Good Luck for You, Good Dreams for Me!

No good story ever started with: “I checked into my five-star hotel and ordered a pina colada.” Mine starts with: “So, I’m dancing around the witch doctor’s coffin in a small village on the Thai/Myanmar border.”

Grab your passport and come with me on a crazy adventure to Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal and many more countries.

You will experience the joy, heartbreak, triumph, exhaustion, calamity, love and exhilaration of volunteering in underdeveloped countries. The feeling of accomplishment is priceless.

You will climb volcanoes, teach incredible kids, bathe elephants, dance in conga lines, fly kites, crash on motorbikes, drink too much, visit medicine men, feed hungry kids, survive earthquakes, visit stunning temples, help families in poverty and see the most beautiful sunsets on the planet!

I have been robbed, crashed from paragliding, been hacked innumerable times, lost my backpack, had all my clothes stolen, had endless illnesses and much more. If that is the price of helping out the underprivileged kids, then I’m all in! If I can inspire people to “go, volunteer, make a difference”, then we all win!

Betsy Brittenham is an adventurer, a volunteer and a traveller to over 43 countries. Her passion is helping underprivileged kids learn English to create a path out of poverty. After three decades as an interior designer, renovator and builder, and a decade in fashion, she is dedicating the rest of her life to helping kids in need!

In the sweltering heat of Cambodia, in the crowded, chaotic, dusty streets of Siem Reap, there is an unwritten rule of bicycle travel. To turn left, you simply turn directly into the pandemonium of oncoming traffic, cycle as fast as you can and pray that you don’t die! The goal is to cross the oncoming traffic unscathed. The quicker you get over to the correct lane, the quicker your heart rate returns to normal. That is until the next turn. Oh, and look out for the oncoming traffic!

That is what I did with my life. Nothing was going right, so I turned left! One year, four countries, 1200 underprivileged kids…and other crazy travel stories!