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Beautiful Are The Fireflies
Our guide sunk his comically large paddle into the bank and pushed us away. While I half-expected us to gracefully sink into the river like Jack Sparrow's Black Pearl, we stayed afloat. Once we gained distance from the raucous restaurant, a peaceful silence settled over us as the boat cut through the silken black water.…
Tiger Traps
In the North of India, lost somewhere in the heart of Rajasthan, near a tiny town with a single dirt road, I went looking for tigers. In a national park as big as a small country, the way you look for tigers is simple: you drive and drive across prairies and through forests, around lakes…
Life’s Little Joys
The finest and best restaurant on Koh Tao is a cosy little place called Mama’s. The eponymous Mama is a middle-aged blob of a woman, chubby and churlish, who makes the best chicken soup you may ever set spoon to in your entire life. Her husband is Yeh, a chuckle-faced and kind-eyed man with a…
Stitched Back Together in Thailand
A harsh light pierces my eyes from a low swinging globe above my face. I am lying on a bed. No. It’s a gurney. It creaks in rhythm with the tight pulling of my arm.  A young Thai woman sits on a wooden stool next to me, threading me back together like a seamstress. She…
WWOOFing in the North Thai Wilderness
I abandoned my job teaching at a school in Thailand to volunteer at an organic farm. I'd heard about a beautiful property outside this place called Chiang Rai; it was described to me as "a little volunteer community in the mountains with rice paddies, yoga and organic food". Sold. I pictured myself working in the…

Astray is run by a team of writers who mostly live, work and play in nipaluna / Hobart. With reverence, we acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the traditional and ongoing custodians of trouwunna / lutruwita / Tasmania: land that was stolen and never ceded. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.