Travel plan idea blog

So the Lebua hotel will encourage the rich folks to buy "carbo credits" to redeem themselves for visiting and dropping thousands of dollars in country that desperately needs currency? Who manages this hotel, Al Gore?
Apparently the owners of the Lebua hotel feel no such compunction to feed and educate the needy.

Let them eat cake?

I am neither jealous or sad,young man, I am angry.
Apparently you don't grasp that the poor are
people, not zoo animals and that to drive by them
staring at their"life style",do nothing about helping them and then go eat an expensive dinner is, in fact, immoral. Morality is not what you read or who you sleep with, it is how you treat other human beings"do unto others as you would have them do unto you" If you don't "get it" you
are as completely insensitive as it is possible to be. It doen't take an ideal world to ask those who have to give, just a humane and responsible one.Remind me never to read your site again

I agree with you, James. It's a very interesting story, but I think your logic is right. They're just as immoral wasting millions on first class travel and wine while in Europe as in Bangkok.

I just wish I had the money to worry about these things.

I have to question why the rich are taking a tour of poverty areas in the first place - are they trying to make some sort of statement, or simply flaunting their wealth. I tend to think it's the latter. Avarice is the root of all evil and this is a good example of what we see everywhere. How anyone could indulge in fancy feasts after touring an area of shacks and beggars is beyond me. I recall a visit to New York City and a tour we took. In the alleys and doorsteps were the poor sleeping on cardboard in the snow. The saddest part about it was that people on the tour laughed and turned away. The insensitivity of it all was a disgrace and a shame. It is doubtful that any good will come of this venture, once idle curiosity has been satisfied.

RJ - I have no idea what the owners of the hotel are doing besides encouraging their rich customers to donate money. I'm sure they could do more but then again so could I.

Who are you talking to Margaret? Me? I agree that rich people should do more to help the poor. I disagree that they should never see or meet poor people.

Margaret, never read my site again. You are banned for being stupid. I know that poor people are human and I even treat poor people like humans.

Sharon, laughing at poverty is disgusting. I don't know what else to say about that - I'm having trouble even imagining it.

I have taken the opportunity as an Australian traveller of very moderate means to travel through neighbouring South and South-east Asia extensively. I have generally back-packed but occasionally lashed out on higher standard accommodations. It seems to me that the kernel of this thread is that it is the perceptions and sensitivities of the traveller that is the issue not whether they may come from a higher socio-economic background. I have met both rich and poor fools in my travels....the distinguishing characteristic is the degree of foolishness...not the amount of "readies" they have to splash around! Education of the traveller is everything.

To take any action, we must first be aware of the problem.By making the rich and priveleged witness the injustice of poverty, disease, violence and hunger, Lebua has created an awareness which would not only benefit the village but would also lead to more acts of charity on part of the guests.

In the whole furore no one seems to have mentioned that this village was neglected. The people of this village have lived a life of hardship. Had lebua not bought our attention to this village it could have been years before some progress took place there. They plan to set up water sanitation programs, associate the village with the Bill Gates charity foundation educate the villagers about better methods of farming and actually help the villagers make their life better.

If one really has to go on touting the whole point about “poverty tourism” really what has anybody done for the village till date? It is easy for us to sit here and call it a marketing gimmick, but at least something is being done. Plans to improve conditions are underway.
I am surprised that in all this no one has even mentioned that the hotel has collected a sizeable amount of donation for the benefit of the village without even asking for any donation from the guests. I don’t see the villagers who will benefit from this event complaining. To us it is just another controversial issue, but to the people of Surin, this is the chance to start again with a ray of hope.

Why it that this has become an issue? Is it because it actually involved something good?
I wonder why the media is making such a big deal about it. The guests donated money, the village is going to have better living conditions as well as a chance to make their life easier. Perhaps there was no other “juicer” story that day.

Please read the following unbiased story from AP to get a grasp of the impact. This is really an excellent initiative and should be kept up.

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP, 4/7/08) — A Bangkok luxury hotel treated its top clientele to a tour of a poverty-stricken Thai village on Saturday before dazzling them with a lavish feast, ignoring outrage over the event that prompted a boycott by elite chefs around the world.

Controversy has surrounded the event, which critics characterize as a tasteless publicity stunt and organizers call a novel approach to helping the needy.

The posh hotel hosting the event, the lebua, is offering a 10-course meal — for free. The catch was that the guests — 35 bankers and corporate executives from the U.S., Europe and Asia — were required to spend the afternoon visiting a village in one of the poorest parts of Thailand.

``Who better to give poor people what they need than rich businessmen?'' said Deepak Ohri, the hotel's chief executive, who puts the hotel's cost for the dinner and trip at $300,000.

Early Saturday, the hotel jetted its well-heeled group to Ban Tatit village, a ramshackle community of wooden shacks in northeastern Thailand that is home to 600 residents. The village once raised hundreds of elephants but there are now only five of the giant gray beasts, villagers said.

Organizers said they hoped the visit would inspire their wealthy customers to act charitably.

Participants disputed the controversy surrounding the event as misguided.

``How would I ever have known these people needed help?'' said Javed Malik, an airline executive based in Hong Kong. ``I might not help the elephants but I'd like to help those children,'' he said, pointing to a group of smiling girls in dirty T-shirts.

The controversy appears to have delighted organizers, who credit the resulting publicity with drawing nearly $50,000 in advance donations. Contributions will be managed by a foundation the hotel is creating with its own donation of $96,000 to bring clean drinking water and other basic infrastructure to the village, Ohri said.

The executives toured the village's broken water filtration system, its dilapidated schoolhouse and parched farm land, which is too dry to grow crops for themselves or the elephants.

The sights of poverty did not appear to dent anybody's appetite.

``Would they have gotten everyone here together if it hadn't been for the 10-course dinner afterward?'' said Shanghai-based businessman Peter Foster.

The 10-course meal awaiting the group back in Bangkok included a seafood risotto, scallops with truffles, roasted rack of lamb, neck of Iberico pig — each to be washed down with a different fine Burgundy or Bordeaux.

An outcry in the French media prompted three of France's top chefs to bow out of the feast last month after initially agreeing to cook it.

``You can't see people living in misery and then go back to Bangkok to eat foie gras and truffles,'' said Paris chef Alain Soliveres, one of the three who opted out.

The bad publicity spooked 20 other top-ranked chefs in France, Germany and Japan, who feared that taking part in the event would harm their reputations, Ohri said.

Despite the boycott, four chefs from top-rated restaurants in Europe agreed to cook the meal.

Three of them will walk away with $8,000 each for the night's work: Christian Lohse from Fishers Fritz in Berlin, Henk Savelberg of the Restaurant Hotel Savelberg in The Netherlands and Atul Kochhar of London's Benares.

Belgian chef Yves Mattagne, whose Sea Grill in Brussels has two coveted Michelin stars, said he was donating his earnings to the village of Ban Tatit.

``This is to help people,'' Mattagne said, while chopping chives for a red tuna with ginger entree. ``For me, the most important thing is the charity.''

I think it is a fantastic idea. The rich would be more prone to giving charity having experienced it themselves.

Sharon...i think you let your imagination run a little wild...stories on AP let us know that the people were moved and the chefs even donated their entire salary...i am pretty sure there was no laughing involved.

I think you should not mix your facts and your wild imaginations.

Lets put it down frankly. Lebua saw a problem, they decided to help and they did it in the best way they could.

What did you do besides create a controversy and dare i say it laugh?

I appreciate the story you posted Perez..and yes I think it is cynical to criticize some organization when they are trying to do real good.

Actually, people get confused when some really noble initiative is undertaken among all the fraud ones around. But hear this, the emotional tourism, pioneered by Lebua is not only creating a sizeable fund, but also discovering ways and means of making the village self sustainable.

I must appreciate this novel initiative.

Krazzy, I think you misunderstood Sharon's post (unless I misunderstood your post)- she said tourists in New York City were laughing at the homeless - she said nothing about laughing in Thailand.

I do understand people, Sharon included, who say there is something wrong with seeing poverty up-close and then eating a meal that costs thousands of dollars. I just hope they think these meals are always immoral.

I feel that it doesn't matter when rich people eat the expensive meal and that the chefs who boycotted the dinner are hypocrites because they will cook expensive dinners where 1 meal might cost more than a month's or a year's wage every day in their 5 star restaurants. Are those expensive meals more moral when they are not preceeded by a visit to an impoverished area? I don't see how.

This is an oversimplification but it's late and I haven't thought of a better way to put it yet: Either it's right to eat fancy food any time and any place because you are a capitalist who earned enough money and it's not your problem if some people didn't OR it's wrong to eat fancy food while much of the world is hungry.

Krazy, You obviously did not read my post carefully, which was as James pointed out, about New York City. If you have ever been to the City, or traveled at all,you would realize that such things are not a figment of my imagination. I base my information on what I have personally observed, not the media. It is doubtful that you have any firsthand knowledge of the subject, as is reflected in your posting, which is indeed laughable!!

The lebua invited fifty of their most valued guests to accompany them on a trip to the north-east of Thailand, the poorest region of the kingdom. They went to a village to inspect the underprivileged circumstances the farmers and their children have to live in. As most of the guests are in influential positions in multi-national corporations, they were asked to think about how they or better their companies could offer a long-lasting solution. The guests were not asked to make donations, but to get involved, i.e. build a school, support a kindergarten, found a scholarship fund, etc. After their return to Bangkok, they were invited to a gala dinner prepared by Michelin-starred chefs from Europe and Canada, of whom some donated their compansation to the good cause.

The whole day was a full success and shows the positive influence, our industry can have for the societies we live and work in. The lebua has triggered a great new initiative more of us should follow. We all have a social responsibility for the underprivileged among us. I tip my hat and hope that many of us will follow this example to fight poverty and add what we hoteliers and our influential guests can to make a difference in our societies.

Well done lebua!

While I have read both your posts Krazzy and Sharon, I feel it is never possible to feel for a cause until you feel the cause itself. While in New York City the rich might have made a mockery of poverty (as in Sharon's post), I can assure you this effort in Thailand was a genuine one. Lebua has unambigously stated that it will show the positive differnce in three months time. Another thing about the expensive meal; you know, I really feel that it helped the participants to realise the stark difference between their fortune and the villagers they just visited. And we must not always assume that the rich are devoid of conscience. This dinner, though expensive, definitely achieved a purpose. It was an eye opener to many of the guests and probably they will pursue charity in their own ways. After all no other organization, in recent past, has accumulated a corpus of THB 4.5 miilion to help the poor !!