The Volunteer Work Thailand website has been launched and is now ready to view online. Initially, this didn’t seem an appropriate time to announce the arrival of a new website but considering Thailand’s need to woo back tourists after recent rioting our timing could be perfect.

Thailand’s tourism industry is suffering from the recent 2 month-long anti-government protests, which ended on 19th May with 88 people dead and some of the capital’s most popular shopping areas in flames. Hotels across the country are reporting less than 50% occupancy after many tourists changed their holiday plans to avoid the trouble.

International tourist arrivals and revenues could fall between 10% and 20% this year. Such a decline would present serious problems for the country’s economy, which relies on tourism for roughly 6% of gross domestic product and for more than 15% of its jobs.

Light, peach-skinned and demure, Arttasit is the kind of woman who would turn heads on any college campus, except that he is not a woman; not yet.

The 21-year-old catering student attends class in Thailand's Suan Dusit University wearing makeup and a body-hugging female uniform. After four years of hormone treatment, he is preparing for a full sex change. "My goal in life is to become accepted as a woman," he explains.

There are about 100 transgender undergraduates at this college in central Bangkok, which offers the so-called "lady-boys" a unique educational refuge from homophobia and discrimination. Students are allowed to flaunt the campus dress code, which demands men wear trousers. Every year, dozens of the students enter a university beauty contest that has become famous for supplying entrants to Thailand's Miss Tiffany Universe, an annual pageant for transsexuals broadcast live across the country. Lady-boys work as teachers in some university departments and are even sent out on school recruitment drives.

Two anteaters at Bangkok's main zoo have been given a three-month holiday to recover after violent clashes between police and protesters erupted near their enclosure, the zoo director said on Sunday.

The four-year-old male and female anteaters were moved to a zoo in Chonburi province east of Bangkok soon after Tuesday's protests, when tear gas and loud bangs rang through the streets around parliament next to their enclosures.

"A pair of anteaters had come from the United States about a year ago. This animal is sensitive about noise, and they have not yet got used to loud noises," Dusit Zoo director Kanchai Sanwong said.

The other animals in the park, however, had been there a long time and are used to Thailand's shaky political situation, with noisy protests often held in the Dusit government district, he said.

Dear Readers,

Every week I read about the problem of English Language skills in Thailand. The difficulty of finding qualified English Language teachers, the lack of up to date teaching materials, the scarcity of properly thought out curriculums.

Whilst on a short break we visited Koh Sukorn a small (8klms by 5 klms) island in the Andaman sea off the Trang coast. The island's population is about 95% Muslim 5% Buddhist. The people on the Island are desperately trying to develop tourism but what is really holding them back is the lack of English language skills. We spent about 3 months on the island in 2007 and got to know a lot of people. Eventually we took the plunge and decided we would like to live on the island and teach English.

Did you know that having an affair can help to save a struggling marriage, but it has to be the "right kind" of liaison?

So says a marriage therapist in Thailand, whose, somewhat questionable help goes right against the grain. A 30-year veteran of the sofa, she also reckons, hardly brilliantly, that the last thing philanderers should do is come clean and admit that the error of their ways.

Nonetheless, a bit of indiscretion can be a positive thing, jolting people "from their inertia," she says.

But the marriage therapist, insists that most cheating spouses should never own up, because admitting their infidelity is more damaging than keeping quiet. "The truth usually creates far more damage in the long run," the therapist says.

A land of diversity and refinement, Thailand is recognized for its strong export potential. Exports from Thailand cover a wide-range of products including food, jewelry, accessories, electrical appliances and electronic goods, textiles, leatherwear, processed agro-products and other industrial goods.

International importers and consumers have expressed confidence in these products for their excellent quality and standards.

In response to increasing demands for Thai export, the Department of Export Promotion established around 8 years ago a center, called the Thailand Export Mart, to allow foreign importers to meet directly for discussions with Thai producers and exporters.

Designed to facilitate and support international trade, the Thailand Export Mart serves as merchandise display and export center to enable Thai exporters and foreign importers to finalize deals on the spot.

The Saen Saep Canal was dug at the initiative of King Rama III in the early Bangkok period, to join the Chai Phraya River with the Bang Pakong River. When this canal was linked to other canals, such as Maha Nak and Krung Kasem, it needed a gate to maintain the water at an appropriate level.

The water gate for Saen Saep Canal was located in the area that is presently Pratunam which literally means 'water gate'. Pratunam is found in the heart of Bangkok, at the intersection of Phetchaburi and Ratchaprarop roads, and today, the area has become a center for all kinds of products, especially ready-to-wear clothing, and textiles, which are sold at local market prices.

It had not always been a shopping area. Around 1957, Pratunam was still considered suburban as rice fields could still be found nearby. Subsequently, a fresh foods market was built on Ratchaprarop Road opposite the Indra Hotel, and before long, the Chaloem Lok and Chaloem Lap markets came up, drawing more shoppers and collectively making the area even more active and popular.

As an icon of Thailand, elephants are as prevalent as orchids or gold-adorned temples. A white elephant - an auspicious symbol of royalty in the Kingdom - figured on the Thai national flag until 1917, and the animal also features prominently in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Today, particularly in the north of the country, elephants still represent a connection with the country's rural past. While their numbers have dwindled to a fewer than 3000 from more than 100.000 a century ago, many now are linked with tourism rather than with forestry.

Jim Thompson's disappearance in the Malaysian Cameron Highlands 40 years ago remains very much a mystery today.

Moonlight Bungalow. A scenic highland retreat. War-time espionage. A mysterious disappearance. Strangely enough, all these elements in the case of the disappearance of Jim Thompson, known as the Thai silk king, could have been the perfect ingredients for a hardboiled, crime novel written by that other Jim Thompson, the American pulp fiction writer.

Indeed, the real-life case is as intriguing as any crime thriller, and still piques interest even today. This year marks the 40th anniversary of Thompson's disappearance in Cameron Highlands. The case remains as densely shrouded in mystery as it was in 1967.

Back then, the high-profile case drew frenzied media attention, leading to speculation about how and why Thompson had vanished without a trace.

A Thai mother who was lost for 25 years after catching the wrong bus home has spoken of her ordeal after being reunited with her family thanks to simple song. The last time Jaeyaena Beuraheng saw her seven children was in 1982 when she left south Thailand on one of her shopping trips across the border to nearby Malaysia.

She never returned, and police later told her family that she had apparently been killed in a traffic accident. In fact, Jaeyaena had taken the wrong bus home - an error that would have been easy to fix except that she only speaks the local dialect of Malay known as Yawi, according to officials at the homeless shelter where the 76-year-old has lived for two decades.