Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"THEY live in stilted shacks built on a mud flat above piles of oyster shells, broken glass and rubbish, their nomadic days on the seas of South-east Asia gone forever. Liya Pramongkit, an elder and midwife of Thailand's largest group of Moken-speaking sea gypsies, saw her people on the small island of Koh Lao dying at the rate of one a week, many of them starving mothers and babies. "We have lost our traditional way of life as our children no longer hear the stories that have been handed down by our ancestors," Liya says, her deeply lined face showing the hardship the Moken have suffered since they were forced to leave their seafaring lives, where the only things that mattered were the tides, the fish, the storms, the moon and the sea spirits. "Before, when we lived and died on the sea, life was much better," she says. Advertisement More than three decades working in Bangkok's slums did not prepare Catholic priest Joe Maier for what he saw on Koh Lao when he made his first 30-minute boat ride here from the Thai fishing port of Ranong, in south-west Thailand, four years ago. "The people were literally starving to death, trapped between the modern world and the Moken world," Father Maier says. "I have never seen people as poor. "The women did not have milk in their breasts to feed their babies and everyone had [intestinal] worms ... there were no traditional values ... it was a matter of basic survival." For centuries, home for the Moken were hand-built boats called kabang which they plied through the Mergui Archipelago, where 800 islands are scattered along 400 kilometres of the coasts of Burma and Thailand, in the Andaman Sea. They lived on fish, molluscs, sandworms and oysters, accumulating little and living on land only during the monsoons. But massively depleted fishing stocks, the declaration of marine reserves and crackdowns on itinerant fishers in Burma forced them off their boats into an uncertain future where they are struggling to survive in a Th

"Alpine and Nordic skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, snowshoeing - even ice fishing - could all be in trouble unless winter sports industry leaders take a leadership role in curbing emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, members of the National Resources Defense Council and Protect Our Winters insist."

"HAT YAI, Thailand - He had already endured a treacherous journey down the Bay of Bengal, squeezed in the belly of a fishing trawler, then squashed in a pickup truck as it hurtled down Thailand's southern coast. Malaysia, his final destination, was tantalizingly close. But under the towering trees of a rubber plantation, the smuggler who had brought Abdul Musid, a 30-year-old from Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority, this far made a new demand: Pay more or be left behind. When Mr. Musid pleaded that he had no more money, the smuggler kicked him in the groin and left him for dead. "

"IT'S ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU CANCEL YOUR RESERVATION A vacation is supposed to be your time away from the crazy. Remind me never to travel to any of the same vacation spots these people have booked. I'll take that upgrade and trade you a bus tour of "OH MY GOD THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTS!" - THESE ARE ACTUAL COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY "THOMAS COOK VACATIONS FROM DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS" : 1. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts." 2. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallarta to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned." 3. "On my holiday to Goa in India , I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food." I'll book it but only if I can screen my fellow travelers first. 4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price" 5. "The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room." 6. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow." 7. "They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax." 8. "No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared." 9. "Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers." 10. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish." 11. "The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun." 12. "It took us nine hours to fly home