Home Stay Project in Khao Lawm

GVI's Expedition Members had the opportunity of a lifetime this past weekend. The local village of Khao Lawm, previously visited as part of GVI's Ao Luk Village Project, has expressed interest in developing some of their community's natural highlights into Community Based Tourism (CBT) projects to provide the village with a means of income while still maintaining their own unique cultural identity. To kick start this concept GVI Thailand paid a visit to the Khao Lawm community for a weekend home stay to give the village an opportunity to give CBT a try.

Saturday afternoon EMs arrived at Khao Lawm. First stop was the hot sand beach, which is a hot spring that flows out of the river warming a stretch up muddy beach near the shore. Swapping between swimming in the river and covering themselves in hot mud, the group created their own 'rural spa' experience.

After mucking it up everyone headed to their home stay houses to meet up with their new families and clean up for dinner. The evening consisted of a home cooked Thai meal of sweet and sour tofu, chicken coconut soup, rice, and Pad Thai. Afterwards there was a Thai sweet making workshop in which EMs got to try their hand at making local sweets and snacks. Later in the evening their was a mini-concert with villagers playing Thai rock music. Full and satsfied everyone returned to their home stays for a night of sleep.

Breakfast consisted of coffee, tea, and sweets from the workshop the night before. After breakfast everyone went for a walk through the village. They learned about the local fruits grown and rubber harvesting. The walk finished at the village temple where EMs helped the community to pick up trash and rake leaves to clean up the temple grounds. After exploring the temple everyone headed back "home" where they packed up, had lunch, and headed back to base.

The Khao Lawm Home Stay provided EMs with a great opportunity to experience rural Thai community life.

Home Stay Project in Khao Lawm