Designed around a village home-stay in Northeast Thailand (Isaan), this adventure takes your group deep into the host culture. Itineraries are designed to encourage cross-cultural understanding and appreciation atypical of the average sight-seeing tour. Isaan, with its generous, humble farmers, and its rich and ancient history, is basically ignored by most guidebooks - and that is why we go there.

How it works:

Sweet Mango staff work with your group (school, church, family) on a program of education, fundraising and preparation that culminates with an extended visit to a rural, rice-farming village in Isaan. Montpelier High School students in Vermont, for example, have been going to Isaan annually since 2004. Norwich University, also in Vermont, spends the fall semester preparing for a January term service-learning project each year. These programs typicaly begin six to seven months prior to the actual journey, and involve planning meetings, fund-raising, team-building, independent study and language lessons.

Not only do the students benefit from this process, but our focus on cultural appreciation and understanding has inspired rural Thai communities onto paths of cultural pride, environmental consciousness and economic development.

If you are interested in a custom-designed, meaningful travel experience for young people that you care about, please contact us. We would love to open up their world with you.