We travelled with our 2,5 year old daughter Philien. And we loved it!

I was in Asia before (Indonesia), but Thailand was beyond my expectations. The respect for the King, the friendly people, the lovely food and the beautiful sights made me fall in love with Thailand. And the local people fell in love with Philien…. It is so easy to get around and there is so much to see. When you are volunteering in Thailand there is no way you will feel bored.

Our Ao Nang based Diving & Marine Conservation project is a project like no other. You will learn how to scuba dive and will do marine life and coral reef research and monitoring and recovering work.
While diving you will see the most colourful amazing fishes and plants you have ever seen. Unfortunately I just missed a seahorse, but it was there!! Next to the diving part you also will help cleaning beaches and plant mangroves and learn about the importance of mangroves.
Sleeping with other volunteers in a shared apartment, tasty food being provided - you can have the time of your life!

My opinion remains the same, when you feel like travelling or volunteering abroad, please take your chances: HELP, LEARN, EXPLORE!!!!

Janou Vos

In response to my foreign food question, I received the most feed back about Asian food from my fellow staff members who recalled stories of eating every part of a goat on the Mongolian steppe to eating fried batwings in Indonesia. But the best reply by far was from Sarah, a Programme Advisor and design aficionado at our UK office. Here are her varied culinary memories of China:

Having lived in China for a while, I have a few interesting ‘food’ stories. I was fortunate enough to attend lots of amazing banquets and tried some fantastic food, one of the best things I ate was a special soup made from ‘hairy crab’. These are a certain special type of crab that are found around Shanghai only a couple of months a year. They have a special yellow bit of meat and the soup was made just from this - absolutely delicious!

Now onto the slightly more dubious……

There is a food market in Beijing which has stall after stall selling only various kinds of fried insects on sticks - everything from grasshopper to moth larvae! I didn’t personally try these but I have eaten several weird and wonderful things: several toads and frogs (which actually taste ok - a cross between fish and chicken!), snake (a real delicacy), various internal organs of animals (not sure exactly what!), chicken and goose feet (when you eat these in a restaurant they give everyone a plastic glove and you sit there gnawing at your fried foot then spitting out the bones, never really saw the appeal in it). They seem to try and eat every part of each animal possible, so you want to watch out when you order chicken soup in China, you are likely to find the head, neck and feet floating around in there!

One a had on my plate but couldn’t bring myself to eat was a fish eye, which I helped myself to off a buffet thinking it was just a piece of fish till I turned it over and the eye was staring right at me! I have also had sparrow in a restaurant where you have a small BBQ in the middle of the table and they bring all the food to you and you cook it yourself. There wasn’t much meat on it I have to say!

The best one though is a ‘live prawn’ dish (see the picture above), another Shanghai specialty. The chef takes a glass bowl, half fills it with a dark red wine sauce. Lots of live prawns are then put in and a lid put on. The prawns start off splashing around but then get gradually more and more drunk so become sedated. At this point the lid is taken off and everyone dives in with chopsticks and eats them all whole (spitting out any bits of shell they don’t want to eat). I found this terrifying and did try one but made a real mess of it! Naturally once the prawns feel you grabbing them, they start to wiggle around!!

I was actually a demi- (fish-eating) vegetarian when I went out there but gave up trying to figure out what I did and don’t eat!

Fresh from Mexico, Suzi then headed to Costa Rica to see our volunteers enjoying the good life!

Costa Rica’s national slogan – Pura Vida, literally ‘pure life’ seems to perfectly embody the country’s incredible natural diversity and the simple friendly welcome you receive from the Ticos, as Costa Ricans are known.

I had visited Costa Rica’s capital city, San Jose, five years ago, so had some idea of what to expect from Costa Rica. Liberia, the town where we are based, is a much smaller town, so those wanting a wild nightlife may be better off in Mexico, but I liked the laid back atmosphere. The town is easy to get to know, centred around the shady central plaza overlooked by the distinctive white church, where volunteers meet before a night out. There are a couple of good bars, serving good cocktails and cold beer, with views over the nearby streets. Volunteers can also take part in free weekly salsa lessons that we arrange.

At the weekends, there’s a massive choice of things to do close to Liberia, from sunbathing on nearby beaches, climbing a volcano, swimming in waterfalls or having a volcanic mud bath. During my visit, on the Sunday, Luis – the Costa Rica director, myself and three volunteers visited a volcano crater with bubbling mud fumaroles and two very tame toucans happy to pose for photos (see pic!). Next came the canopy tour zip line, now one of Costa Rica’s top activities. Whizzing through the jungle canopy sat in a harness attached to a thin wire, is quite a way to see the jungle. Especially if like one of the volunteers, you’re a bit nervous and choose to go tandem, attached to one of the very nice guides!

When not zipping through jungles it was great to visit some of the schools, universities and a care centre where we work and get to know the host families, who are undoubtedly some of the most welcoming I have ever met. I also spent some time at the Conservation Project, on the Pacific coast and was incredibly lucky to see some baby leatherback turtles!

As always, the time went far too fast, though lots of work was accomplished with both Luis, our Costa Rica Director and Marianela, the Assistant Manager. Keep up the good work guys and hope to see you again soon! Suzi