Parents who raised 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.
Former Melbourne fashion influencer Honey Ahimsa and her Canadian husband Pan, a van reseller, launched a GoFundMe last year to charter a flight for their daughter Lucky, who had sepsis and pneumonia and could not receive treatment in Indonesia.
Generous Australians donated $190,000 to save the baby, who was then seven weeks old and given only a 50 per cent chance of survival by Balinese doctors, according to Ms Ahimsa.
Lucky was flown to Brisbane on a medevac flight and transferred to the Gold Coast where she was successfully treated by doctors.
An Instagram follower asked Ms Ahimsa if she would donate the leftover 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 mysteriously deleted. She has since given little explanation as to what happened to the extra funds.
The family returned to Bali in July last year, where they were renovating a villa and had plans to launch 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, moved to Thailand and abandoned their staunchly vegan lifestyle to become voracious meat eaters.
Pan and Honey Ahimsa (pictured), who raised nearly $200,000 in donations to fly their sick baby Lucky from Bali to Australia for treatment, are at the centre of a fresh controversy after making a radical change to their alternative lifestyle.
Lucky’s parents, whose real names are Rachael Eti-King and Graham White, moved to Thailand and abandoned their strictly vegan lifestyle to become voracious meat eaters.
In videos posted on Instagram, the voracious couple can be seen devouring chicken and beef in their mouths, announcing the end of their 27 years of veganism.
The couple had previously expressed their hatred of meat and animal products.
Mrs. Ahimsa, who has 83,000 followers on Instagramclaims that her Instagram reels have gone viral with up to 32 million views.
It’s unclear how the couple’s new carnivorous lifestyle aligns with their chosen surname: Ahimsa means “non-violence towards all living beings” in the Sanskrit language.
Ms Ahimsa said her family’s transition to meat-eating began when she switched to cow’s milk after her breast milk dried up before Lucky fell ill.
She told her followers that she has noticed a “huge difference, health-wise” between Lucky and her first 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 in public and says she defies people who criticise her for doing so.
But the family’s drastic lifestyle change has sparked a heated debate in the comments on their posts, fuelled by Ahimsa’s claims that vegan products “kill more animals than carnivorous ones”.
“VEGAN**** wasn’t healthy so we added meat and now we are THRIVING,” she wrote in an Instagram post.
The family’s drastic lifestyle change has sparked a heated debate in the comments on their posts, fuelled by Ahimsa’s claims that vegan products “kill more animals than carnivorous ones”.
The couple launched a GoFundMe last year to charter a flight for their daughter Lucky (all pictured), who had sepsis and pneumonia and was unable to receive treatment in Indonesia.
Anti-vegan comments among responses to couple’s conversion to eating meat again
HOW TO REDUCE 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:
I tried to live in:United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, Mexico, Costa Rica and Bali, but “life is easier in Thailand”
Friends Rentals in Los Angeles:$3000-$10,000 per month
Rent in Thailand: ‘Practically rent-free’
Cost of foodA meal for a family of two adults and two children costs $10 and is “a feast.” Mangos cost 80 cents a kilo.
Fuel costsGasoline costs $10 a week.
Jobs: Create your own
Beaches:’Like entering a postcard’
People: ‘Amazing’
One vegan commented that the couple “were never really vegan” and that “no animal would ever accept food from them. There is no such thing as ethical animal-based food.”
In another fervently pro-vegan post, one commenter argued that keeping pets is “not vegan and immoral” and even building houses and driving cars is not vegan because “cars require roads that encroach on wildlife.”
However, the family has gained some support thanks to one commenter who posted: “I’ve never seen a vegan being nice to a meat eater, but I’ve seen plenty of meat eaters being nice to everyone.”
Another wrote: “Welcome back from the ravings of veganism.”
Defending her family in the face of criticism, Ms Ahimsa posted: ‘We feel a huge positive improvement in our overall wellbeing.
“You are allowed to change. Nowhere does it say ‘lifelong commitment’. We make a conscious effort to eat ethically and sustainably sourced animal products.”
Ms Ahimsa says moving to Thailand has helped them survive the cost of living crisis, saying “our rent is basically free”.
He also posted that he has discovered the secret to making money on social media with a “secret strategy.”
She says she has created a “four-day online event where we share everything.”
“It’s time to stop playing small and claim the life, wealth and everything you deserve,” she wrote.
Before they met and later changed their names, Rachael Eti-King had worked as a model in Melbourne and Graham White travelled the world visiting hippie spots and was compared 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 went by the stage name Pan Trinity Das and was married to Los Angeles actress Kyrie Maezumi, before meeting Ahimsa in Bali.
In Bali, they created their own brand of “ethical clothing” and sold redesigned vehicles, such as the vans preferred by van lovers.
Ms Ahimsa gave birth to her daughter Lucky via a “natural home birth on a tropical island in Thailand” in December 2022, according to her Instagram page.
But the couple returned to Bali, where two months later Lucky was put on a ventilator at Denpasar hospital but then fell ill and was fighting for her life before the fundraiser paid for her medical evacuation.
Little Lucky in a Gold Coast hospital in early 2023 (left) with her mother breastfeeding her in public. Ahimsa has defended herself against criticism of the practice, saying: “Other people’s opinions are not my problem.”
Pan munches on chicken as Honey sways to the music as they celebrate going meat-free in one of their “viral” Instagram videos (left) and Pan with his baby daughter Lucky (right) in Thailand.
The couple told the Daily Mail Australia last year that Lucky’s medical evacuation had consumed more than $100,000 of the funds.
Ms Ahimsa said at the time that “none of the Lucky Love GoFundMe money was used for anything other than what was mentioned on the GoFundMe page”.
She had said she was “more than happy” to provide a detailed account of how the money was spent, but stopped responding to emails when asked to do so.
The couple had also previously launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to pay for an “eco-friendly hotel” in Mexico.
Honey and Pan Ahimsa attempted to raise US$10,000 for a “non-profit vegan restaurant, boutique eco-hotel and tattoo studio” in Tulum, Mexico, in early 2020, but the project was never completed.
