Watch me eat these beetles, crickets, roaches, frogs, larvae, and a bunch of unidentifiable critters from a street stall in Phnom Penh, Cambodia - all for a good cause to raise money for several amazing charities! 

If you got a kick out of this video PLEASE consider donating $100, $25, or even $10 to the charities I introduce below, Connecting Hands, Willow Tree Roots, and the Children's Improvement Organization. These are all charities I personally help out and see first hand the work they do to better a lot of lives.

Thanks - and get ready to be grossed out!

-Norm  :-)

To donate, just click on the PayPal link below and tell me which charity you'd like to help.
​It's quick, easy, safe, and I'll make sure the money gets to the appropriate charity and you get a receipt.
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1. While the western world celebrates New Years on December 31 at midnight and considers January 1 the first day of the year, the rite of passage of the changing of the year is done differently in Thailand, and most of Asia for that matter.

2. Thailand’s New Year is called “Songkran” and celebrated in mid April, the hottest time of the year in the southeast Asian country.

3. But it’s not just a one-night affair, as the Thai New Year observation goes on for three full days. While it used to be a floating hotel with dates that changed slightly depending on the year, Songkran is now set for the 13th to the 15th of April.

4. Songkran is quite possibly the most unique New Year in the world, celebrated with a national water festival that’s grown to legendary proportions. Not only do all Thais take part, but also tens of thousands of farang (foreigners) visit the country every year to join in the wet and wild festivities.

5. For those three days, the streets basically become a massive water fight, with every man, woman, and child (but especially teens, young adults, and now, tourists) throwing water on each other unmercilessly.

6. It’s also the longest holiday in Thailand, running three full days, day and night. However, in some parts of the country that are vacation spots or cater to tourists, etc. the water fights sometimes go on for a full week!

7. For weeks ahead of the New Year, you’ll see giant water pistols and crazy, colorful Hawaiian-style shirts sold on the side of the road in anticipation of the antics. Thais will also resort to garbage pails full of water, hoses, and buckets – whatever it takes to soak their fellow man or woman.

8. In cities, you’ll even see big tanker trucks driving around delivering water (or soaking people themselves) and delivery trucks also deliver blocks of ice, deposited in the trash pails so the soaking will be frigid as well.

9. Everyone is fair game to get doused with a bucket of water when they are walking around during Songkran. Tourists who wish “not to participate” better stay in their hotel rooms for those three days or not come to Thailand!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog with the FUNNIEST sh*t you'll see in Southeast Asia and shared it with you. The response was so great that I decided to follow up with a new two-part blog with the CRAZIEST sh*t you'll see in Southeast Asia!

From Cambodia to Laos, Vietnam to Myanmar, and Thailand to the Philippines, there's definitely NO place on earth that will make you sure in amazement and scratch your head like in Southeast Asia, where the wild, hilarious, and downright bizarre are a daily occurrence. 

So enjoy, and look for part 2 of this blog coming soon! 

If you want to read more about life in Southeast Asia, read my new book, The Queens of Dragon Town.

-Norm   :-)

As I travel around the world, I see so much poverty that it can become routine, a kaleidoscope of suffering always spinning in the background. But when I stop for a second and talk to these children, the beggars and hustlers and vendors on the streets who approach you for change or try and sell you a bracelet or bubblegum, I see their big, eager smiles, the glint of hope that hasn’t been burned out of their eyes quite yet. And when I chat with them you realize they’re just as funny, imaginative, and bursting with energy as our children here in the United States.

So I’ve compiled a few photos of poor street children from my recent stint living in Cambodia and the Philippines, two of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. This is just a very small sample of the children I’ve encountered and happened to shoot photos of. Every time I do so I ask permission, and/or give some money or food to them. Most of the time they’re thrilled, and want to look at their own photo in my phone or camera. I focus on helping children because they haven’t done anything to warrant their circumstances - they're not guilty of making bad choices. Instead, they’re born into the curse of poverty, and can’t fight for themselves. 

There are far too many children in the world who eat like this - rooting through the trash to try and discover a few edible scraps that aren't too rotten, fighting off the rats and insects and sometimes, other people, for their supper. 

In fact, more than 1 billion children are living in poverty, according to UNICEF. 1 in 5 children around the world don’t even have clean drinking water, and around 1 in 4, enough food to eat. An alarming number of children don’t get the proper immunizations and die of easily preventable diseases like malaria, measles, and diarrhea – the three biggest killers of children that end about 500,000 young lives each year.

The statistics go on and on, but if we only quantify child poverty by numbers and statistics, our perceptions tend to slip from compassion to calculation, and we start defining them as problems, not people. So let’s focus on a different statistic: one. The number one is the only way to define each of these children. Each as their own person, their own mind and spirit, just like you or me.

The little things that you and I take for granted are unimaginable luxuries to these kids. These little street girls in in Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia, were amazed to see their own reflection in a car mirror, and giggled embarrassingly at their own vanity when I snapped a photo of them.

In poor countries, there are no government programs to help; no social security, food stamps, welfare, free medical care, or anything else for the poor. So these kids don't get the simple vaccines and immunizations that our kids enjoy. They are rife with worms and malaria and infections.
 
They hope for the charity of NGOs, orphanages, schools, or community centers that receive foreign aid or are set up by great, caring individuals. But corruption is also rampant among international NGOs, and even the good ones can only help a few.

Last week in the Philippines, I was talking to a local friend over dinner. We got to talking about our families, and she told me this touching story about her childhood: 

“I grew up very fortunate, living in the countryside in the province. Our village was right on the side of a mountain and my dad was a miner so we did well. He made enough money that my mom could open up a little store and we had plenty to eat.

But others in the village were very poor. They’d come to my mom’s store and ask for a bag of rice or some medicine for their children, but they wouldn’t have enough money to pay.

“Please, I will pay you tomorrow,” they’d say, and she’d give it to them, even though she knew they couldn’t pay tomorrow, either. But she carried medicine at the store even though she made no money on it, and ay sundown when she heard the babies and children in the village crying from hunger, she’d always give out some rice. I had everything as a little girl, plenty of food and clothes and gold necklaces, and never had to be sent to the mountain to work like the other kids.

But when I was eight years old, things went bad when my father met another woman in our village. She was older than him and very rich, with many houses and gold since she owned the mine. They started having an affair, and soon my father left my mother. My mother was crushed, but I was too young to understand that my father wasn’t coming home anymore. I grew very sick with a broken heart.

My mother had no more money from his mining job. The store didn’t bring in much because she gave food to those who were hungry and medicine to those who were sick, even thought they could not pay. I grew even sicker and I stopped eating. I only wanted to see my daddy. For months, I didn’t eat anything but liquids and I grew so thin that even the doctors thought I would soon die. My mother tried to take me to more doctors and buy me medicine, but she had no money. And there was no medicine for my broken heart. My mother sold everything in the store and then the store itself and started selling our furniture just to keep our house and enough food. But I did not eat. I only watched the window every day, lying on my bamboo matt on the floor because I was too weak and sick to even sit up, waiting for my father to come home. There was nothing more my mother could do because I refused to ear, and she was heartbroken, herself.

The rich older woman was in love with my father, and wanted him to come to the big city. She had a beautiful house there where they could live with servants and always be comfortable and he would never have to work again. He agreed, and they took their things and went to the bus station to travel to the city.

But once they got there, he couldn’t stop thinking of his children and his family. Their bus was leaving soon so he told the rich woman that he had to go to the bathroom. He left her side and all of his suitcases but instead of going to the bathroom, he went to the ticket counter and bought a ticket for the next bus back toward our village. He never went back to her, but got on the bus and left.

I was so sick that there was nothing anyone could do and my mother was waiting for me to die, but I wouldn’t eat. I had such a bad fever sometimes that I would say crazy things and see things that weren’t there. Sometimes I’d call out to my father. My mother had no choice but to ignore me after a while.

But one afternoon, I thought saw someone walking on the long dirt road that ran into our village from the main road, where the buses ran. I was dizzy with fever but I thought I saw a man walking towards us. I knew I was sick so I thought I must be seeing crazy things again, because it looked like my father. But I watched him walking, and even thought he was still far off, I could tell it was my father.

I cried out to my mother that my father was walking home, but she dismissed me as having feverish dreams once again and went back to doing the wash. I called out again when he was closer, but my mother just swept the floor. Finally, when he was so close that I could see his face and I knew it was actually my father and not a dream, I cried out to my mother again.

My mother turned around and dropped her broom with what she saw. It was him.

He walked up to the home and came inside. He saw that there was no furniture and his daughter was very skinny on the floor. He hugged me first.

“Is everything Ok?” he asked my mother.

“No, everything is not ok,” my mother said. “We have no food or medicine and our daughter is very sick. She hasn’t been able to eat rice or solid food in months. She just drinks. She is going to die and the doctors don’t know what it is.”

He hugged me again, and then hugged my mother. He apologized and she hugged him back and they both cried, because she knew he was home for good and her heart opened up to him again.

“Mommy,” I said. “Can I have some rice? I am hungry.””

My friend told me that she ate well from that day on, and grew healthy again. Her father moved back in and her mother forgave him. He tried to go back to work but he couldn’t work in the mine again, and they didn’t have money to open the store, so they were poor. But the people in the village remembered that the family had been good to them and shared what they had. Things were not easy, but somehow, there was always enough.

Her father and mother never left each other’s side again, and lived the rest of their many years together until he passed away around Christmas, the year before.