Family holiday in Thailand

These adventures are designed to give you a chance to give something very real back to the regions you visit during your trip. Whilst still a great family holiday, time is scheduled in (usually 2-3 days) to spend some time helping out at worthwhile projects which directly benefit the local people or environment. On this trip, time is spent at a community led project which is working within some of the communities hit by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, where there is still much rebuilding work to be done.

This hands on adventure visits a rural village community and during your stay you’ll be actively involved on a day to day level. The exact nature of this involvement will depend upon what is going on at the time of your visit, but you might find yourself giving English lessons and playing games with the local children, helping in the community garden, assisting with beach clean ups or visiting the local market to buy provisions. It’s defiantly fun and educational too!

We know a 3 day visit won’t always make a lasting impact to a project, but we hope your time here will demonstrate how little things can make a big difference, and leave you feeling that you have made a small, positive contribution back to the area through which you’ve travelled.

On this trip: Our small group adventures are designed to impact as little as possible on the regions through which we travel – this trip is no exception. We use the overnight sleeper train from Bangkok to Surat Thani and travel by boat to the islands both of which help keep down the carbon footprint. We also work with a Thai owned local agency that employs local guides, drivers and the Group Leader on our behalf. Money from our visit reaches a wide range of people from local hoteliers to restaurateurs, during your stay around Khao Sok we will visit and stay in a homestay where you will live with a local family for three days directly benefiting them and the local community. Our small groups have minimal impact on the environment, whilst reinforcing the need to protect important natural wonders, such as the mangrove forests and Khao Sok. Money from our visit to Khao Sok National Park goes towards maintaining and protecting this valuable natural wilderness.

Our Responsible Travel Code: Clients who travel with us will automatically receive a copy of our Responsible Travel leaflet. This contains details and advice on how you can make a positive difference when you travel. If you would like a copy in advance of travel please contact us.

Charity Partnerships: We work in partnership with the following charities. SOS Children is the world’s largest orphan and abandoned children charity, helping some of the world’s most vulnerable children whose parents are not there for them. We also support Friends of Conservation – an international charity committed to working with local people to develop a balance between their needs and the wildlife with which they share the natural habitat and ecosystems. Other charities that we work closely with include the Born Free Foundation, an animal welfare charity working to prevent animal suffering in captivity and to protect them in the wild, the Galapagos Conservation Trust - a UK charity that raises funds and awareness for the conservation of the Galapagos Islands, and The Travel Foundation, a UK charity that has been established to promote responsible travel practises throughout the whole of the travel industry.

Carbon Balancing: Global warming is a real issue and is a direct result of your travel. We have teamed up with the Tourism Industry Carbon Offset Service to give you the opportunity to offset the carbon emissions from your flight. You’ll be asked upon booking if you want to donate to the solar stove and poverty reduction project we are supporting in South Africa – with set amounts from £4. As a company we offset the carbon emissions from all staff travel and office energy use in full.

Our Foundation: We’ve highlighted a few of the ways in which we offer our support to various charitable initiatives, both financially and otherwise, and now you can too. We have set up our own foundation, which will administer funds donated by you and us. A small donation of £1 per person will be taken when booking a holiday and that money will be put to good use by one of our carefully selected projects. If you don’t want to make the donation, just tell us when you book. To encourage you to do this and to put our money where our mouth is, we’ll match every single £1 donated and this we’ll give to our charity partner, Just a Drop. This is a global charity founded by members of the international travel industry, aiming to provide clean water and sanitation where it is most badly needed. In the developing world it costs just £1 to supply water to a child for nearly 10 years, so for every single person who travels with us, we’ll give Just a Drop £1.