Will, our Director of Recruitment in Australia, and Mandy with their beautiful baby girl Jasmine. A future volunteer in 2026?

Staff outside the new Projects Abroad - Thailand office

By Suzi Lamb,

My third visit to Projects Abroad – Thailand was a busy one. Since spending a month working on our Conservation project last summer in Thailand lots has changed.

Conservation Director Marten Meynell has been out in Thailand for almost a year now and has done a great job of developing the Conservation work further. His monthly updates on the Thailand Conservation website are well worth a read. Conservation staff, Guang and Pam also do a fantastic job both with the diving side of the project and on land, accompanying the volunteers on beach clean-ups and mangrove days.

However, the biggest change is that our Teaching and Care projects are now also based in and around Krabi and we welcome Parichart Chaipikul, known as Ant, to our staff team as Director for Teaching and Care. Assistant Manager, Chane has moved with us from Bangkok, and continues to show the volunteers around when they first arrive and much more. We have also just finished our new office (see photo), located at the back of the volunteer house, which certainly gives the staff much needed extra space.

We still have a few Teaching and Care projects located in Chumphon, about three hours from Krabi and for volunteers wanting an experience of Thailand which is well off the tourist trail, this is an excellent option. Chumphon Coordinator, Jamnong will welcome you into his local community and have you speaking basic Thai in no time!

Staff training and visiting our new projects left me with no time to visit any of Thailand’s beautiful beaches this time, however, the volunteers enjoyed a weekend at stunning Ko Phi Phi. Thailand definitely offers volunteers plenty to do in their free time, combined with a unique insight into the Thailand most tourists don’t see and I’m already looking forward to my forth visit.

Ciprian Radu has married the very beautiful Corina. Ciprian is the Head of Coding at our IT office in Brasov, Romania and his friends all call him Chipry. He is not just a coder, but also a singer, a violist, a pianist and a footballer.

All his family are singers who can stay in tune without an accompaniment. There were loads of songs all the way through the service and the reception, which was brilliant (especially for me since, being songs, it didn’t matter so much if they were all in Romanian – and anyway some were in English like Swing Low Sweet Chariot). The reception was held at a place up in the mountains in a forest and the whole event had so much music that there were times when you felt like you were playing a bit-part in the Sound of Music, except the songs were better. There were no speeches, just songs, so better and better!

Chipry and Corina were married in the Seventh Day Adventist tradition of Christianity. So the wedding was on a Sunday since their Sabbath is on a Saturday. Also, the church had no crosses since crosses are thought to be backward-looking and symbolic of suffering. Instead of dark and gloomy stuff, they have pictures of beautiful landscapes which had been created by God, which was the right kind of atmosphere for wedding vows and blessings. Another thing that was different was that the bride and groom entered the church together, instead of the bride being given away. All the Seventh Day Adventist women wear simple clothes and no make-up – in Corina’s case, these would have been sacrilege anyway (you wouldn’t decorate the Mona Lisa, would you)?

In Romania, they usually steal the bride from the reception. They hold her hostage and give her back in exchange for some gifts. So, Arthur Radulescu (I can hear those who know Arthur saying “Who else?”) caused a great stir by kidnapping Corina and arranging for Szilard to take her for an ice-cream in a nearby café. In return, Arthur (rather than Szilard who did all the work) got a bottle of champagne and an ice-cream cake. By the time the bride got back, everyone was just starting to get anxious and a teeny bit cross. Then she appeared, smiling and gorgeous. So everyone forgave everyone else and forgot to be anxious or cross, and they all kissed and made up – and lived happily very after.

Chipry and Corina – Congratulations! Have a wonderful life and always be together!

Peter Slowe

(Pictures to follow shortly)

By Sarah Milnes, Programme Advisor

As my first time to Africa, I was more than a little excited about heading off to Ethiopia, home to the roots of modern man! Ethiopia certainly didn’t disappoint. Despite it being the peak of the rainy season in Addis Ababa, which combined with the altitude of over 2400m, gave the capital a distinctly ‘British’ climate, the warmth and friendliness of the Ethiopian people more than made up for it.

Sami, our Ethiopian Director and his Assistant, Abe, became my guides for the week, showing me round all our various host families and placements in addition to some of the cities attractions. At first the Ethiopian capital can seem quite disorientating, with no definite ‘centre’, but once you get the hang of using the shared minibus taxis, everything soon slots into place. It is also a surprisingly safe and un-intimidating city, although being one of relatively few ‘feranjee’ (foreigners) you do stand out and attract a fair bit of attention!

View of Addis from the office

experienced Ethiopian hospitality on many occasions and was regularly ‘force-fed’ mounds of injera (the local staple –grey ‘pancake-style’ bread made from fermented grain) and tibs (fried pieces of beef) whilst visiting local host families alongside delicious coffee or macchiato. I was also fortunate to witness traditional coffee ceremonies and cultural dancing, which seems to basically involve lots of rapid shoulder movement, something which all Ethiopians seem to be able to do, but I and fellow ‘feranjee’ were hopeless at!

Ed,a volunteer, with some children

Volunteers mainly spend their time in Addis either teaching or doing care work in orphanages or drop-in centres, although there are also opportunities to do journalism for one of the private English language publications ‘The Daily Monitor’. As it was the school holidays, I visited volunteers teaching adults in small language schools, as well as working on a holiday teaching programme.

With a diverse mix of different peoples, the vast majority being either Orthodox Christian or Muslims, Ethiopia is a fascinating country. I was lucky enough after my time in Addis to spend 10 days in the South of the country, visiting the tribal peoples of the Omo valley, a truly mid-blowing trip. 80 % of the population of Ethiopia are farmers, a fact that becomes blindingly obvious when you have driven through the 10th herd of cattle or goats crossing the road in the same number of minutes! I saw some stunning and varied scenery from the mountain peaks and fertile valleys to the dry scrubland of the lowlands.

Sarah in a Mursi tribal village

It was incredible to see people ploughing the fields with oxen and living in small grass and mud huts, having to walk for miles each day to fetch water, which involved digging a hole in one the dried up river beds. Despite the economic hardships many people face, I found the Ethiopian people proud and resilient and will certainly never forget my time there.