E-mail to parents Bill and Barbara in NZ 11:37AM

Hi good to get your mail, we are all good, so busy and tired but exited doing stuff. I'm taking lots of photos, check blog every day for more. We will be out of reach for tonight, seeing the Lasu hill people celebrating the Chinese new year. Yesterday, we saw my namesake, KAREN hill people clearing a fire break, looking after the rain forest, where they live. Gavin interviewed the head man of the Karen in the forest, with his daughters, they had a great grasp of climate change and the need to preserve their environment. They are doing some great things.

by the sea, it was great to see all that the organic farmers were doing, working We have been eating lovely Thai food, and I have seen amazing new things at at the markets, buckets of eels, massive crabs, fruit I have never seen before, and have tasted spiky red fruit with white flesh and tiny black seeds, I will try to find out names.

The Thai people are so gentle and graceful, even riding their mopeds 3plus, weaving in and out of massive traffic jams in Bangkok, they are so relaxed, I would freak out... After our 6 hour train ride down to Chumphon - working co-operatively, and recycling etc. Woke up early to walk on the beach and take the sunrise, saw a special needs Thai group on beach, amazed. well I'll say more soon.

Love to all **Karen

11:19AM local time

We've had a challenging, but great, first week in Thailand. As much as I believe we got some great footage earlier in the week, for me there was a real beginning yesterday. It was incredibly powerful to hear the voice of a village leader and his 16 year old daughter from within the forest they live in. It may not always be this good but this interview was a very powerful affirmation that we have the makings of a story that as many people as possible around the world need to hear.

So please, let as many people know about what we are doing and share our blog with them.... and with your support we may just get the help we need to turn our vision to create a documentary into a reality. "Voices from the earth: Where hope lies".... a working title. If any of you can think of a better one, please let us know.

From Lena in Thailand 11:06AM

Flying over Bangkok at night was really beautiful; just the shiny lights outlining the streets and buildings and everywhere else just blackness. As soon as we got off the plane the humidity hit me, I couldn't believe that people were walking around wearing jeans!! I suppose they're used to it though.

The hotel we arrived and are staying at looked a bit shabby from the outside, but as the owner explained to us, that's cos they use recycled wood. All the people who work here are really nice and polite and most of them speak at least a bit of English and Rose (the owner) speaks English very well.

It takes a while to get used to the smell and the food, well lets just say it's more of a challenge than usual for me.

We visited the Grand Palace, it was massive. We weren't allowed in most of the buildings because they were tombs for deceased royalty. I felt that we were kind of intruding on a sacred place; a bit tapu. there were so many tourists, I think it should just be a place left in peace.

We also went and saw the Emerald Buddha. As soon as I walked in I felt like there was real energy and power, and again, I felt we were intruding.

The Reclining Buddha in another temple we visited was, what's the word for it? Amazing? Spectacular? Breath-taking? A combination of all three. Hollow and gold-plated, it was there before the temple that was built around it. On its feet were mother-of -pearl pictures of elephants, people, gods.

Dad and I did some filming around Chumphon Cabana Resort with Varasorn (the owner) and it was real interesting cos on the outside it's just a holiday place for people, but if you go out back or know where to look, you see all this amazing stuff going on like they've created a wetland and grow rice and try to do heapsa stuff organically. Also they have this Play + learn = Plearn philosophy which is making it a pleasant environment the workers to work in.

Yesterday we went out to this forest tribe and interviewed the leader of the tribe and he had some really interesting stuff to say about climate change both on a local and global scale. But what amazed me was when we interviewed his two teenage daughters - they had such wisdom about how the world should be, I couldn't believe that they were only 16/17!

Ciao from Chiang Rai 10:44AM

An email to Emma in Switzerland

We're in Chiang Rai now, in the north of Thailand. We had an AWESOME day yesterday!!! We drove out to a small village of about 100 people. They are from the Karen (same name as Mum!) minority group and live in and protect the forest. We walked into the forest to where they were working, clearing leaves to create a fire break. We filmed some awesome stuff there.

Then we went back to the village and had an amazing lunch of very interesting food, bits of flowers, dried mushrooms, forest herbs, all sorts of interesting things. After lunch we went for a walk along the stream by the village with the village leader and his two daughters, aged 16 and 17. We eventually came to a quiet place in the forest where we set up the camera on the tripod and interviewed them. This was incredible.

These people are so in touch with the earth and aware of what's happening in the world with climate change and other issues. They talked about how we all need to be living closer to nature. It is their hope that they can provide a good model and example for city people, people in Thailand and around the world, to learn from. This was very powerful stuff. For me this was a real beginning to this journey. I feel very determined to find a way for as many people as possible to hear the voices of these forest people and of others that we will be meeting.

I may not be able to communicate for a few days now. This afternoon we're going to a Lisu (another minority group) village where they will be celebrating the Chinese New Year tonight. We'll be staying there the night and then going next day to the Hill Area Development Foundation field headquarters, which is by an Akha village. Then we are going on the Mekong River for a bit, to a place on the river where we will stay two nights.

We'll be celebrating Lena's birthday by the Mekong River! Then (on evening of 22 Feb) we fly back to Bangkok and are going to stay with a Buddhist Monk for 2 nights who our host Tuenjai Deetes really wants us to meet. We'll be back in Bangkok on 24 Feb, so if you don't hear from us before I'll definitely be in touch then.

Sunset near Chiang Rai city 6PM ( Saturday 17th)