Natural ecotourism is about giving nature the holiday and ensuring 'creature comforts' means the creatures' comforts. But it's not only wilderness. With so much of Thailand cultivated, a variant of 'cultural ecotourism' dubbed 'agrotourism' introduces the village: work in the field, forest and stream; rural industry; and the rites of bucolic life. Enhancing the agrarian experience through personal contact, homestays have joined tents, huts and barges as eco-sensitive alternatives to hotels and guesthouses. Local involvement powers ecotourism, both in running tours and sharing their proceeds equitably. These incentives lead villagers to maintain traditions, conserve natural assets and resist the pull of the cities.

There's a certain unpredictability in staying in a village, quite different to commercially managed soft adventure, activity holidays and coach-based safaris. Homestays may be Spartan - cold water and slim floor mattresses go with the territory. Yet old Thai timber homes are kept very clean, and visitors usually find them surprisingly comfortable. Plus getting involved is more fun, whether it be trying to cast a fishing net or help cook a meal, then laughing with the villagers afterwards. Eating and sleeping in a family home compounds the win-win, by turning tourists into guests, voyeurism into friendship.

The homestay scheme in Amphawa, a district of canals in Samut Songkram province, won a TAT award for keeping its environment in balance. Here life remains much like it was in bygone Bangkok. Vast swaths of palm plantations and gabled timber houses are accessible only by water, with wooden boats trading wares, ferrying monks on alms rounds and vending kwetiao reua (boat noodles), with not one tacky souvenir in sight. Waterborne tours take in floating markets, boatyards and canal-side wats, plus archaic sugar workshops. Villagers still extract sugar from the palms by hand, harvesting the sap in bamboo tubes and boiling vats of the caramel over coconut husk furnaces.

Aside from children swimming in the klongs (canals), betel-chewing grannies offering you khanom (dessert) in banana leaf wrappings, and teak houses teetering on stilts, the most profound impression remains the community's closeness to nature. Eagles, dragonflies and kingfishers swoop across the boat bows by day, bats and fireflies by night. Geese, egrets and monitor lizards glide gently in and out of water teeming with fish, crabs and shrimp. The entire waterworld hums with insects, frogs and birdsong. Visitors are left to ponder why Amphawa is such an exception to the norm, where residents chose to live in this idyll when motorised plastic modernity is but a paddle away.

Ecotourism is definitely about cultivating awareness. So keep an eye out for tours with a mission to educate, such as the homestays and trips arranged by REST (Responsible Ecological Social Tours) or Lost Horizons. Caring enough to learn about the environment you've entered earns rich rewards - and great anecdotes when it comes to showing holiday snaps back home.

Homestay Baan Song Thai Plai Pong Pang
Baan Khok Ket, Moo 7 Tambon Plai Pong Pang, Amphoe Ampawa,
Samut Songkhram
Tel: 0 3475 7333, 0 3471 7510, 0 1403 7907, 0 1554 1065

Lost Horizons
Tel: 0 2860 3963
Website: www.losthorizonsasia.com

REST
109/79 Moo Baan Yucharoen Pattana, Lad Phrao Soi 18, Bangkok
Tel: 0 2938 7007
Website: www.ecotour.in.th

An arts, entertainment and travel journalist and editor for 14 years, he became the founding editor of Bangkok Metro in 1994, Thailand's first and still leading city listings magazine. After eight years of writing about culture and lifestyle from an unbiased consumer standpoint - and helping to found the independent Metro Awards - he went freelance after seeing through Metro's redesign.

Alongside doing writing and location consultancy, Philip is now the editor of an all-new guidebook, the Time Out Guide to Bangkok, Chiang Mai & the Islands, to be launched in 2003. A decade earlier, Philip was deputy editor of the award-winning Time Out London and Amsterdam guides. In the meantime, he has contributed to various international publications and broadcasting projects, and written much of the bestselling Eyewitness Guide to Thailand. Later this year, Philip will appear on Discovery Channel in Europe hosting a segment of a travel magazine show for Noodle Box Productions.