The nutrient economy of the cave is explained to the students as they stand in heel-deep bat guano. “Insectivorous bats hunting throughout the night release their droppings in these cave chambers,” the instructor begins. “This rich but rank-smelling nitrogen base serves as fodder for fungus growth. Huge cave crickets with absurdly long antennae graze on the fungus like deer in a meadow, but their predators – cave hunter and scorpion spiders – stalk them in the total dark like tigers in the night.”

A Japanese girl, struggling to overcome her arachnophobia, gasps, then holds her breath as the instructor’s torch illuminates one giant spider after another. Overhead, stripe-tailed cave-racers climb sheer limestone walls in search of slumbering bats to constrict and swallow. The instructor points out that another constrictor – the world’s longest snake – is also known to frequent cave recesses to rest while digesting particularly large meals such as a deer or wild boar.

With vivid images of slumbering pythons and other creepy creatures fresh in their fertile minds, the teenagers now find themselves embarking on a real-life Indiana Jones adventure. They must negotiate the river, which carved out this cave passage millions of years ago, working their way past plunging waterfalls, huge flow formations, and deep, cold pools of water. It takes nearly an hour before anyone can see light at the end of the twisting tunnel, and by that time all 22 students have eyes as wide as elephant tracks.

“Wow! I never thought my parents or my school would ever let me do something dangerous,” one exhilarated student exclaims as she plops herself down, sopping wet, on the forest floor near the cave exit. The rainforest now seems as welcome to her as the living room of her opulent family home. The pampered 16-year-old spots a leech inching its way towards her like a sinister slinky toy; she shrieks, then laughs at her own squeamishness. “Let’s go!” she shouts out happily to her classmates. “Which way?” she asks her guide excitedly, ready for more adventure.

The cave passage isn’t really dangerous at all, nor are the leeches, but for a generation of youth who have only known virtual adventure from TV, movies and video games, the experience is the thrill of a lifetime. Real-life adventures, combining the spark of danger with the challenge of overcoming personal fears, are important in young people’s development; lessons learned from such experiences are never to be forgotten.

There’s an ancient but timelessly true adage: “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.” Contemporary research in human retention abilities lends considerable credence to this age-old saying. Studies confirm that after one month people remember 14 percent of what they heard, 22 percent of what they saw, but 83 percent of what they heard, saw and converted into action. Given such revealing statistics, it is a wonder that formal education depends so much on the spoken and written word and so little on actual experience.

This is not the case with Rediscovery. More than two decades ago a programme founded on indigenous teachings and outdoor experiential learning began on the remote shores of Haida Gwaii, an archipelago on Canada’s Pacific coast. Designed to help youth of all ages discover the world within themselves, the cultural worlds between peoples, and the wonders of the natural world, Rediscovery soon became a model for similar programmes throughout Canada, the USA, Europe and Asia. Pai Tio Rediscovery has been working with Thai and international youth in the south of Thailand for nearly 10 years. Students from Canada, Hong Kong, Dubai, Japan, USA and India have joined together with Thai youth on a number of rich cross-cultural and environmental learning adventures.

The International School Bangkok (ISB) has also long recognized the need to expand education outside the halls of academia and has developed a “Week Without Walls” programme of its own. Each year ISB students spread out across the planet to ski in the Alps, tour art museums in Paris, climb in the Himalayas and Andes, or cruise the Andaman Sea. This year, 22 students from grades 9-12, accompanied by two teacher-chaperones, teamed up with Pai Tio Rediscovery for a unique “Reefs to Rainforests” environmental education tour of southern Thailand’s seven major ecosystems. The eight-day programme took the students to six protected areas in four provinces to gain first-hand knowledge of tropical evergreen forests, lowland rain forests, mangrove forests, karst and caves, fresh-water wetlands, intertidal zones and coral reefs. Some of these sites are known to tourists, others have yet to be discovered by Thailand’s growing eco-tourism industry. Still, it seems remarkable that, with such diversity at its doorstep, more school programmes aren’t taking advantage of the region’s world-class natural classrooms.

On Saturday, 17 February, the Bangkok students flew to Surat Thani, received a “Reefs to Rainforests” guide as a textbook, and within two hours found themselves face to face with wild gibbons, langurs, macaques and hornbills in the centre of the largest protected area on the Thai peninsula – Khao Sok National Park. As the chugging engines of the three longtail boats slowly cruised the towering karst shoreline of Cheow Lan Reservoir, all eyes were alert for animals.

“Why do the macaque monkeys let us get close in our boats, but the gibbons and langurs drop from the trees to hide?” one keenly observant student asked the instructor.

The answer was as pragmatic as it was sad: “Macaques don’t taste good. Langurs are popular in curry dishes and gibbon mothers are shot to get their babies for the pet trade, so both of these primates defy their age-old instincts and descend from the treetops to get out of the line of fire.”

“But I thought this was a park,” the student protested.

“It is,” her guide replied. “But poaching is rampant, and it may end up the responsibility of your generation to change that.”

Conservation lessons took many forms and all of them were experiential. To bring home the lesson of the interconnectedness of all living things, students were asked to sit in a circle one morning while photo name cards were handed out representing some of the many animals, plants and insects found at Khao Sok. Kite string was used to connect the students’ hands, symbolizing the dependency each species has on others. Soon a very large and interconnected “web of life” emerged. To illustrate the 25 percent biodiversity loss that scientists predict will occur in our lifetime, every student’s hand was given a number (one to four); then, on cue, each person with a hand numbered one was instructed to let go of the string. The visual impact of the great web of life collapsing had a profound affect on everyone.

So as not to end the exercise on a pessimistic note, students were reminded that this is what is predicted to happen, but hasn’t happened yet, and must not happen. As a personal empowerment exercise, they were then asked to go off alone somewhere to write down confidentially something they would do in their life to ensure that this tragic projection never actually occurs. This promise to themselves was sealed with their fingerprint stamped from an ink pad – “a mark as unique as every species on our planet,” they were told.

Lessons were rarely so formal or serious. Rediscovery games like Bear/Bug/Frog, Echo Location, and Don’t Bungle the Jungle more often had the youths reeling with laughter. Sometimes something as simple as seeing the brilliance of stars in the night sky while on night safari by boat, or waking up to clean air, the song of birds and taking a morning plunge in the fresh lake waters, held the Bangkok-based youth more enchanted than any activity a facilitator could devise. The utter simplicity of sleeping overnight on a bamboo raft house and negotiating the wobbly walkway that led to the outhouse on shore were other novelties that delighted the urban youth. Personal discoveries happened all the time, and often when least expected.

“One thing about Thom and his staff is that they don’t help you more than you need,” one grade-12 student wrote following her trip. “At first I got a little angry because somebody wasn’t always there to help me. But as I got through the hikes and caves and river crossings and everything, I came to realize that I could do most of these things by myself. I’ve learned that I can be strong when I need to. I learned that I am more capable of things than I thought.”
Some students became keen spotters of wildlife and wildlife signs. Together the group recorded 13 of Khao Sok’s 48 mammal species and 14 of its 184 confirmed bird species. At Thale Noi Waterfowl Park, they spotted 28 of the wetlands 187 water-bird species. “I liked the way we learned about relationships, not just the names of things,” said one student. “The hidden messages in the tracks were as fascinating for me as seeing the animal itself – the huge prints of the wild elephants, the deep diggings of the Asiatic black bear and the shallow rootings of the wild pigs in search of grubs and burrowing crabs. These were lessons for me I would never have learned in a classroom.”

The eight-day programme offered the youth a whirlwind of non-stop activities: boating through Thailand’s largest display of water lilies at dawn while thousands of waterbirds took wing; hiking up a forested mountainside to bathe in the cold pool of one of the South’s most spectacular waterfalls; swimming through an emerald cave to a hidden Garden of Eden in the middle of a karst-walled island; snorkelling over some of the Andaman Sea’s most brilliant coral reefs; enjoying mock combat battles in an artesian forest-fed pool set like a gem in Thailand’s last lowland forest; sea canoeing through intricate mangrove channels and karst-walled canyons; and probing the secret recesses for life in the rich intertidal zones.

The Reefs to Rainforests – Week Without Walls came to an end much too soon for many, but just in time for others. “Don’t you people ever think about my hair?” one jungled-out teen wrote on her evaluation. “Don’t you know that hot water is important for a girl's hair?” The night before everyone returned to the comforts of home – hot water, TV, stereos ... and the security of classroom walls – a final celebration was held at Krabi’s Dawn of Happiness Beach Resort. Dozens of colourful rice-paper candle lanterns glowed the length of the beach as a seafood buffet was set out under the stars. There was music and fire-show dancers, Thai boxers and the launch of a traditional hot-air balloon to mark the occasion. Each student was presented with a programme T-shirt, an embroidered patch for their pack, and a diploma as they were called upon one by one to be acknowledged for their accomplishments. Many had words of deep appreciation to share that night, others presented them in written form as they departed the following morning.
Clearly, it wasn’t only students who benefited. One of the teacher-chaperones had this to say: “Reefs to Rainforests is a programme that everyone should experience at least once in their life. Re-kindling a feeling of being close to nature from the days of my youth was a rare pleasure for me –a happiness returned that I thought I had lost forever.”