Voluntourism: a rant

It appears I'm back to winging it with no plan. Not entirely a bad thing, but really not what I was hoping for. I was hoping that if I did enough research I'd find a few leads on places that might need some help of whatever type I can give. Unfortunately, volunteer opportunities overseas (at least the ones you can find online) come in the form of "volun-tours." I have no problem with this, but it's just not what I want. I don't want the extra day of hiking to an "undiscovered" ethnic minority village to participate in staged encounters. I don't want the group dinner at a local restaurant that serves local food and a serviceable pizza. And I definitely don't want to pay a third party all kinds of money to set it up for me. All I want to do is live in town on my own for a while and be helpful to somebody in some fashion.

It's not that I have a problem with that type of thing. If I wasn't already in the country and didn't already kind of know my way around enough to get by, it would be great. If the thousands of dollars they ask for wouldn't go a lot further if "Voluntours Inc." or whoever didn't first take a cut out of it for operating costs and profit, I would have no problem with it. But as it is, I have no interest in paying any for-profit entity over a thousand dollars for the opportunity to play with kids in an orphanage.

So the new plan is I'm going to buy a bus ticket back to Luong Prabang today, probably head back there sometime tomorrow (a loooooooong ride. Not looking forward to it so much, but LP is a great town), and start out by going to play with elephants for a couple of days. When I get back, I'll drop in on a school after hours and ask an administrator if that school (or any others that he/she knows of) could use a hand in their English department tutoring kids, correcting student exercises, practicing conversation, or whatever else. Hopefully that'll give me a lead or two to go on, and I'll get at least a couple days of being helpful out of it.

Fingers crossed it all works out. If all else fails and I get sick of it all, I can always push my flight ahead a few days or just kick around and explore Bangkok for a week...if I forgive them for the airport fiasco and they're on their best behavior between now and then :)