Yesterday was my second Christmas Day spent abroad while working with Hands On and it topped the one in Haiti. Of course, last year in Haiti I spent most of Christmas day in transit trying to escape the country for the beaches of the Dominican Republic, but even that torturous journey on the back of a pickup truck with 20 people had a charming side.

This year’s holiday festivities were certainly a lot more relaxing but also a lot more covert. The community here is pretty sensitive about religion and some people are worried our goal in the community is to convert people to Christianity. In an effort not to stir up trouble, we’ve been banned from uttering the word ‘Christmas’ and have instead chosen to wish friends a Merry Holidaymas, Happy Day or even, my favourite, Happy C-word Day which just makes me laugh.

There’s a great gang of people here at the moment and on Xmas Eve we had a BBQ, sneakily drank beer, and turned the backyard tent into a dance party on complete with strobe lighting provided by our blinking headlamps. Xmas morning was mostly spent nursing a hangover with me surfacing from time to time to fetch the contents of my stocking or collect my secret Santa gift before retreating back to bed but I had no complaints. In the afternoon we all pitched in to create a not-so-traditional meal of pot roast, veggies, spaghetti with mushroom sauce and BBQ chicken topped off nicely with pastries and apple crumble. Xmas evening was spent nursing a food coma while listening to people sing along to the guitar and joining in with some out of tune contributions from time to time.

Volunteering is a great way to spend the holidays and I’m always impressed with how many people rock up for a week over Xmas and New Year’s to help out. In Haiti a big gang of people descended on us in late December and in Indonesia it has been the same but with people generally staying for three or four weeks. We’ve even had a family of four choose to spend their holidays working with us, coming all the way from Alaska. It’s a great atmosphere and I’m still loving it. We’ve had a recent influx of Indonesian volunteers too which is really inspiring as well.

Hands On started on this day five years ago after the Tsunami and, while this is a sad anniversary, it also makes me happy to think about how many people took action to do something positive in the face of devastation. I’m surrounded by some pretty amazing people here and I feel lucky to have gotten the chance to spend another Xmas with Hands On getting dirty and sweaty.

Happy belated C-Word Day everyone!

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I’m sitting here in the fancy, new Air Asia airport in Kuala Lumpur waiting for my flight to Padang soaking up the last bit of relatively luxurious living before heading back into the steamy jungle. KL is a great city to decompress in as it has all of those comforts you crave when you’ve been living in rural Aisa for awhile: hamburgers, Western toilets (with toilet paper!), frappuccinos, free wifi, air conditioning, steak, ice cubes, ice cream, and a private room all to myself to sleep for as long as I want to.

I’m usually able to cope well for long periods of time without these things but, this time, I could hardly wait to get to Malaysia and descend upon the Starbucks. I had been sick for my last week in Indonesia and I also went off the food and was sustaining myself on peanut butter and jam sandwiches. The thought of eating another mouthful of rice made me gag and I successfully avoided it all week here in KL, instead feeding my face with Western crap that probably didn’t do too much to help make me get healthy, but it certainly made me feel better!

After a week of indulging on goodies, hanging out in shopping malls for the air conditioning and wifi, and hibernating, my batteries are charged and I’m ready to clobber some buildings with a sledge hammer back in Indonesia. I really needed this break, possibly more than on any other project I’ve done with Hands On, but I can only take so much luxury before I start to long for dorm living, 7:30am starts, long, hot work days and humid nights. I would still be happy if I never saw rice again but I’ve come prepared with a stockpile of tuna fish, pasta, tomato sauce and other goodies that will give me a break once or twice a week from the routine having the same thing to eat almost every day.

Even when I’m backpacking around I can’t usually go for much longer than a month of constantly moving or being in a really rural location. Little breaks from my travels, either on the beach, in a major city, or just unpacking somewhere for a week and doing nothing, go a long way towards keeping me sane on the road.

But I’m ready to get back and am looking forward to shoveling me some rubble and getting sweaty. I’m hoping this week of luxury hasn’t made me soft!

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I posted last week about wanting to raise $10,000 for a good cause and was bombarded with lots of encouraging comments with idea for the type of ebook I could offer. I’ve decided to follow the advice of several people and write an ebook on international volunteering. It makes sense since all of the revenues from the book will be donated to Hands On, an organisation that does disaster relief work all over the world with the help of volunteers. Plus it’s an area I have some experience in, am passionate about and the idea that I could help motivate people to volunteer is a pretty exciting one.

I’ve spent the past couple of days writing ideas down and I think I have a pretty good base for the book and I’m kind of excited at how well it’s going so far. Here are a few of the points I’m planning on including:

• Finding volunteering opportunities
• Finding an organisation that is right for you
• What to look for in a volunteering organisation
• Vacation volunteering/voluntourism
• Should you pay to volunteer?
• Living conditions and what to expect
• Paperwork and visas for volunteering
• Benefits of volunteering
• List of trustworthy free and cheap volunteering organisations
• Outline of the types of volunteering (disaster, construction, social, children, teaching, professional, farming etc.)
• Volunteering membership websites
• Volunteering scams to look out for
• List of resources on volunteering
• Interviews about people’s volunteering experiences

As I flesh out these ideas, I was wondering if any of you have anything else you would hope to read about. I’m completely open to ideas! I would also love to hear suggestions for trustworthy organisations… these sorts of things are best found by word of mouth and, while I have a good start to a list, I would like to come up with at least 50 suggestions. Plus I would love to chat with people about positive or even not so positive volunteering experiences as well as any initial fears about volunteering and what the reality was once you got there. If you’re willing to let me pepper you with a few questions, leave a comment or drop me an email.

I’ve spoken to the people at HODR, the organisation I will be donating the money to, and they’re on board and have committed to taking charge of the book’s distribution since I will be stranded in middle of nowhere in Sumatra for the next two months. Google donate some money each month to them to use in an Adwords campaign and they suggested setting one up aimed at creating interest in the ebook which would be great. I’m not sure how that would work but it would be interesting to try it out. Either way, having the use of their resources is a big bonus and if they are willing to send a plug out on their giant mailing list, that would be huge.

I guess the last thing for now is to ask about pricing. Do you think asking people to donate what they feel its worth is the way to go? Or should I set a $5, $10, or more minimum donation? I like the idea of asking people to donate a bit, and send the message on but I think that’s something I would aim more at friends and family. I think getting some bloggers on board and asking for a mention on their blogs will be key so if anyone is willing to allow me to do a guest post or even just give the book a mention, I would love to hear from you. Or maybe I will just start spamming you all once the book is out!

Thanks again for the support I’ve gotten so far on this! I’m pretty pumped now about the idea and I’m having fun writing it and looking forward to hearing some more of your suggestions.

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This is my third time volunteering with Hands On on their disaster relief projects and one thing has become clear to me in this time: I’m not interested in being a leader. I’ve successfully sidestepped any responsibility or leadership roles since Bangladesh back in January 2008. As you become a regular volunteer though, you inevitably get on the radar of the people who run the show and sticking to the grunt work I love so much and avoiding leading projects becomes harder and harder.

But when I was asked last week to co-lead a team on a satellite project, I couldn’t scam my way out of it. I accepted and spent last week living in a temporary village made up of people displaced by landslides. Their entire village has been wiped out and a whole bunch of displaced people are waiting for construction to finish on their new homes in wooden longhouses. They’re expected to be there for up to two years and Hands On were brought in by an Indonesian NGO called People in Need to help set up a guttering system to catch the rain so that people here will have water. A Czech NGO are also going to be setting up latrines and we will be participating in that program too once it gets going.

The community was great. We had plenty of helpers, many who seemed to be over 100, and most who could saw like… well, something that saws really well. Our team had six volunteers from HODR and we were helped by three guys from People in Need who let us do our own thing and figure things out as we went. We’re expecting to play a big role in the rain water program so being able to work things out on our own and figure out the best way to do things will help down the road when we’re doing it all ourselves.

Our team was great, the work was slow but fun and the only thing I can think of complaining about is the lack of toilets and having to slog it down a slippery hill in the pouring rain anytime the moment took me. Did I mention I have been having a dodgy tummy lately? I will let you work out for yourselves how much of an ordeal the toilet situation was for me but, thinking about it now, the whole thing was pretty funny.

The other thing to complain about is the massive amounts of durian located in this part of the world. The things were dropping from the trees. Motorbike were loaded up with them and parked on the paths. The market stalls in town seemed to sell nothing but this terrible excuse for food. The locals offered us a durian about 10 times per day and some of them found their way into our room on occasion. They are foul, horrible things. They don’t smell as bad as I expected them to but the insides look like fetuses, the outside is spiky and painful and the taste and texture is gag-inducing after only a small bite. But eating durian was something I had on my list and I’m happy to check it off and never, ever let that evil fruit darken my doorstep again.

Escaping the durian was easier said that done, though. After spending two days working on the rain catchment systems we waited on the third day for the latrine project people to show up. They were supposed to show up the previous day but didn’t and now, they had stood us up again. They eventually arrived at 1pm on Thursday but they had no materials and weren’t ready for us to get some work done. We had been calling home for a pickup for the two hour journey back to our base since 10am but the phone networks were inconveniently down for four hours that day. So we sat around on day three avoiding offers of durian, peeing in the woods, chatting, and admiring our new rain gutters. After about 10 minutes of that we were bored and were desperate to leave but we were stranded.

By about 6pm we were on our way home having had a great first two days, a frustrating third day and in need of showers and a good meal. Overall it was a great experience and I’m looking forward to heading back from time to time over the coming months. I’m still not too into the whole leadership thing but somebody needs to take these roles on and it’s about time I step up for once.

Down with durian!

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I earned $1560 this month which, for doing a grand total of zero hours of work on my sites, I’m really happy with. My target earnings per month is $1500 so being able to earn that while leaving my sites unattended has proven to me that this really is passive income. The best part about earning $1500 is that I have spent about $100 in
the month I’ve been here so most of that money is headed straight for
my ailing bank account.

Earnings Breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $334 - Another drop in Adsense but I have a bunch of sites completed that could bump this up if I’m ever able to get them going. I really need to focus on building links and getting my sites into the search engines because, at the moment, they’re nowhere to be seen.
• Affiliate Sales - $380 - My main affiliate program is on the way out and I haven’t got anything going at the moment to replace it. I have some affiliate sites up and ready to go but I need to do a lot of SEO before they’ll start paying off.
• Advertising - $846 - This was made up of my usual $400-ish of monthly subscription payments along with a new, six month deal with an advertiser on my moving to London site. The new advertiser is a perfect fit and I’ve set up a few affiliate programs with them too that I think my site’s readers will find really useful.

I have all the sites in place I think I will need to kick my earnings up to the next level but, as I’ve mentioned, I need to spend a lot of time doing SEO to get visitors and get them earning. It’s impossible to get much work done in Indonesia due to a terrible internet connection and unreliable power so there’s not much I can do about it for now. I’m heading to Kuala Lumpur today to eat hamburgers, have hot showers, drink mocha frappuccinos and do some work for a week and SEO will be my focus. I have about seven new sites that need attention but I’m going to focus on two and see if I can get things going a bit in the week I have.

I’m loving it here in Indonesia but I’m in need of a break. I’ve been sick for the past week and I’m looking forward to having my own room, a decent net connection, a western toilet and eating lots of yummy food.The work here isn’t too physically demanding but the hot and/or rainy weather makes it challenging. Plus, while I like the food, I’m in need of some variety, namely green vegetables that haven’t been boiled to death.

Next time I write I will be in KL stuffing my face!

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