Sustainable Travel

Sustainable travel is the only way to travel.

It’s very important to us to travel in a sustainable and socially responsible way. Sustainable travel includes raising awareness about ethical wildlife tourism, caring for the environment, and supporting the local people and economy. Sustainable travel should be the only way we travel, here’s why.

7 Simple Tips To Be a More Responsible Traveller

Responsible travel means making environmentally, socio-culturally and economically aware travel choices. Knowing how to plan a responsible travel trip can seem like an absolute mission though, especially if there’s not a lot of time to read and research or you’re not sure where to start.

If you bring up the topic of responsible travel, more often than not people wrinkle their nose or shrug it off. Over time I’ve learned that this isn’t because they don’t care about the environment, wildlife and local people, it’s because it’s hard to know what choices are best.

6 mins read

Top Sustainable Travel Destinations for 2016

Now that we’re approaching the end of 2015, lists of the top countries to visit in 2016 are cropping up all over the place. The most prominent among these has been Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2016, featuring countries hand-selected by Lonely Planet’s “travel experts.”

But just how were these countries selected as the best places to go in 2016? I wrote to Lonely Planet to find out.

6 mins read
Phi Ta Khon Festival Thailand

Phi Ta Khon Festival: Thailand’s Haunting Festival of Ghosts and Masks

Why is it that when you give someone a mask they will never fail to show you their true face? For Phi Ta Khon festival, or the ghost mask festival, the normally shy, polite and retiring villagers of Dan Sai reveal themselves to be fun-loving, dance-crazy, non-stop party people. The festival, held in Loei province, is a vibrant interweaving of religion and art.

Mask makers spend the months leading up to the big event constructing and painting their lavish costumes in exquisite detail. When finished, the complete outfits resemble colourful monsters, somehow managing to be both fearsome and fluorescent. Dancing and continuous cowbells announce to the world that the ‘ghosts’ are in town.

5 mins read

Can Air Travel Ever Be Sustainable? Taking Responsibility for Our Carbon Footprint

It’s no secret that air travel is harming our environment. Global aviation is responsible for 2% of human induced C02 emissions, and while this figure might seem low, let’s not forget that we’re burning fossil fuels at an unsustainable rate and damaging the environment as a result.

What’s really staggering though is that the demand for air travel is expected to double over the next 20 years. We’re facing a very real risk of over expansion and this increase will only worsen greenhouse gas emissions and local air quality around airports.

We need to find a balance that means we can protect our planet and reduce C02 emissions without sacrificing travel altogether.

7 mins read

Tourism Disrupts Turtle Nesting in Ostional, Costa Rica

A year ago, Luke and I had an incredible experience witnessing the turtle arribada in the small Costa Rican beach town of Ostional. During an arribada, thousands of turtles come onto the beach to lay their eggs in the sand.

We were surprised not only by how breathtaking it is to see these creatures come out from the sea, but also how deserted the small town of Ostional was when we were there. One year later, I was horrified to read that swathes of tourists had prevented the turtles from nesting on the coast.

5 mins read

Coastal Paths, Clean Beaches and Local Heritage in Porthtowan

In England, it’s not unusual to take a family holiday to the same familiar seaside town, often just the closest one to where you live, or one of the really popular ones that actually have sand rather than pebbles.

Every year you pack up the car with too much stuff and a bag of Starburst. You go, you build sandcastles on the beach, eat Mr Whippy ice creams, probably eat fish and chips too, walk along the pier and play on some penny machines in an arcade. That’s what family holidays were like for me when I was growing up.

Like most people in the UK, I have a lot of nostalgia about seaside holidays.

4 mins read

Thailand’s Growing Raw Food Movement

The raw food movement, or raw foodism, is a massively growing trend. My Instagram feed is always crammed with raw food bloggers posting images of incredible raw cakes, spiralised veggies and superfood salads, which I admittedly go a little wild over.

Raw foodism refers to a diet with a high consumption of uncooked, unprocessed foods. A raw food diet mainly focuses on eating lots of raw fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds, but interpretations of what else is considered part of a raw food diet varies.

You hear a lot of buzz about raw food diets from places like California, Vancouver, Australia and New Zealand’s North Island, but far less so over in Asia. While travelling in Thailand though, I unexpectedly discovered that the raw food movement is slowly starting to set down roots over there too.

4 mins read

Chicken Coop Saunas and Community Tourism in Thailand

I’m not exactly au fait with spas of any sort, but a chicken coop sauna certainly wasn’t something I ever expected to see. In the Chong Changtune community in Thailand’s Trat province, they’ve invented a new kind of sauna experience, simply involving a traditional style chicken coop ideas, a rice cooker and some local herbs.

Are you as intrigued as I was?

3 mins read
Rocky outcrop on koh samet

Rocky Outcrops and White Sand Beaches on Koh Samet

With a couple of days to spare in between traversing the neon lit expanse of Bangkok and heading to the green mountain city of Chiang Mai in the north, we pulled out a map to locate an island not too far from Bangkok.

After some flash research, we ended up opting for Koh Samet, an island known for it’s close proximity to Bangkok, it’s silky white beaches and clear waters, and it’s – as we discovered – dubious National Park status.

We only had three days on Koh Samet, and though we prefer to travel slowly as often as possible, I’ve got to say that unless you’re keen to just kick back on a white sand beach for a week, then Koh Samet can be easily covered in that time.

4 mins read
Rice paddies

Ecotourism in Thailand: Planting Seeds at Phu Ruea Ruean Mai Rice Farm

If you spend any time at all in Thailand, or any Asian country, you’ll immediately notice that rice is essential to the local diet. Many people, especially from the older generations and in the countryside, eat some form of rice three times a day. Having spent so much time in Asia, Charlie and I have also become a little bit addicted to rice, and quite happily eat it seven days a week, and sometimes for breakfast too!

So naturally I was keen to visit Phu Ruea Ruean Mai resort, an organic rice farm, and learn more about how some Thai people are trying their hand at ecotourism. The rice farm is run by Nu Dee, a young, well-educated woman from Bangkok, and her mother. Nu Dee is one of a small handful of people bucking the urban migration trend, and she argues that there’s more to life than sitting at a standstill in Bangkok’s notorious traffic jams.

5 mins read

Eco-Friendly Accommodation Options and How to Find Them

If like me you are feverish with wanderlust but also keen to be as eco-friendly as possible while travelling, then you might want to look into making eco-friendly accommodation choices. You don’t need to spend a fortune to be an eco-friendly traveller, but making eco-conscious choices often takes a reasonable amount of research.

Unfortunately, it can be all too easy to end up staying in a hotel or resort that has a negative impact on the environment without even realising it. Collectively, hotels are guilty of excessive energy consumption, unnecessary overuse of water and poor waste management. From bigger issues like building in areas where construction ruins the environment down to the little things like pumping out air conditioning and washing bed linen daily, hotels can leave a huge carbon footprint.

6 mins read