Natureholic Tour Thailand - part one: our trip

Off to Thailand

In May I went on an excursion to natural invertebrate habitats in Thailand. I was accompanied by my good friend and business partner Bernhard Ehmer, who was and is significantly involved in the development of NatureHolic products. Bernhard and I have known each other for a long time, we live only about 60 km apart and see each other almost every week. We work closely together on the development of new products, which we test and perfect in the Garnelio facility. This is where new ideas are developed, and this is how the idea came about that we should not only work with the animals in the facility, but also go out together into the habitats and visit the invertebrates that accompany such a large part of our professional and private lives in the wild.

We were sure that the experience we could gain on site would help us in our daily work, in food development and, of course, in the care of the shrimps, crabs, snails, mussels and crayfish.

Aquarists on the move

When two aquarists, two NatureHolicers go on such a vacation together, the focus is naturally entirely on the invertebrates. We could not cross any lawn without looking for crabs. Every body of water, no matter how small, we had our eyes firmly on, always ready to wade into the water and go in search of invertebrates. The flora was also exciting - there were sea almond tree leaves on the ground, and the corresponding tree was also there. Great to see something like that live and in color! It was really funny to be abroad with an equally invertebrate-crazy aquarist. Normally your family moves away and you are more or less alone if you want to look for new animals. Here it was completely different, there was no one to stop us. We went swimming in the sea once for 10 minutes, otherwise we were just out and about in nature, rocking each other up. Our hearts went out to all the discoveries we were able to make!

Why Thailand?

Why did we choose Thailand of all places? Lately we have been active in many Thai Facebook groups. There is a constantly growing, very active invertebrate scene there, and also the fantastic nature in this great country was finally the deciding factor for us to go to Thailand.
We also have a lot of animals from Thailand in our Garnelio store, and I thought it was just cool to see how they live in the wild.

Let's go!

So I packed my photo equipment, my photo tank and NatureHolic food for the local people. Bernhard joined me in Mannheim, and together we drove to Frankfurt. After a 16 hour flight with a stopover we arrived at the airport in Phuket / Thailand - exhausted from the long journey. Upon arrival, 30 °C and enormous humidity hit us under the airplane door, it was as if we were entering the butterfly house in a zoo. The climate was really tropical, although we were there in the rainy season. Despite overcast skies, it was incredibly hot and humid.

Finally arrived

Our final destination was the area around Khao Lak, we got there by bus transfer. Another two hours later we arrived at our destination, exhausted but happy. We quickly regained our strength after a proper break and were able to really get going the next day.

Why Khao Lak?

Why did we go to Khao Lak specifically? We really wanted to be in nature, not in urban areas, and on Google Maps it looked very promising there. Many rivers, many waterfalls - the area around Khao Lak looked very inviting to us.
Unfortunately, when I opened my suitcase I found my so carefully packed photo pool broken, so the photos shown here are biotope shots at the stream, there are unfortunately no photos of the animals in the water. What a bad luck!

Country and people

The first impression of the people was extremely positive. It is quite a poor country, many people earn very little and live away from the tourist areas partly in slum-like settlements. Nevertheless, the Thais are incredibly warm and friendly people!

The nature is overwhelming. The soundscape is incredible even in the streets - loud frog croaking and humming and buzzing of insects can be heard, there really lives a great diversity, which is very impressive. Unfortunately, in many places nature is also incredibly polluted. At the waterfalls and other tourist highlights and in the tourist districts, care is taken that the garbage does not get out of hand, but in the districts where mainly locals live, the pollution is already very blatant.