Adam Skolnick

It was a near-perfect afternoon on Thailand’s Northern Andaman coast, and Khao Lak’s horseshoe bay had revealed itself. Resort rooftops peeked out from the coconut palms, tourists lounged on golden sand, and the turquoise sea gently licked the shore in overlapping ovals. A minute later we rolled into town, which is essentially one main drag. Tourists [...]

I didn’t expect strollers. Yet there I was eyeing an army of young mom’s wheeling prams along Hat Pattaya, a crescent of white sand that rolls into Ko Lipe’s main long tail harbor. This is Lipe’s gateway, and I’d landed here only moments before thinking of the whispers shared with me by a gorgeous French-Thai [...]

A professional environmental and human rights direct action activist. He has plied his trade for the Ruckus Society, Greenpeace, and the Burma Humanitarian Mission in the US, Canada, Brazil and Burma, where he also trains young activists to resist non-violently.

Ko Phi Phi, a drop dead gorgeous, jungled limestone and white sand butterfly is one of Thailand’s signature islands. Just fifteen years ago it was a backpacker’s secret, laced with sandy trails and dotted with a few thatched bungalows. Then it blew up, grew concrete streets, plugged into absurdly loud sound systems, and became the cheesy fire dance Mecca of the south seas.

The Moken people first caught my attention after the 2004 tsunami. Their village on South Surin island in the Andaman Sea was wiped out, and yet they had no casualties. They escaped to the mountains because their legends about the seasonal patterns of the sea primed them to notice nature’s signs. Since I live in Los Angeles, where nature’s voice is drowned out by the roar of cars, this amazed me — although it wasn’t that long ago when I would hike to a peak in the Santa Monica Mountains and sit for hours, wanting so badly to tap into the great mystery that there were times I swore I could feel nature’s rhythms and read its signs. But as the years have worn on I’ve lost that connection, and my culture lacks the stories and legends to lead me there