The parents who raised nearly $200,000 in donations to fly their sick baby Lucky from Bali to Australia for treatment are once again at the centre of controversy after making radical changes to their alternative lifestyle.
Former Melbourne fashion influencer Honey Ahimsa and her Canadian bus flipper husband Pan started a GoFundMe last year to charter a flight for their daughter Lucky, who was diagnosed with sepsis and pneumonia and could not be treated in Indonesia.
Generous Australians donated $190,000 to save the then seven-week-old baby, who doctors in Bali said had only given him a 50 percent chance of survival.
Lucky was flown to Brisbane on a medevac flight and then transferred to the Gold Coast, where doctors successfully treated her.
A follower on Instagram asked Ms Ahimsa if she would donate the excess GoFundMe money to Siloam Hospital in Denpasar, where Lucky was first treated.
Ms Ahimsa said she would do so, but questions were raised when the comment was later mysteriously deleted. She has since given little explanation as to what happened to any additional funds.
The family moved back to Bali in July last year, where they were renovating a villa. They wanted to start an online course to show other expats how to do the same.
However, Daily Mail Australia can reveal that Lucky’s parents, whose real names are Rachael Eti-King and Graham White, have since moved to Thailand and given up their strict vegan lifestyle to become ravenous meat eaters.
Pan and Honey Ahimsa (pictured), who raked in nearly $200,000 in donations to fly their sick baby Lucky from Bali to Australia for treatment, are at the centre of a new controversy after making a radical change to their alternative lifestyle
Lucky’s parents, whose real names are Rachael Eti-King and Graham White, have since moved to Thailand and given up their strict vegan lifestyle to become voracious meat eaters.
Videos on Instagram show the gluttonous couple wolfing down chicken and beef, ending their 27-year veganism.
The couple had previously expressed their aversion to meat and animal products.
Mrs. Ahimsa, who 83,000 Instagram followersclaims their Instagram reels have gone viral and have now been viewed 32 million times.
It’s unclear how the couple’s new meat-eating lifestyle fits in with the surname they’ve chosen: Ahimsa means “non-violence towards all living beings” in Sanskrit.
Ms Ahimsa said her family’s transition to meat-eating began when she herself started drinking cow’s milk after her breast milk dried up and Lucky became ill.
She told her followers that she had noticed a “huge difference, health-wise” between Lucky and her first child, son Hendrix, who was initially raised vegan.
“Our son now has a healthier relationship with food,” she wrote.
Ms Ahimsa now regularly posts videos of herself breastfeeding her daughter Lucky, and says she stands up to people who criticise her for doing so.
But the family’s drastic lifestyle change has sparked a heated debate in the comments section of her posts, sparked by Ms Ahimsa’s claim that vegan products “kill more animals than carnivores”.
“VEGAN**** wasn’t healthy so we added meat and now we’re thriving,” she wrote in an Instagram post.
The family’s drastic change in lifestyle has sparked a heated debate in the comments section of her posts, fuelled by Ms Ahimsa’s claims that vegan products ‘kill more animals than carnivores’
The couple launched a GoFundMe last year to charter a flight for their daughter Lucky (both pictured), who had sepsis and pneumonia and could not be treated in Indonesia.
Anti-vegan comments in reactions to couple’s conversion to meat eating
BEATING THE COST OF LIVING IN THAILAND
The couple known as Honey and Pan Ahimsa say moving to Thailand helped them overcome the cost-of-living crisis. Here are their tips:
Tried to live in: US, Canada, Australia, Europe, Mexico, Costa Rica and Bali, but ‘life is easier in Thailand’
Rent from friends in Los Angeles: $3000-$10,000 per month
Rent in Thailand: ‘Virtually rent-free’
Cost of food: A meal for a family of two adults and two children costs $10 and ‘it’s a feast’. Mangoes cost 80c a kilo
Fuel costs: Gasoline costs $10 a week
Jobs: Make your own
The beaches: ‘Like stepping into a postcard’
The people: ‘Astonishing’
One vegan noted that the couple “were never really vegan” and “no animal agreed to be your food. There is no ethical animal food.”
In another fervently pro-vegan post, someone argued that keeping pets is “non-vegan and immoral” and that even building houses and driving cars is not vegan because “cars need roads that infringe on wildlife.”
However, the family has received some support, as evidenced by the following comment: ‘I’ve never seen a vegan be nice to someone who eats meat, but I’ve seen many who do eat meat and be nice to everyone.’
Another wrote: ‘Welcome back from the delusions of veganism.’
Ms Ahimsa defended her family against the criticism, writing: ‘We feel a huge positive improvement in our overall well-being.
“You can change. Nowhere does it say ‘lifetime commitment’. We make a conscious effort to eat ethically and sustainably produced animal products.”
Ms Ahimsa says moving to Thailand has helped them survive the cost of living crisis, saying ‘our rent is basically free’.
She also posted that she has discovered the secret to making money on social media with a “secret strategy.”
She says she has set up a “four-day online event where we share everything.”
“It’s time to stop playing small and claim the life, the wealth and everything you deserve,” she wrote.
Before they met and later changed their names, Rachael Eti-King worked as a model in Melbourne and Graham White travelled the world visiting hippie haunts and comparing himself to world-famous street artist Banksy.
Daily Mail Australia revealed their true identities and the fact that White was the son of a concrete industry worker who grew up on a farm in Ontario.
He previously called himself Pan Trinity Das and was married to Los Angeles actress Kyrie Maezumi before meeting Ms. Ahimsa in Bali.
In Bali, they started their own ‘ethical clothing’ brand and sold modernised vehicles, such as the vans popular with ‘van-lifers’.
Ms Ahimsa gave birth to daughter Lucky in December 2022 via a “natural home birth on a tropical island in Thailand,” according to her Instagram page.
But the couple returned to Bali, where Lucky was put on a ventilator in a Denpasar hospital two months later. She fell ill and fought for her life until the fundraiser could pay for her medical evacuation.
Baby Lucky at the Gold Coast hospital in early 2023 (left) and with her mother breastfeeding in public. Ms Ahimsa defends herself against criticism of the practice by saying: ‘other people’s opinions are not my problem’
Pan bites into chicken as Honey sways to the music as they celebrate going back to eating meat in one of their ‘viral’ Instagram videos (left) and Pan with baby daughter Lucky (right) in Thailand
Last year, the couple told Daily Mail Australia that Lucky’s medical evacuation had cost them more than $100,000 of their budget.
Ms Ahimsa said at the time that “none of the funds from the Lucky Love GoFundMe were used for anything other than what was stated on the GoFundMe page”.
She had said she would be “happy” to provide a detailed breakdown of how the money was spent, but she stopped responding to emails asking her to do so.
The duo previously started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for an ‘eco-hotel’ in Mexico.
Honey and Pan Ahimsa attempted to raise $10,000 in early 2020 for a “nonprofit vegan restaurant, boutique eco-hotel and tattoo studio” in Tulum, Mexico, but the project was never completed.