In just a few hours we catch the night train back to Bangkok, 3rd class hard seats of course, but with that comes wide open windows, and local food vendors making their way up and down the train with unrecognizable edibles for sale! Then it's one night in Bangkok before hitting the airport Monday morning and flying home (defined at the moment as someplace we can understand everything that is spoken and the road signs don't look like a preschooler's scribbling pad) - and after about 24 hours of flying and layovers, we arrive in the states that same afternoon! Cool, huh?
We just spent the last 10 days of our 5 months of wandering, on an island in southern Thailand. Hot. Heat. Muggy. Sweaty. Hot. Humid. Sticky. Sweaty. Hot. Um, yeah, it was a spectacular tropical non-touristy quiet island, but wow, hot, humid, and so forth. You get the idea. Even the ocean is 85 degrees! Whew - swim too hard and you get HOT! Okay, it was pretty darned incredible - despite no breeze and 95 degrees with 99% humidity - maybe I'm exaggerating (but I don't think so) - I didn't have a thermometer - but we read the ocean temperature in our guidebook, so you know that MUST be true (all hail Lonely Planet!)...
So, I'm not exactly a hot/humid type person - you Mid-Westerners wouldn't bat an eye (I mean break a sweat), but me - I melt and get slightly cranky until I can cool down to a humane temperature (you can ask my family about the slightly cranky part).
Again, we seemed to step back in time - this time maybe 100 years (well, maybe less since they did have a few modern conveniences) - an island not yet hit by the glut of tourism - intermittent electricity, no roads, just paths winding through coconut groves, rubber plantations, cashew trees, brushy jungle. Tiny "bungalows" on a huge white sand beach, with NO umbrellas, NO lounge chairs lined up three deep, NO high rise hotels, NO people (okay, a couple of people, a few friendly, pudgy old dogs, and lots of tiny beige crabs that look more like plant fluff skidding across the sand than side-stepping invertebrates).
More details:
Bioluminescence - This was the big excitement - really, truly, it is so incredibly cool! The water is filled with it, tiny one-celled (multi-celled?) organisms that light up when agitated (movement-wise, not emotionally!).
So we wade along the shore at night, creating sparkling, glittering showers of diamonds, twinkling constellations, underwater fireworks displays. Even when we stand still, the in and out surges of the tide make a galaxy of stars and nebulas stream past our legs. We splash and swirl the water - all is dark except for the brilliance of the water-lights - even the breaking waves sparkle. Walking along, Raina exclaims, "It's like trailing your own little personal Milky Way!"
It's fairy - faerie - we enter a sparkling realm - we create the lights, we follow the lights, and unlike the lights of Gollum's warning in the marshes of Middle Earth ("Don't follow the lights!") these lights lead us into beauty and imagination and a mystical realm - like Gandalf's curtain of silver glass - an entryway into another world. Fairy? Elven? Who knows? But always: goodness.
Oh yeah, I forgot shimmering - really, how many adjectives like sparkling, glittering, shimmering can I use? Really (again really) there are not enough in the English language. So I'll use them all. But it doesn't come close to what I'm seeing, feeling.
Some of you know how much I like sparkles, and sparkling and glittering. So what is it? It's this. Or part of it is this. Here, there is a silence, filled only with crickets, and gentle waves breaking, rolling back down the clean sand, warm wind rustling the palm leaves. And these lights. There are these lights. It's the beauty of a black universe full of stars. It's the touch of eternity.
So this glitter thing - anyone with any new "glittering" words or thoughts, let me know! I could get a lot more abstract about it all, but really, it's just something that's deep down and just so beautiful I can't describe it.
Swimming: Let's see, when you go swimming you get stung by a bunch of invisible creatures! It's really not much of a sting (a little like lemon juice in a cut) but a bit annoying, and you don't want to just lounge in the water. We went swimming everyday. Finally, someone told us it was sea lice. Whatever that is. We'll have to look it up when we get home.
Animals: So we've got the bugs from Land of the Giants - one is a black fuzzy thing the size of a hummingbird, but much louder. Then there's the geckos - the small one's are cute and live on your ceiling and chirp - the big ones look like dragons and make this spectacularly loud rubber ducky noise. Of course there are crickets galore (both normal size and giant size - for you coffee drinkers that would be tall and vente). And the chainsaw bugs are here too (the cicadas we heard in Cambodia). We also saw a number of birds - hornbills (look just like the toucans on the cereal box), sea eagles, kites. There's also some really cool jungle noises (no clue as to what it is, but sounds just like the movies).
What we did: Swim (and get stung), hike and explore the island, walk the beach, wilt under the sun, watch the sunsets, kayak (really fun in big waves and wind), note location of tsunami evacuation zones, eat green coconut curry, swim some more, hang out on the porch of our little beachfront bungalow, and that's just day one!
Boat to island: So did you see the movie Nim's Island? The part where Jodie Foster gets dropped off and has to swim to the beach? Well, we didn't have to swim, but we did get our feet wet! The boats are called "longtail" boats - they are wooden, long, and have a motor with the propellar on the end of a 10 foot or so long shaft sticking out behind (hence the name longtail).
Coconuts - here we could find our own - they are all over the ground on the island (and you have to watch your head since they periodically and spontaneously fall). But how to open without the useful and ubiquitous machete? Send Marc for the biggest rock he can lift - you lose the water, but the coconut is so delicious!
Well, we've got to head over to the train station. Don't want to miss our ride!
I'll update next week with pictures! Thanks again for reading!
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
100 Green Coconuts Later...
Cambodia (Phnom Penh and Siem Reap)
Ah, green coconuts. COLD green coconuts even! Everywhere, piles of the giant green balls, full of huge amounts of delicious water and delicate, yummy fruit! Head straight for those next to one of the ubiquitous SE Asian orange coolers - the cold ones are oh so refreshing! We've lost count of our coconut consumption, but I'm sure it's bordering (at least for me and Raina) on addiction. You've heard of death by chocolate? We've got hydration by coconut (okay, so not quite the same ring, but really, you have to admit it's more upbeat and positive if not catchy). They are quite spectacular - ecological, biodegradable, sterile containers that slake both your thirst and hunger - the coconut fruit inside can be any consistency from gelatinous (makes Marc gag, but what does he know?) to rubbery (yum) to almost like "real" coconut (the kind you buy at Safeway and spend hours trying to open and then hours more prying out the coconut and bending your mom's favorite butter knife - really yum). It all depends on the luck of the draw, and the maturity of the coconut (rubbery is the norm). After you slurp the water like you'd just spent the last 10 days in the Sahara with nary an oasis in sight, they hack it open for you (so you don't have to spend hours with a bent butter knife) and may even chop off a piece of husk as a spoon - the street vendors are incredibly adept at weilding those machetes! (Raina now wants her own machete and coconut tree!)
Man it's hot here. In the 90's, high high (remember same same?) humidity. Our clothes stick to us, we sweat even in the cold shower - in fact, we are so sticky it feels like we've been bathing in soda pop. Even in the chill hours of dawn it is never below 75 degrees. One night in Phnom Penh, one of the locals at our guest house couldn't figure out why we'd want to sit out on the dock (we were on a lake, incredibly beautiful at night, polluted by day) in the breeze. He thought it was COLD (it is, after all, winter). There were a number of small dogs living in various shops around there, who at night and in the mornings would be attired in little doggy sweaters - so cute! Meanwhile, we are wilting. Sweat sweat sweat. It's hard to remember the frigid cold of the Himalayas.
So, CAMBODIA! Being here has reminded us of a line from the movie Contact (from the book by Carl Sagan):
An alien makes the following observation to the main character - something like "You human beings are such interesting creatures - capable of such amazing beauty and such horrible cruelty." And vestiges of beauty and cruelty we have seen in abundance.
Some details:
January 5, from Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia): I just can't get over the fact that we are in Phnom Penh. Running around in tuk tuks, wandering the markets, buying coconuts. Phnom Penh! Cambodia! I just can't get over it - more than anywhere we've been - because Phnom Penh pops up in my memory banks in the same category as the Vietnam War, Apocolypse Now, guerrilla and jungle warfare, US bombings, genocide. You can be a tourist here? Don't they hate Americans? And yet, here we are, in the midst of incredibly friendly people, watching the movie, The Killing Fields, in our guesthouse lobby one night, then visiting the actual places the next day.
We visited the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, the site of the S-21 prison during the Khmer Rouge regime. There are a lot of photos - I.D. photos taken by the KR - face after face after face - children, men, women with babies, all staring into the camera, faces of those who were tortured, then killed most brutally, ghosts, memories, faces of the doomed, the helpless... And the Choeung Ek Killing Fields - a large memorial stands there now, filled with level upon level upon level of human skulls, bones, clothing, all respectfully and honorably exhumed from the mass graves... The brutality and inhumanity is incomprehensible, and overwhelming. Heart rending. You have to weep. One of our books talks about "the country's descent into a hell beyond our imaginings: a world of war slaves and senseless brutality, where family life simply ceases to be."
To think that anyone over the age of 30 or so has lived through that era, has family that died, or disappeared forever. Much of the population suffers (silently) from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
And the mines. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world - you don't want to go poking around off-trail - landmines claim many many victims every year...
Okay - so that was Phnom Penh - for $4.00 per night we stayed in the back alleys (but amazingly also on a lake) of the backpacker tourist area - sort of funky and ramshackle, alleys winding in every direction with shops and tiny eating places (and the little dogs with their sweaters), where Marc was offered marajuana every time we went out, even when we were looking at other guesthouses ("You smoke? We can provide smoke no problem!" And they weren't talking cigarettes. Needless to say, we of the straight and narrow did not stay there!
So, from Phnom Penh, we took a boat up the Tonle Sap, a tributary of the Mekong River, to Siem Reap, where lies the 8th wonder of the world, the temples of Angkor (and Angkor Wat - you remember wot's a wat, what?). The boat ride was a blast - we rode on top - it's a boat for tourists, but safety-wise, not many regulations. It had a curved roof, like a bus (or a submarine) but with a six-inch railing - if you want to use the toilet you crawl over the six-inch railing, lower yourself to the ledge (no railing), and walk around to the door leading to the interior, all the while the boat speeding ahead. I wonder if anyone's ever fallen off? We had great views of the flat as a pancake Cambodian countryside, floating villages, houses on shore built on stilts...
Three days exploring the Angkor Temples - Indiana Jones, here we come! Dum da dum dum bum ba dum... (so how do you write the theme music anyway?). Over 1000 years old, they are truly amazing, and when you can find one without lots of tourists, you can pretend to be a jungle explorer (but don't go off-trail, remember the mines!). We also visited the River of a Thousand Lingas - and later (thankfully, because it was a really spectacular hike) read that area is heavily mined, but we DIDN'T go off trail!). So get this, lingas are "phallic symbols representing the essence of the god Shiva"! Hmmm. It was a wonderfully quiet hike through the jungle, up past a waterfall, to where the river bottom was carved with all sorts of things (including the lingas, which just looked like circles).
The jungles are beautiful - just the sounds are fantastical. There is this little bug, okay it's a rather big bug, as bugs go, but only the size of a locust I think - not really sure how big a locust is... So, one of these bugs in a tree sounds like a combination of a planer (like in your woodshop), a burglar alarm, a dog whistle, and a constantly ringing bell on a bicycle - at such high decibles you could go deaf if you were too close. And this is just one little bug! There are also incredible bird calls that sound like a video game (whop whop whop whop weeop weeop weeop op op op op oppppppp beeoing oing oing oing - got that?). Very exotic!...
Money - Cambodia uses two currencies - U.S. dollars, and riel (there are 4000 riel to a dollar). And often you pay or get change in a combination of the two...
We saw some Apsara dancing the other night (ethic dancing). We had seen carvings of Apsara dancers on the walls of some of the Angkar temples, and the live dancers looked exactly the same - they hold their hands and feet exactly opposite of ballet dancers - their hands are bent backwards, with fingers curving back, and same with feet - it's very controlled and often slow, quite beautiful - and we thought the carvings were just a weird way of depicting people, but no, it was quite exact! Of course, when we got back to our room, Raina and I had to try it out - OUCH! How do they do that?...
Yesterday we waved to the King of Cambodia!...
The street sellers must have been trained by the NFL - some actually run at you to get you to look at their wares. Anybody seen the newer South Pacific movie starring Glenn Close? Well, I always thought the woman who plays Bloody Mary was overacting - but it is an EXACT portrayal of the selling style here - "You Buy? I make good deal for you. Only one dollar..." and so on. We have said "No thank you no thank you no thank you" more times in the last week than I think all of the, what, Miss Manners wanna-bes, say in a lifetime. But they are so good natured about it, and laugh and just continue on with the barrage, but in such a way that you can laugh with them. (Okay, I'll admit, sometimes you just want to be left alone.) It is a little sad, though, when small children have the entire speil down...
Our hotel lobby displays a sign you wouldn't see in the U.S. In pictures, it says, "No guns, no grenades, no drugs allowed"...
Travel from Thailand to Cambodia - from hotel in Chiang Mai (northern Thailand) to guest house in Phnom Penh - 31 hours, two tuk tuks, three busses (1st class, 2nd class, 3rd class), one shuttle bus, one remork (Cambodian tuk tuk), one bribe at the border to get our Cambodian visas (border immigration is notorious for adding that "extra fee" - you just smile and pay it - actually we questioned it, but hey, we're usually totally clueless as to what is going on anyway, so we hadn't a chance)...
Traveling about in tuk tuks is so much fun - here they are motorcycles pulling a trailer with two facing seats - I can't say I'd want to be in an accident in one, but they are great for seeing the countryside, because you are out in the open air, and can see and smell and really feel the country...
Another oft said statement: "Now what was that I just ate?"...
Traffic in Phnom Penh is astounding - there are so many motorbikes! They fill up every available space at a stoplight (yes, they have stoplights and actually stop for them), flowing around cars and tuk tuks like water, and you end up with this huge mob of them at the front, including a solid mass up on the sidewalk. Which makes walking and crossing the streets interesting...
Okay, it's late and we've got to get up early tomorrow to catch the bus back to Thailand - southern beaches here we come - we're headed to a small island with no internet (we think), no vehicles, not much of anything, so hopefully it will be peaceful and quiet! We'll just need a bonfire and some rum and we can sing just like Captain Jack Sparrow!
We catch our plane back to the states on January 25th - not too far away! Wow, where did the time go? We'll be at Marc's folks for a number of days, recuperating from our rum and cokes.
Not sure when I'll have internet access again. But thanks for reading. And thanks for those of you who've written comments - I love them.
That's it for tonight. Actually, you all are just waking up. So, GOOD MORNING!
Ah, green coconuts. COLD green coconuts even! Everywhere, piles of the giant green balls, full of huge amounts of delicious water and delicate, yummy fruit! Head straight for those next to one of the ubiquitous SE Asian orange coolers - the cold ones are oh so refreshing! We've lost count of our coconut consumption, but I'm sure it's bordering (at least for me and Raina) on addiction. You've heard of death by chocolate? We've got hydration by coconut (okay, so not quite the same ring, but really, you have to admit it's more upbeat and positive if not catchy). They are quite spectacular - ecological, biodegradable, sterile containers that slake both your thirst and hunger - the coconut fruit inside can be any consistency from gelatinous (makes Marc gag, but what does he know?) to rubbery (yum) to almost like "real" coconut (the kind you buy at Safeway and spend hours trying to open and then hours more prying out the coconut and bending your mom's favorite butter knife - really yum). It all depends on the luck of the draw, and the maturity of the coconut (rubbery is the norm). After you slurp the water like you'd just spent the last 10 days in the Sahara with nary an oasis in sight, they hack it open for you (so you don't have to spend hours with a bent butter knife) and may even chop off a piece of husk as a spoon - the street vendors are incredibly adept at weilding those machetes! (Raina now wants her own machete and coconut tree!)
Man it's hot here. In the 90's, high high (remember same same?) humidity. Our clothes stick to us, we sweat even in the cold shower - in fact, we are so sticky it feels like we've been bathing in soda pop. Even in the chill hours of dawn it is never below 75 degrees. One night in Phnom Penh, one of the locals at our guest house couldn't figure out why we'd want to sit out on the dock (we were on a lake, incredibly beautiful at night, polluted by day) in the breeze. He thought it was COLD (it is, after all, winter). There were a number of small dogs living in various shops around there, who at night and in the mornings would be attired in little doggy sweaters - so cute! Meanwhile, we are wilting. Sweat sweat sweat. It's hard to remember the frigid cold of the Himalayas.
So, CAMBODIA! Being here has reminded us of a line from the movie Contact (from the book by Carl Sagan):
An alien makes the following observation to the main character - something like "You human beings are such interesting creatures - capable of such amazing beauty and such horrible cruelty." And vestiges of beauty and cruelty we have seen in abundance.
Some details:
January 5, from Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia): I just can't get over the fact that we are in Phnom Penh. Running around in tuk tuks, wandering the markets, buying coconuts. Phnom Penh! Cambodia! I just can't get over it - more than anywhere we've been - because Phnom Penh pops up in my memory banks in the same category as the Vietnam War, Apocolypse Now, guerrilla and jungle warfare, US bombings, genocide. You can be a tourist here? Don't they hate Americans? And yet, here we are, in the midst of incredibly friendly people, watching the movie, The Killing Fields, in our guesthouse lobby one night, then visiting the actual places the next day.
We visited the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, the site of the S-21 prison during the Khmer Rouge regime. There are a lot of photos - I.D. photos taken by the KR - face after face after face - children, men, women with babies, all staring into the camera, faces of those who were tortured, then killed most brutally, ghosts, memories, faces of the doomed, the helpless... And the Choeung Ek Killing Fields - a large memorial stands there now, filled with level upon level upon level of human skulls, bones, clothing, all respectfully and honorably exhumed from the mass graves... The brutality and inhumanity is incomprehensible, and overwhelming. Heart rending. You have to weep. One of our books talks about "the country's descent into a hell beyond our imaginings: a world of war slaves and senseless brutality, where family life simply ceases to be."
To think that anyone over the age of 30 or so has lived through that era, has family that died, or disappeared forever. Much of the population suffers (silently) from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
And the mines. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world - you don't want to go poking around off-trail - landmines claim many many victims every year...
Okay - so that was Phnom Penh - for $4.00 per night we stayed in the back alleys (but amazingly also on a lake) of the backpacker tourist area - sort of funky and ramshackle, alleys winding in every direction with shops and tiny eating places (and the little dogs with their sweaters), where Marc was offered marajuana every time we went out, even when we were looking at other guesthouses ("You smoke? We can provide smoke no problem!" And they weren't talking cigarettes. Needless to say, we of the straight and narrow did not stay there!
So, from Phnom Penh, we took a boat up the Tonle Sap, a tributary of the Mekong River, to Siem Reap, where lies the 8th wonder of the world, the temples of Angkor (and Angkor Wat - you remember wot's a wat, what?). The boat ride was a blast - we rode on top - it's a boat for tourists, but safety-wise, not many regulations. It had a curved roof, like a bus (or a submarine) but with a six-inch railing - if you want to use the toilet you crawl over the six-inch railing, lower yourself to the ledge (no railing), and walk around to the door leading to the interior, all the while the boat speeding ahead. I wonder if anyone's ever fallen off? We had great views of the flat as a pancake Cambodian countryside, floating villages, houses on shore built on stilts...
Three days exploring the Angkor Temples - Indiana Jones, here we come! Dum da dum dum bum ba dum... (so how do you write the theme music anyway?). Over 1000 years old, they are truly amazing, and when you can find one without lots of tourists, you can pretend to be a jungle explorer (but don't go off-trail, remember the mines!). We also visited the River of a Thousand Lingas - and later (thankfully, because it was a really spectacular hike) read that area is heavily mined, but we DIDN'T go off trail!). So get this, lingas are "phallic symbols representing the essence of the god Shiva"! Hmmm. It was a wonderfully quiet hike through the jungle, up past a waterfall, to where the river bottom was carved with all sorts of things (including the lingas, which just looked like circles).
The jungles are beautiful - just the sounds are fantastical. There is this little bug, okay it's a rather big bug, as bugs go, but only the size of a locust I think - not really sure how big a locust is... So, one of these bugs in a tree sounds like a combination of a planer (like in your woodshop), a burglar alarm, a dog whistle, and a constantly ringing bell on a bicycle - at such high decibles you could go deaf if you were too close. And this is just one little bug! There are also incredible bird calls that sound like a video game (whop whop whop whop weeop weeop weeop op op op op oppppppp beeoing oing oing oing - got that?). Very exotic!...
Money - Cambodia uses two currencies - U.S. dollars, and riel (there are 4000 riel to a dollar). And often you pay or get change in a combination of the two...
We saw some Apsara dancing the other night (ethic dancing). We had seen carvings of Apsara dancers on the walls of some of the Angkar temples, and the live dancers looked exactly the same - they hold their hands and feet exactly opposite of ballet dancers - their hands are bent backwards, with fingers curving back, and same with feet - it's very controlled and often slow, quite beautiful - and we thought the carvings were just a weird way of depicting people, but no, it was quite exact! Of course, when we got back to our room, Raina and I had to try it out - OUCH! How do they do that?...
Yesterday we waved to the King of Cambodia!...
The street sellers must have been trained by the NFL - some actually run at you to get you to look at their wares. Anybody seen the newer South Pacific movie starring Glenn Close? Well, I always thought the woman who plays Bloody Mary was overacting - but it is an EXACT portrayal of the selling style here - "You Buy? I make good deal for you. Only one dollar..." and so on. We have said "No thank you no thank you no thank you" more times in the last week than I think all of the, what, Miss Manners wanna-bes, say in a lifetime. But they are so good natured about it, and laugh and just continue on with the barrage, but in such a way that you can laugh with them. (Okay, I'll admit, sometimes you just want to be left alone.) It is a little sad, though, when small children have the entire speil down...
Our hotel lobby displays a sign you wouldn't see in the U.S. In pictures, it says, "No guns, no grenades, no drugs allowed"...
Travel from Thailand to Cambodia - from hotel in Chiang Mai (northern Thailand) to guest house in Phnom Penh - 31 hours, two tuk tuks, three busses (1st class, 2nd class, 3rd class), one shuttle bus, one remork (Cambodian tuk tuk), one bribe at the border to get our Cambodian visas (border immigration is notorious for adding that "extra fee" - you just smile and pay it - actually we questioned it, but hey, we're usually totally clueless as to what is going on anyway, so we hadn't a chance)...
Traveling about in tuk tuks is so much fun - here they are motorcycles pulling a trailer with two facing seats - I can't say I'd want to be in an accident in one, but they are great for seeing the countryside, because you are out in the open air, and can see and smell and really feel the country...
Another oft said statement: "Now what was that I just ate?"...
Traffic in Phnom Penh is astounding - there are so many motorbikes! They fill up every available space at a stoplight (yes, they have stoplights and actually stop for them), flowing around cars and tuk tuks like water, and you end up with this huge mob of them at the front, including a solid mass up on the sidewalk. Which makes walking and crossing the streets interesting...
Okay, it's late and we've got to get up early tomorrow to catch the bus back to Thailand - southern beaches here we come - we're headed to a small island with no internet (we think), no vehicles, not much of anything, so hopefully it will be peaceful and quiet! We'll just need a bonfire and some rum and we can sing just like Captain Jack Sparrow!
We catch our plane back to the states on January 25th - not too far away! Wow, where did the time go? We'll be at Marc's folks for a number of days, recuperating from our rum and cokes.
Not sure when I'll have internet access again. But thanks for reading. And thanks for those of you who've written comments - I love them.
That's it for tonight. Actually, you all are just waking up. So, GOOD MORNING!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Same same...but different
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Sawasdee-ka!
So, the title of this posting: "Same same...but different." The first time we heard this we didn't realize how endearing it would become (to us at least). So much so that Raina bought a t-shirt with same same on the front, and but different on the back. It really should be the national motto. We hear it all the time (at least the same same part), and it has many subtle meanings, but mostly I think it's that in Thailand, everyone wants to be nice and no conflicts, so "same same...but different" is a way to agree even when you may not really mean you are agreeing. Also, in the Thai language there is no word for "very" (like very long would be long long) so same same would be like very same, and with the but different added on you can mean "exactly the same, but not really but I don't want to offend you by disagreeing and so voila, a perfect little saying that you and I both know what it means but makes everyone happy"!
Enough of that! New Year's Eve! Let's see, here it's 2:30 p.m. on January 1st, so that means only one half hour to zero countdown for you westcoasters! So funny to think of you all celebrating right this very moment!
On to New Year's Eve in Chiang Mai:
Fairy lights in the sky. Soft, golden candlelights, flowing against a background of stars, the black night glittered with hundreds of magical lanterns rising up and up and up, mingling with the Milky Way, forming another galaxy of slowly spinning nether-lights and swirling fireflies, firelights, passing the face of the full moon. A never ending progression of lights, for hours on end, sparkling, burning, some with showers of sparks and silver tails, others pulsing and shining with an ethereal glow.
It's a scene straight out of a fantasy movie - Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter? Legend? - the only thing missing is the London Symphony Orchestra! (Instead we have loud blaring Thai pop music complete with go-go dancers.)
It's New Year's Eve in Chiang Mai. The lanterns are oil drum sized tissue paper lanterns that rise into the sky like little hot air balloons. The "candle" that provides the heat is a cross section of paper towel roll dipped in wax - you light them and send them into the sky for good luck in the new year (so we were assured by the woman we bought ours from). Environmental and safety ramifications aside (there are now paper lantern shells strewn all over the city, and it's a wonder nothing caught fire from the many that ran into trees and power lines, or from the ones that burst into flames and fell out of the sky anywhere and everywhere) - these things aside - it's a SPECTACULAR sight - something from a magical world - people started sending them up as soon as it got dark, hundreds and hundreds rising a thousand feet and more into the sky, drifting with the wind, different directions at different elevations, the spent ones gently falling back to earth, barely perceptible as shadows.
Then at midnight - fireworks - straight overhead - an incredible display - soon the ash started falling on our heads, so we squinted our eyes and kept watching, entranced by the glittering explosions amidst the floating fairy lights.
We are truly in another world.
SO! Here we are in Thailand! Quite the change from Nepal. In one plane flight we went from chilly to tropical, from the 11th century to the 21st century (relatively), from stupas to wats (what's a wat we can walk to? you may ask, or if you're British, wots a wot and can we wok? Okay, I think I've heard too many accents. Answer - monasteries/temples) - back to changes from Nepal...from prayer flags and monks in maroon to golden spires and monks in orange, from squalor to slightly less squalor, from dal bhat and more dal bhat to sticky rice and mango and all the fresh vegetables you can imagine, from traffic chaos to traffic chaos with lines, from rupees to baht, from an incomprehesible and unreadable language to an incomprehensible and unreadable language with tones!
It still amazes me, both here and in Nepal - the contrast between the beauty of the monasteries (the wats) and the surrounding squalor (I know I just used that word above, but it's the only description I can think of at the moment). The wats are incredible monuments, spires, golden buddhas, beautifully painted prayer rooms - the gold and more gold and the amazingly fine paint jobs, the intricate carvings, the mosaic mirrored colored tiles inlaid meticulously over an entire building - it's unbelievable really - spectacular, absolutely beautiful sparkling brilliance amid noise, traffic, garbage, sewage - not nearly the amount of filth as in Kathmandu - there is still sewage running through the streets, but to tell the truth, when we arrived here our first thought was, wow, it's so clean! - I think maybe our viewpoint has been skewed a bit - but still, such artistry and care and quiet beauty surrounded by an area that is seemingly devoid of aesthetics, or cleanliness, or care of creation. It's a bizarre conundrum - and it's that very surrounding community that totally supports the wat and its monks (Thais are almost all Buddhist and very supportive of the wats).
And the traffic. It never stops. It's like a river, contantly flowing along, building as evening comes, until night when the floodgates open and the river is a torrent impossible to ford. You learn to time things exactly, to be patient, bold, but to take no undue risks, and eventually you get across. There are thousands of motorbikes, tuk-tuks (three wheeled taxi cart things), cars, trucks with loudspeakers advertising full moon parties, or blaring something in Thai (I'm sorry, but over the loudspeakers the language sounds exactly like Guido in Star Wars - the not very nice creature who meets Han Solo in the bar in Mos Isley, I think of that every time I hear it and have to smile), people pushing carts with Thai ice creams, juices (they make it when you order it), you name it.
We took the night train from Bangkok to here, 16 hours, 3rd class - means you get the hard seats, but at least you get you OWN hard seat, and no one is trying to squash in next to you, or pile into the aisle or onto the roof - so it was an incredibly relaxing ride compared to the bus in Nepal! We've had some incredible food here - lots of street food including green coconuts - they chop the top with a machete, stick in a straw, and voila, you drink the water, then scoop out the soft rubbery coconut, so delicious. We've learned about tamarinds - look like a big brown bean pod, but inside is something like a combination of date, fig, and prune, with seeds that are hard and smooth and feel like you lost a tooth while chewing! Then there's the noodle bowls - for 20 baht (about 65 cents) you get a huge bowl of some combination of noodles/vegies/chicken (okay, we've had to revise our vegetarianism a bit while traveling)/spices, with bean sprouts and lettuce on top. So many things we have no idea what it is - you point and buy and try it, and you still have no idea what it is! Dragonfruit blended with ice, sticky rice rolled into balls with guava and sesame seeds and sugar, coconut flavoring in everything. Our favorite eating spot is at the night market, card tables and plastic chairs set up in a vacant lot - one man and his wok and over 100 choices on the menu, all for about $1 per dish!
There is a huge contrast, though, between the "budget" places, and the all-out first-world tourist places. You can spend a LOT of money in this country! In our hotel (budget of course), the higher you go, the cheaper the room. So of course we are on the top floor - you have to walk up 7 flights of stairs, and there's a shared bathroom, and a ceiling fan that feels like it's about ready to blast off when you turn it on, but it's a really cool, colonial type building with plants trailing down the front from the roof and the floor balconies. So the walls and rooms are a little dingy - there are trees and lots of plants in the entry way (no door, the front is just an open air lounge), and it's off the main street, so not too noisy. It's even got a small swimming pool! So we're enjoying our time in Chiang Mai.
One evening we went to a "Monk Chat" at one of the wats. The Suen Dok Wat, which is affiliated with a Buddhist university, holds "monk chats" three nights a week. We were expecting some sort of lecture on Buddhism, but what it turned out to be was monks chatting with us (hmmm...maybe that's why it's called "Monk Chat"!). The three of us were at a table with 4 or 5 monks, all eager to practice their English and find out more about us! So we all chatted for two and a half hours, about everything from what we do, to what they do, to the weather, to the politics in Myanmar (Burma), to environmental issues, to meditation and yes, there even was some Buddhist philosophies thrown in here and there. It really was an incredible evening - these monks come from all over SE Asia, and are really friendly and personable. We were a little worried at first, when it seemed like this one on one thing, but it turned out to be a highlight - a bit exhausting because you have to listen so carefully to understand their English, and you have to be "on" all the time - yes, tiring for us introverts - but we had a blast, and it's just another bizarre and wonderful experience to have in our memory banks!
Pachaderm Ponderings at the Elephant Sanctuary, our volunteer stint December 14 - 27:
I'll start with Christmas Day. The morning found a small group of us crawling through bamboo jungles with machetes, chopping young and tender grasses (bamboo is a grass, just sometimes a REALLY BIG grass) for elephant munchies. After a harrowing ride back to the park atop our load (90% of it produced by our local counterparts who made our meager efforts seem like mere twiddling) we then headed up to Elephant Haven, a refuge further up in the mountains and jungle - about 9 of us volunteers and a family of 6 elephants - (an aside - the elephants here have made their own "families" of unrelated elephants - in the wild you have related females and young males - the males go off by themselves when older - but here, since they all come from different places, they've been allowed to form their own families - end of aside) - first walking along the road for a couple of hours, then crossing a river on a bamboo raft (like something out of Tom Sawyer) - the elephants of course just wade and loll in the water - then another hour up a trail through the jungle, arriving finally at a little thatched hut on stilts on a hillside amid the tall trees and giant bamboo. Such a quiet and peaceful spot - the elephants are loose all night to munch away the hours wherever they like. We had a campfire (it's amazing the place hasn't burned down, because the fire is on the deck and throws embers everywhere. The place itself is falling apart - you have to be careful where you step or you'll step right through the bamboo floor!), and our Thai leader, a woman who has been with the park since the beginning, told stories and shared her quiet but intense experiences, in her quiet, calm, Thai way.
After everyone else had gone to bed (sleeping bags on the bamboo floor of the open-air shelter, the mosquito nets giving it a truly exotic, tropical feel), Marc and I remained by the fire (Raina was too tired to stay awake), sipping rum that one of the volunteers had brought to share for Christmas, listening to a million crickets and frogs, and the occasional rumbling elephant in the distance (a sound, by the way, straight out of Jurassic Park - where's the T-Rex?), the screen of leaves and branches of the forest canopy high above catching the twinkle of stars. Such peacefulness after the hubbub of the last two and a half months of third world existence.
A beautiful beautiful Christmas Day, though we did miss the quiet, the snow, the sledding, the caroling, and all the twinkling lights and glittering hoarfrost back in the Cascades! Christmas Eve was even more bizarre - the park put on a big show which involved the staff doing indiginous dances, Joy to the World sung in Thai, and a cabaret revue straight out of Vegas (with professionals from Chiang Mai). So we had a great time for Christmas, even though it didn't feel like Christmas!
So, Elephant Nature Park (not really an inspiring name to us Westerners who hear the words "nature park" and imagine a certain petting zoolike quality, but English in Thailand is really different, and translating things is really a huge cultural experience in itself). We were volunteers for two weeks. The sanctuary is about an hour and a half north of Chiang Mai, and is a place that is basically trying to change the image of tourism (as it relates to elephants) in a country mired in tradition, and a tourist base (Westerners) ignorant of what goes on behind the scenes with the elephants. They have over 30 rescued elephants at the park itself - they are mostly rescued from abusive, unhealthy situations - each elephant has its own story - one was a drug addict, it's owner keeping it on amphetamines in order to work her day and night, one had part of a foot blown off by a land mine, many were beaten and forced to work (for tourists) long hours on the streets of Bangkok, many had not enough food, and on and on and on. It breaks your heart. Most domestic elephants (all?) have had to go through this training period called "pajaan," which is basically ritual torture, in order to break the elephants spirit. They are beaten with sticks and sharp hooks, they are tied in a tiny cage for days and weeks, they are deprived of food and water and sleep - it's a horrible thing. And the training continues the more they want them to do tricks for tourists...
The park is unique in Thailand, because it is trying to move tourism away from elephant entertainment - like elephant painting and soccer and elephant rides, (which mostly involve abuse and mistreatment of elephants) - and toward a more natural view of elephants, while learning about and interacting with them. The founder "Lek" is an amazing woman who has devoted her life to changing the lot of elephants in Thailand, and who believes in love and respect - such simple words, but so hard for a culture and world to achieve. She's been featured on National Geographic, BBC, and more, and has won many awards ("Hero of the Planet" from Ford Foundation, "Hero of Asia from Time Magazine) as well as having had to go into hiding for a time when there was a contract out for her life (she is not appreciated by many in the tourist industry). Raina had a chance to interview her one on one, so you can ask Raina for more information!
As volunteers we were like Holden's "maverick" crew - we did whatever labor job they had on hand - though some of these jobs were a bit different than the Holden crew would encounter - scooping elephant poop (not bad, since the poop is mostly undigested vegetation - they even make paper out of cleaned elephant poop!), cutting grass/bamboo or cornstalks with a machete (for elephant food), cleaning squash and cukes and watermelons (to remove possible pesticides) for elephant food, feeding elephants (they also wander around all day and eat on their own - elephants spend about 18 hours a day eating, 4 hours sleeping, and 2 hours playing poker - okay, playing and relaxing, not poker), bathing elephants (one of our benefits of getting close to the elephant - we go right in the water with them), riding in the backs of trucks up bouncing rutted dirt roads and coming back so covered with dust that my hair was turning BROWN!, or riding on top of our pile of cut bamboo, racing down the highway, hoping the driver was not on his cell phone but paying attention to the traffic! We helped at the medical center, where they use both traditional herbal and Western medicines.
We wandered about the place and there are elephants everywhere (it's a very large place), and sometimes it seemed like we were on the "wrong" side of the fence at the zoo!
Thailand is not the most organized country, and so of course there were frustrations that we, as Westerners, have difficulty understanding, but really, this place is incredible for what it is trying to accomplish, and we were so happy to have been a part of it! AND to get to hang out with elephants! I don't really know why they've never stepped on anyone, except that I guess they are very particular what they step on and where they put their feet...however, we did have to move out of the way quickly a few times, when the elephants got a little rambunctious!
The place itself was very peaceful, especially at night - dark skies with the crescent moon lying on its back rather than its side, Orion also looking like it was going upside down, the North Star way down low, crickets cricketing, the river flowing quietly by.
Well, I'm sure you are sick of reading and are saying hey where are the photographs!? Well, we have tons and tons of photos - come visit in Ashland and we'll put you to sleep - but really, I plan to post photos right after we get back to the states (January 25, coming right up!). It's been too complicated and time-consuming to have good computer access, so I've decided to just wait a few more weeks, hope you can too!
So next on the schedule - tomorrow we head off for Cambodia! Angkor Wat and Siem Reap, and then a boat down the river to Phnom Phen, then finally to some secluded beach south of Bangkok to round off our journeys (yeah, like there are any secluded beaches in SE Asia or the South Pacific!). We miss you all! Thanks for listening.
Sawasdee-ka!
So, the title of this posting: "Same same...but different." The first time we heard this we didn't realize how endearing it would become (to us at least). So much so that Raina bought a t-shirt with same same on the front, and but different on the back. It really should be the national motto. We hear it all the time (at least the same same part), and it has many subtle meanings, but mostly I think it's that in Thailand, everyone wants to be nice and no conflicts, so "same same...but different" is a way to agree even when you may not really mean you are agreeing. Also, in the Thai language there is no word for "very" (like very long would be long long) so same same would be like very same, and with the but different added on you can mean "exactly the same, but not really but I don't want to offend you by disagreeing and so voila, a perfect little saying that you and I both know what it means but makes everyone happy"!
Enough of that! New Year's Eve! Let's see, here it's 2:30 p.m. on January 1st, so that means only one half hour to zero countdown for you westcoasters! So funny to think of you all celebrating right this very moment!
On to New Year's Eve in Chiang Mai:
Fairy lights in the sky. Soft, golden candlelights, flowing against a background of stars, the black night glittered with hundreds of magical lanterns rising up and up and up, mingling with the Milky Way, forming another galaxy of slowly spinning nether-lights and swirling fireflies, firelights, passing the face of the full moon. A never ending progression of lights, for hours on end, sparkling, burning, some with showers of sparks and silver tails, others pulsing and shining with an ethereal glow.
It's a scene straight out of a fantasy movie - Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter? Legend? - the only thing missing is the London Symphony Orchestra! (Instead we have loud blaring Thai pop music complete with go-go dancers.)
It's New Year's Eve in Chiang Mai. The lanterns are oil drum sized tissue paper lanterns that rise into the sky like little hot air balloons. The "candle" that provides the heat is a cross section of paper towel roll dipped in wax - you light them and send them into the sky for good luck in the new year (so we were assured by the woman we bought ours from). Environmental and safety ramifications aside (there are now paper lantern shells strewn all over the city, and it's a wonder nothing caught fire from the many that ran into trees and power lines, or from the ones that burst into flames and fell out of the sky anywhere and everywhere) - these things aside - it's a SPECTACULAR sight - something from a magical world - people started sending them up as soon as it got dark, hundreds and hundreds rising a thousand feet and more into the sky, drifting with the wind, different directions at different elevations, the spent ones gently falling back to earth, barely perceptible as shadows.
Then at midnight - fireworks - straight overhead - an incredible display - soon the ash started falling on our heads, so we squinted our eyes and kept watching, entranced by the glittering explosions amidst the floating fairy lights.
We are truly in another world.
SO! Here we are in Thailand! Quite the change from Nepal. In one plane flight we went from chilly to tropical, from the 11th century to the 21st century (relatively), from stupas to wats (what's a wat we can walk to? you may ask, or if you're British, wots a wot and can we wok? Okay, I think I've heard too many accents. Answer - monasteries/temples) - back to changes from Nepal...from prayer flags and monks in maroon to golden spires and monks in orange, from squalor to slightly less squalor, from dal bhat and more dal bhat to sticky rice and mango and all the fresh vegetables you can imagine, from traffic chaos to traffic chaos with lines, from rupees to baht, from an incomprehesible and unreadable language to an incomprehensible and unreadable language with tones!
It still amazes me, both here and in Nepal - the contrast between the beauty of the monasteries (the wats) and the surrounding squalor (I know I just used that word above, but it's the only description I can think of at the moment). The wats are incredible monuments, spires, golden buddhas, beautifully painted prayer rooms - the gold and more gold and the amazingly fine paint jobs, the intricate carvings, the mosaic mirrored colored tiles inlaid meticulously over an entire building - it's unbelievable really - spectacular, absolutely beautiful sparkling brilliance amid noise, traffic, garbage, sewage - not nearly the amount of filth as in Kathmandu - there is still sewage running through the streets, but to tell the truth, when we arrived here our first thought was, wow, it's so clean! - I think maybe our viewpoint has been skewed a bit - but still, such artistry and care and quiet beauty surrounded by an area that is seemingly devoid of aesthetics, or cleanliness, or care of creation. It's a bizarre conundrum - and it's that very surrounding community that totally supports the wat and its monks (Thais are almost all Buddhist and very supportive of the wats).
And the traffic. It never stops. It's like a river, contantly flowing along, building as evening comes, until night when the floodgates open and the river is a torrent impossible to ford. You learn to time things exactly, to be patient, bold, but to take no undue risks, and eventually you get across. There are thousands of motorbikes, tuk-tuks (three wheeled taxi cart things), cars, trucks with loudspeakers advertising full moon parties, or blaring something in Thai (I'm sorry, but over the loudspeakers the language sounds exactly like Guido in Star Wars - the not very nice creature who meets Han Solo in the bar in Mos Isley, I think of that every time I hear it and have to smile), people pushing carts with Thai ice creams, juices (they make it when you order it), you name it.
We took the night train from Bangkok to here, 16 hours, 3rd class - means you get the hard seats, but at least you get you OWN hard seat, and no one is trying to squash in next to you, or pile into the aisle or onto the roof - so it was an incredibly relaxing ride compared to the bus in Nepal! We've had some incredible food here - lots of street food including green coconuts - they chop the top with a machete, stick in a straw, and voila, you drink the water, then scoop out the soft rubbery coconut, so delicious. We've learned about tamarinds - look like a big brown bean pod, but inside is something like a combination of date, fig, and prune, with seeds that are hard and smooth and feel like you lost a tooth while chewing! Then there's the noodle bowls - for 20 baht (about 65 cents) you get a huge bowl of some combination of noodles/vegies/chicken (okay, we've had to revise our vegetarianism a bit while traveling)/spices, with bean sprouts and lettuce on top. So many things we have no idea what it is - you point and buy and try it, and you still have no idea what it is! Dragonfruit blended with ice, sticky rice rolled into balls with guava and sesame seeds and sugar, coconut flavoring in everything. Our favorite eating spot is at the night market, card tables and plastic chairs set up in a vacant lot - one man and his wok and over 100 choices on the menu, all for about $1 per dish!
There is a huge contrast, though, between the "budget" places, and the all-out first-world tourist places. You can spend a LOT of money in this country! In our hotel (budget of course), the higher you go, the cheaper the room. So of course we are on the top floor - you have to walk up 7 flights of stairs, and there's a shared bathroom, and a ceiling fan that feels like it's about ready to blast off when you turn it on, but it's a really cool, colonial type building with plants trailing down the front from the roof and the floor balconies. So the walls and rooms are a little dingy - there are trees and lots of plants in the entry way (no door, the front is just an open air lounge), and it's off the main street, so not too noisy. It's even got a small swimming pool! So we're enjoying our time in Chiang Mai.
One evening we went to a "Monk Chat" at one of the wats. The Suen Dok Wat, which is affiliated with a Buddhist university, holds "monk chats" three nights a week. We were expecting some sort of lecture on Buddhism, but what it turned out to be was monks chatting with us (hmmm...maybe that's why it's called "Monk Chat"!). The three of us were at a table with 4 or 5 monks, all eager to practice their English and find out more about us! So we all chatted for two and a half hours, about everything from what we do, to what they do, to the weather, to the politics in Myanmar (Burma), to environmental issues, to meditation and yes, there even was some Buddhist philosophies thrown in here and there. It really was an incredible evening - these monks come from all over SE Asia, and are really friendly and personable. We were a little worried at first, when it seemed like this one on one thing, but it turned out to be a highlight - a bit exhausting because you have to listen so carefully to understand their English, and you have to be "on" all the time - yes, tiring for us introverts - but we had a blast, and it's just another bizarre and wonderful experience to have in our memory banks!
Pachaderm Ponderings at the Elephant Sanctuary, our volunteer stint December 14 - 27:
I'll start with Christmas Day. The morning found a small group of us crawling through bamboo jungles with machetes, chopping young and tender grasses (bamboo is a grass, just sometimes a REALLY BIG grass) for elephant munchies. After a harrowing ride back to the park atop our load (90% of it produced by our local counterparts who made our meager efforts seem like mere twiddling) we then headed up to Elephant Haven, a refuge further up in the mountains and jungle - about 9 of us volunteers and a family of 6 elephants - (an aside - the elephants here have made their own "families" of unrelated elephants - in the wild you have related females and young males - the males go off by themselves when older - but here, since they all come from different places, they've been allowed to form their own families - end of aside) - first walking along the road for a couple of hours, then crossing a river on a bamboo raft (like something out of Tom Sawyer) - the elephants of course just wade and loll in the water - then another hour up a trail through the jungle, arriving finally at a little thatched hut on stilts on a hillside amid the tall trees and giant bamboo. Such a quiet and peaceful spot - the elephants are loose all night to munch away the hours wherever they like. We had a campfire (it's amazing the place hasn't burned down, because the fire is on the deck and throws embers everywhere. The place itself is falling apart - you have to be careful where you step or you'll step right through the bamboo floor!), and our Thai leader, a woman who has been with the park since the beginning, told stories and shared her quiet but intense experiences, in her quiet, calm, Thai way.
After everyone else had gone to bed (sleeping bags on the bamboo floor of the open-air shelter, the mosquito nets giving it a truly exotic, tropical feel), Marc and I remained by the fire (Raina was too tired to stay awake), sipping rum that one of the volunteers had brought to share for Christmas, listening to a million crickets and frogs, and the occasional rumbling elephant in the distance (a sound, by the way, straight out of Jurassic Park - where's the T-Rex?), the screen of leaves and branches of the forest canopy high above catching the twinkle of stars. Such peacefulness after the hubbub of the last two and a half months of third world existence.
A beautiful beautiful Christmas Day, though we did miss the quiet, the snow, the sledding, the caroling, and all the twinkling lights and glittering hoarfrost back in the Cascades! Christmas Eve was even more bizarre - the park put on a big show which involved the staff doing indiginous dances, Joy to the World sung in Thai, and a cabaret revue straight out of Vegas (with professionals from Chiang Mai). So we had a great time for Christmas, even though it didn't feel like Christmas!
So, Elephant Nature Park (not really an inspiring name to us Westerners who hear the words "nature park" and imagine a certain petting zoolike quality, but English in Thailand is really different, and translating things is really a huge cultural experience in itself). We were volunteers for two weeks. The sanctuary is about an hour and a half north of Chiang Mai, and is a place that is basically trying to change the image of tourism (as it relates to elephants) in a country mired in tradition, and a tourist base (Westerners) ignorant of what goes on behind the scenes with the elephants. They have over 30 rescued elephants at the park itself - they are mostly rescued from abusive, unhealthy situations - each elephant has its own story - one was a drug addict, it's owner keeping it on amphetamines in order to work her day and night, one had part of a foot blown off by a land mine, many were beaten and forced to work (for tourists) long hours on the streets of Bangkok, many had not enough food, and on and on and on. It breaks your heart. Most domestic elephants (all?) have had to go through this training period called "pajaan," which is basically ritual torture, in order to break the elephants spirit. They are beaten with sticks and sharp hooks, they are tied in a tiny cage for days and weeks, they are deprived of food and water and sleep - it's a horrible thing. And the training continues the more they want them to do tricks for tourists...
The park is unique in Thailand, because it is trying to move tourism away from elephant entertainment - like elephant painting and soccer and elephant rides, (which mostly involve abuse and mistreatment of elephants) - and toward a more natural view of elephants, while learning about and interacting with them. The founder "Lek" is an amazing woman who has devoted her life to changing the lot of elephants in Thailand, and who believes in love and respect - such simple words, but so hard for a culture and world to achieve. She's been featured on National Geographic, BBC, and more, and has won many awards ("Hero of the Planet" from Ford Foundation, "Hero of Asia from Time Magazine) as well as having had to go into hiding for a time when there was a contract out for her life (she is not appreciated by many in the tourist industry). Raina had a chance to interview her one on one, so you can ask Raina for more information!
As volunteers we were like Holden's "maverick" crew - we did whatever labor job they had on hand - though some of these jobs were a bit different than the Holden crew would encounter - scooping elephant poop (not bad, since the poop is mostly undigested vegetation - they even make paper out of cleaned elephant poop!), cutting grass/bamboo or cornstalks with a machete (for elephant food), cleaning squash and cukes and watermelons (to remove possible pesticides) for elephant food, feeding elephants (they also wander around all day and eat on their own - elephants spend about 18 hours a day eating, 4 hours sleeping, and 2 hours playing poker - okay, playing and relaxing, not poker), bathing elephants (one of our benefits of getting close to the elephant - we go right in the water with them), riding in the backs of trucks up bouncing rutted dirt roads and coming back so covered with dust that my hair was turning BROWN!, or riding on top of our pile of cut bamboo, racing down the highway, hoping the driver was not on his cell phone but paying attention to the traffic! We helped at the medical center, where they use both traditional herbal and Western medicines.
We wandered about the place and there are elephants everywhere (it's a very large place), and sometimes it seemed like we were on the "wrong" side of the fence at the zoo!
Thailand is not the most organized country, and so of course there were frustrations that we, as Westerners, have difficulty understanding, but really, this place is incredible for what it is trying to accomplish, and we were so happy to have been a part of it! AND to get to hang out with elephants! I don't really know why they've never stepped on anyone, except that I guess they are very particular what they step on and where they put their feet...however, we did have to move out of the way quickly a few times, when the elephants got a little rambunctious!
The place itself was very peaceful, especially at night - dark skies with the crescent moon lying on its back rather than its side, Orion also looking like it was going upside down, the North Star way down low, crickets cricketing, the river flowing quietly by.
Well, I'm sure you are sick of reading and are saying hey where are the photographs!? Well, we have tons and tons of photos - come visit in Ashland and we'll put you to sleep - but really, I plan to post photos right after we get back to the states (January 25, coming right up!). It's been too complicated and time-consuming to have good computer access, so I've decided to just wait a few more weeks, hope you can too!
So next on the schedule - tomorrow we head off for Cambodia! Angkor Wat and Siem Reap, and then a boat down the river to Phnom Phen, then finally to some secluded beach south of Bangkok to round off our journeys (yeah, like there are any secluded beaches in SE Asia or the South Pacific!). We miss you all! Thanks for listening.
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