February 22, 2005
Book aids tsunami relief
Here are some final numbers for my efforts to encourage tsunami relief by offering a free copy of 
An Amateur's Guide to the Planet to those who donated:
40 copies of An Amateur's Guide have been used to recognize $6,361 in donations and another $1,100 in matching donations.
Graduates of Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Md., members of the Comets and Canton Connection soccer teams, Drew Curtis' Fark.com and theTravel Publishers Association have given to AmeriCares, The American Red Cross, the Phuket Project, American Jewish World Service, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, Worldvision, Lutheran World Relief and a South India ashram.
Thanks to one and all!
Here is some additional information and updates to earlier blogs:
- For those looking to help Ko Yao Yai (Long Island), please visit this link and click on the link for News, or contact:
Julie Sebode Tel.: +66 (0)7-2841071
Hanne Sebode Tel.: +49 (0)2686-8219
Email: juliedamrong@hotmail.comThe group is attempting to replace boats for 36 families, who lost five houses, 19 boats, additional boat engines and three piers.
- Sounds like Phuket, Phi Phi Don and Koh Samui are incredibly more developed than we saw a decade ago on our sailing trip, leading to exponentially more devastation in an area the world now recognizes as facing some danger from Mother Nature:
- Women in South Asia were hit disproportionately, because they are weak swimmers, see The town left without women, by Richard Lloyd Parry in Indonesia: "A community of 6,000 woke up to find the tsunami had swept away its womenfolk." This is bound to increase the already existing impetus for men in this region to work as gigolos to contact female sex tourists, if they are lacking their own women.
- Actor Leo DiCaprio, star of The Beach, eventually did give an undisclosed sum to Unicef, see link.
- posted by jbelliveau at 12:16 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
