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.