Randy Gaudet

have been living in Thailand since 1989. I have traveled extensively throughout the Kingdom and want to share my wonderful experiences of Thailand with others. I talked with many travelers here in Thailand and saw a need to take visitors away from the normal tourist areas filled with large tour buses and groups. The biggest complaint I heard from visitors is "there is no real Thai culture". "Everything is staged for the tourists". This is because they keep following each other around using their guide books. I lived in a remote area of north Thailand at Wat Thaton temple in the town of Thaton on the Burmese border for more than 3 years. I taught English to
Monks, novices, high school students, the Thai Army, local and tourist police. I also did hill tribe programs by taking small number of tourists to hill tribe villages to spend the evening. All the money for the trek went to the villagers. I bought clothes for the children, medicines and blankets for the families. I paid the villagers to build a bamboo schoolhouse and paid a teacher to teach Thai at the school who could speak their language. I taught them how to dispose of waste properly, keep the children and village clean and to use spoons instead of their fingers when eating which was a big source of their health
problems. I provided seeds and Logan and lychee fruit trees for
planting. This was fine until I left the temple then the school stopped and the health problems returned. I talked with the Abbot of the temple and he now has a school for the children at the temple. He has a nurse looking after the children and takes those to the clinics that have problems.

My wife and I now help orphaned and abandoned hill tribe children through our tour operation All Thailand Experiences.

I also write Thailand travel articles for the Welcome to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai and other magazines.