I have been an absolutely terrible blogger. Completely fell off the wagon. I suppose partly its just that Korea has stopped feeling like a foreign place; now it's just the place where I live. So things in daily life don't seem as remarkable as they once did and its hard to believe anyone would still want to hear about it. But that being said, the last four months have definitely NOT been boring. There's always so much to do and see. So I'm going to post a few videos and photos to get caught up as best as I can. In just 7 weeks my Korean adventure will be over and I'll be returning to Canada, looking for my next one. I've really started to play with windows movie maker lately, I've been enjoying it alot! Here's my first attempt at syncing up music with video and photos, and lucky for you its of my "Shark Dive" experience at Busan Aquarium that I went to in mid-May of this year. We had a great time. I shot all the videos/photos myself. Quite exciting to be that close to the sharks!
Showing posts with label wildlife. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wildlife. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Sabah, So Good!
Selemat Petang! Wow - time flies! Already so far behind in the blogging!
I'll try to update you as best I can on how we spent the last few days we had in Sabah, the eastern province of Borneo, Malaysia. I'll save the recent excursion to Miri & Mulu National Park for the next entry.
Our second full day in Borneo was a full day indeed. Because of the wet weather (see previous entry) we decided to for-go a two day hike up Mt. Kinabalu and opted for the less exciting, but convenient day trip offered by most of the tourist operators in the area. The tour took us, a middle-aged Japanese man, and a family from India with two adorable little ones in a groaning minivan up into the Kinabalu mountains (and the clouds) before going into the park's Botanical gardens for an informative introduction to rain forest flora. After which we enjoyed a tasty Malaysian lunch before driving to the Poring Hot Springs for a fantastic walk through the rain forest canopy via a suspended walkway. Then AA, SB and I took a dip in the hot spring tubs. By mid-afternoon the rain had moved into the mountains and we spent most of the 1.5 hour drive home slowly winding along the mountain roads covered by clouds. When we arrived back in the city, we hit up an Italian restaurant across the street from our hostel for some fantastic thin-crust pizza (I'm on a vacation from Korean food, not Canadian, after all).
The next day was the big highlight of our short time in Sabah. We were pick up early by Mini-van and drove 3 hours through the stunning countryside to the tiny town of Tenom, where we got on an old rickety train to get to the launch point for white water rafting on the Padas river! The course boasts level III and IV rapids, but thanks to all the rain the day before, the guides advised us that we would actually be navigating level IV and V rapids instead. In the minivan, the only folks who appeared to be rafting were the three of us and Ronnie, our guide. The other men in the van were simply catching a ride to Beaufort en route. However, when we arrived at the train station in Tenom we were joined by 40 Brunei soldiers on an Adventure Training course (a break from their usual boot camp routine). Needless to say, we were a popular addition to the group. The muddy Padas river was all riled up from the rain and after some brief safety instruction and strapping into our jackets and helmets, we hit the river. It was the most exciting, heart-pounding experience of my life. Our raft capsized once in a really tough section of rapid, only Ronnie managed to stay in the boat. Most of my raft members resurfaced close to raft and scrambled back inside quickly. However me and one of the soldiers found ourselves quickly being swept down river away from the boats, struggling to hang on to our paddles and figure out which direction our boat was in. We followed Ronnie's urgent advice to swim right toward the bank and it wasn't long before we were back in the boat and back in business. We rafted for about an hour and a half before stopping in a (relatively) calm stretch for lunch at a stilt-home of faded clapboard. Toddlers chased puppies and chickens around the grounds while we chowed down on some delicious home-made Malay food. It was exactly the break (and fuel) we needed before we went back out on the river to finish the course. Our second time round, our team seemed to hit our stride, navigating the rapids with more confidence and grace than the first time round. Near the end of the course, the river calmed significantly and we were able to hop into the river for swimming/body rafting. I climbed out of the raft onto the bank thoroughly soaked on rubbery legs and feeling elated.
(I'm sorry, I have to interrupt the narrative here for a moment: Korea has been following me everywhere on this trip! K-pop has just started blaring in this cyber cafe - the group 2NE1 for those of you who know who that is, if you don't just Youtube 'em - which reminds me that I forgot to tell you about the 100 or so Korean tourists who managed to find us on Mamutik island. They were impossible to miss - all wearing matching baby pink polo shirts and big sun-visors and staying far away from the beach. Oh gawd, why? Instead they blared bad Korean music, Noraebonged and played coordinated group clapping/towel waving games on a green space near the public toilets...oh Korea, if you're going to follow me all the way to a beach in frikkin' Malaysia, at least try to enjoy it! We've also met folks from Korea at nearly every stop - though thankfully they are the more adventurous type!)
Anyways, we all made it out of the river alive, feeling fantastic. We had another rocking, rickety train ride to Beaufort I believe and then a shorter ride back to KK. One of the guides of the trip, Angelo, rode with us and AA and I really enjoyed chatting with him about his rafting experiences, and some Sabah environmental and political issues.
Arriving back in KK, we debated about heading out to see some of the nightlife (which would include partying with those Brunei soldiers, a few happened to be staying at the same Hostel as us) or getting up real early to catch the ferry to Brunei. We wound up doing neither. The plan to go to Brunei got kaiboshed when I did a little online research around 1am and found it really difficult to find availability to Mulu National Park in Sarawak, a fly-in only location which we were really looking forward too. We decided it would be better to stay in KK at least one more day and get that part of the trip sorted out, rather than delay booking it and miss the opportunity. So we weighed our options, talked to a few airlines and managed to get some flights but they meant taking a flight to Miri in Sarawalk that night. So we're skipping Brunei this time. To be honest, we were mostly going for the stamps in our passports and since Brunei is quite a bit more expensive than the rest of Borneo, we felt it was better to spend that cash in Sarawak where we would get the most out of it. After all the tickets were bought, it was still only lunch time, so we grabbed some grub and our bathing suits and hopped on a speedboat to Sapi Island, another island part of the same park as Mamutik. This island had much better snorkelling and assortments of fish! I still had the bottle of fish food (re: breadcrumbs) from Mamutik and had blast starting a literal feeding frenzy around me in the bright teal water. (You'll love the video, once I get it posted!) Amanda and I took a short hike through the interior of the island to the other side, where we enjoyed a fantastic view of the sea stretching out to the horizon. Then we headed down to the abandoned beaches of the island accessible by hiking trail, but not by boats. We found several fresh monitor lizard tracks in the sand. And a few hops and scrambles-over-rocks later, we found 3 of those giants slowly lumbering across the sand. Two of them quickly slipped behind some rocks and into the forest (I'm sure they'd heard us coming a mile away), but a slowpoke patiently waited in the sand for us to go by (we had to go waist deep into the water to give him his space, we didn't feel like testing how aggressive monitor lizards are). We caught our speedboat back to the jetty at 5 pm, enjoyed a dinner of delicious Arabic food on the wharf and finally got to watch a spectacular KK sunset, which all our guidebooks had raved about, but we'd seemed to miss every night so far. As the brilliant golds and oranges began to fade into magenta and purple hues we headed back to the hostel to pick up our bags and head to the airport.
As our plane lifted off, I felt reluctant to go. I know that Sabah has so much more to offer, so much to see and do that we simply couldn't get to because of time and budget constraints. It's definitely on my list of places to return to. Kota Kinabalu turned out to be a great base-camp for our day-trip excursions and a good introduction to Malaysia, a great place to get our feet wet (Literally and figuratively). At the same time, I was so eager to get to Miri and head on to Mulu National Park - we had seen so little of the Borneo rain forest, soon we would be flying into the heart of it!
I'll try to update you as best I can on how we spent the last few days we had in Sabah, the eastern province of Borneo, Malaysia. I'll save the recent excursion to Miri & Mulu National Park for the next entry.
Our second full day in Borneo was a full day indeed. Because of the wet weather (see previous entry) we decided to for-go a two day hike up Mt. Kinabalu and opted for the less exciting, but convenient day trip offered by most of the tourist operators in the area. The tour took us, a middle-aged Japanese man, and a family from India with two adorable little ones in a groaning minivan up into the Kinabalu mountains (and the clouds) before going into the park's Botanical gardens for an informative introduction to rain forest flora. After which we enjoyed a tasty Malaysian lunch before driving to the Poring Hot Springs for a fantastic walk through the rain forest canopy via a suspended walkway. Then AA, SB and I took a dip in the hot spring tubs. By mid-afternoon the rain had moved into the mountains and we spent most of the 1.5 hour drive home slowly winding along the mountain roads covered by clouds. When we arrived back in the city, we hit up an Italian restaurant across the street from our hostel for some fantastic thin-crust pizza (I'm on a vacation from Korean food, not Canadian, after all).
The next day was the big highlight of our short time in Sabah. We were pick up early by Mini-van and drove 3 hours through the stunning countryside to the tiny town of Tenom, where we got on an old rickety train to get to the launch point for white water rafting on the Padas river! The course boasts level III and IV rapids, but thanks to all the rain the day before, the guides advised us that we would actually be navigating level IV and V rapids instead. In the minivan, the only folks who appeared to be rafting were the three of us and Ronnie, our guide. The other men in the van were simply catching a ride to Beaufort en route. However, when we arrived at the train station in Tenom we were joined by 40 Brunei soldiers on an Adventure Training course (a break from their usual boot camp routine). Needless to say, we were a popular addition to the group. The muddy Padas river was all riled up from the rain and after some brief safety instruction and strapping into our jackets and helmets, we hit the river. It was the most exciting, heart-pounding experience of my life. Our raft capsized once in a really tough section of rapid, only Ronnie managed to stay in the boat. Most of my raft members resurfaced close to raft and scrambled back inside quickly. However me and one of the soldiers found ourselves quickly being swept down river away from the boats, struggling to hang on to our paddles and figure out which direction our boat was in. We followed Ronnie's urgent advice to swim right toward the bank and it wasn't long before we were back in the boat and back in business. We rafted for about an hour and a half before stopping in a (relatively) calm stretch for lunch at a stilt-home of faded clapboard. Toddlers chased puppies and chickens around the grounds while we chowed down on some delicious home-made Malay food. It was exactly the break (and fuel) we needed before we went back out on the river to finish the course. Our second time round, our team seemed to hit our stride, navigating the rapids with more confidence and grace than the first time round. Near the end of the course, the river calmed significantly and we were able to hop into the river for swimming/body rafting. I climbed out of the raft onto the bank thoroughly soaked on rubbery legs and feeling elated.
(I'm sorry, I have to interrupt the narrative here for a moment: Korea has been following me everywhere on this trip! K-pop has just started blaring in this cyber cafe - the group 2NE1 for those of you who know who that is, if you don't just Youtube 'em - which reminds me that I forgot to tell you about the 100 or so Korean tourists who managed to find us on Mamutik island. They were impossible to miss - all wearing matching baby pink polo shirts and big sun-visors and staying far away from the beach. Oh gawd, why? Instead they blared bad Korean music, Noraebonged and played coordinated group clapping/towel waving games on a green space near the public toilets...oh Korea, if you're going to follow me all the way to a beach in frikkin' Malaysia, at least try to enjoy it! We've also met folks from Korea at nearly every stop - though thankfully they are the more adventurous type!)
Anyways, we all made it out of the river alive, feeling fantastic. We had another rocking, rickety train ride to Beaufort I believe and then a shorter ride back to KK. One of the guides of the trip, Angelo, rode with us and AA and I really enjoyed chatting with him about his rafting experiences, and some Sabah environmental and political issues.
Arriving back in KK, we debated about heading out to see some of the nightlife (which would include partying with those Brunei soldiers, a few happened to be staying at the same Hostel as us) or getting up real early to catch the ferry to Brunei. We wound up doing neither. The plan to go to Brunei got kaiboshed when I did a little online research around 1am and found it really difficult to find availability to Mulu National Park in Sarawak, a fly-in only location which we were really looking forward too. We decided it would be better to stay in KK at least one more day and get that part of the trip sorted out, rather than delay booking it and miss the opportunity. So we weighed our options, talked to a few airlines and managed to get some flights but they meant taking a flight to Miri in Sarawalk that night. So we're skipping Brunei this time. To be honest, we were mostly going for the stamps in our passports and since Brunei is quite a bit more expensive than the rest of Borneo, we felt it was better to spend that cash in Sarawak where we would get the most out of it. After all the tickets were bought, it was still only lunch time, so we grabbed some grub and our bathing suits and hopped on a speedboat to Sapi Island, another island part of the same park as Mamutik. This island had much better snorkelling and assortments of fish! I still had the bottle of fish food (re: breadcrumbs) from Mamutik and had blast starting a literal feeding frenzy around me in the bright teal water. (You'll love the video, once I get it posted!) Amanda and I took a short hike through the interior of the island to the other side, where we enjoyed a fantastic view of the sea stretching out to the horizon. Then we headed down to the abandoned beaches of the island accessible by hiking trail, but not by boats. We found several fresh monitor lizard tracks in the sand. And a few hops and scrambles-over-rocks later, we found 3 of those giants slowly lumbering across the sand. Two of them quickly slipped behind some rocks and into the forest (I'm sure they'd heard us coming a mile away), but a slowpoke patiently waited in the sand for us to go by (we had to go waist deep into the water to give him his space, we didn't feel like testing how aggressive monitor lizards are). We caught our speedboat back to the jetty at 5 pm, enjoyed a dinner of delicious Arabic food on the wharf and finally got to watch a spectacular KK sunset, which all our guidebooks had raved about, but we'd seemed to miss every night so far. As the brilliant golds and oranges began to fade into magenta and purple hues we headed back to the hostel to pick up our bags and head to the airport.
As our plane lifted off, I felt reluctant to go. I know that Sabah has so much more to offer, so much to see and do that we simply couldn't get to because of time and budget constraints. It's definitely on my list of places to return to. Kota Kinabalu turned out to be a great base-camp for our day-trip excursions and a good introduction to Malaysia, a great place to get our feet wet (Literally and figuratively). At the same time, I was so eager to get to Miri and head on to Mulu National Park - we had seen so little of the Borneo rain forest, soon we would be flying into the heart of it!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Coming at Ya from Borneo Malaysia!!!
Hey All - I guess I spoiled the surprise, but I'm writing to you from Malaysia!!! Yesterday we (Amanda A, hereafter AA, and Shari B, hereafter SB) flew from Seoul to Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of the Sabah province of Borneo Malaysia. The plan is to travel west from here through Brunei and the Malaysian province of Sarawak, then hop on a boat or a plan to Singapore and explore some of Peninsular Malaysia. Well that's the first 3 weeks. I'm splitting off from the girls in Kuala Lampur to fly to Chiang Mai Thailand, for a week at Elephant Nature Park (you may recall me gushing about this place last year).
Now I realize that my last entry ended in November. I've decided I'm not going to write up a huge thing about December/New Years. One of my goals for the New Year was to update this blog more frequently, therefore have shorter entries, easier for ya to digest. A comment I just had from my mom confirms this as a good idea. Here's the highlights from the end of 2009:
- weekend Christmas shopping in Seoul (ate 2.5 feet of subway sandwiches while there, I'm not ashamed!)
- finals at school + Christmas holidays coming up = lots of watching "Merry Christmas Mr. Bean" and singing carols in the classroom
- had a REAL turkey dinner at Jodie and Stephen's place with a few friends, soo soo good!
- Skyped with family back home
- toured around SK with my friend Mike (who was visiting all the way from San Francisco!), showed around Gwangju, Suncheon and Seoul. We went up Namsan Tower (the Seoul equivalent of the CN Tower) and did a temple stay at HwaGaeSa.
- Snowball fight with Zen Master and 3:00 AM meditations at HwaGaesa
- 5 days of "Additional In-Service Teacher Training" at Seoul's NIIEC centre
- Desking warmingin a cold teachers office (but you've heard my take on that!)
Here's the pics from it all, they tell the story better than I do anways. December
Also, here's some pics of me teaching (as you requested Uncle Mel!), a cornucopia of hilarious Korean signs/stuff, and the outcome of a funny student assignment. Enjoy
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming...
Ok, so landed in Kota Kinabalu around 3:45pm local time. Getting off the plane, the humidity and sweet smell hit me immediately. My guidebook gave us a good tip on looking for 'minibusses' (ie. minivans) to get into town for 2 Ringgit (60 cents) rather than taking a private taxi from the airport for 30 Ringgit ($10), so we hopped in one going the right direction. One of the passengers was a friendly local who helped us get on the correct city bus to get to the heart of downtown KK, where we could walk to our hostel. Everyone here is really friendly, and in a sincere way (as opposed to the "Friendly" people in Thailand who were happily trying to con you). We're sticking to a budget this trip, so we're staying in a dorm-style room with bunkbeds for 10 people and only fans, no air-conditioning. No privacy, but you meet lots of backpackers from all over. After checking into our hotel and changing out of our winter layers (because it was -5 when we left Seoul), we deided to hit the waterfront nightmarket for some local food for dinner. We ate fried noodles w/ chicken and veggies for $1/plate and drank ABC Miah's, the wierdest thing I've ever tried to suck through a straw. Ingredients included canned corn, condensed milk, grenadine, chopped nuts and some green stuff soaked in syrup for good measure. Shari and I also tried some mystery meat - the vendor told us it was pork, so our best guess is that we ate sections of pig tail. We wandered through the craft market and the fruit market in the hot rain. I tried two new tropical fruits: Mangosteen (very sweet and strange looking) and Duku-langsat(which is like a big grape except that you peel it and the inside comes out in sections like a citrus fruit). We loaded up with fruit to eat for breakfast the next day and made our way back to the hostel. I was exhausted - the trip had started at 10:00pm in Suncheon to catch a midnight bus from Gwangju to Seoul and then get on a Plane at a 11:00am. I'm a light sleeper so I really didn't get much if any sleep on the bus or plane. I decided to hit the showers (a good way to keep cool at night is sleep with your hair wet after all. When I got in, a little pink gecko clambered up the wall away from me. I kept my eye on him as I soaped up, and good thing I did. The little bugger climbed until he hit the ceiling and then started making his way across the ceiling directly above me. He lost his grip right above me, naturally. He landed with a loud splat at my feet. I very gracefully squealed and huddled against the door. We stared at eachother dumbfounded for a moment. Then he spotted the exit, which I just happend to be blocking. I squealed again and hopped to the opposite side of the shower as he scooted out under the door.
Today we headed to Mamutik island by speedboat from KK harbour. We thought we would get rained out, but those ugly storm clouds stayed near the mainland and we got to enjoy some swimming and snorkelling (though, as can be expected in a public swimming area, almost all the coral was dead from being stepped on), Tom Yam Soup for lunch (spicy tomato and herb soup with veggies and chicken) and happened upon a HUGE monitor lizard lounging on the rocks. No seriously, HUGE. HUUUUGGGGGGEEEE! We thought at first he was Komodo dragon. Yeah, that big.
I just finished a big dinner at the food court of a big shopping complex and am heading back to the hostel to relax for the rest of the night. Tomorrow we going to Mt Kinabalu park to do alittle touring of the area (the wet weather makes any serious climbing too much trouble for us) and check out the poring hot springs! I'll let you know how it goes. I cannot WAIT to get into that beautiful jungle that is just pressing itself up against the city. Cross your fingers for me that the rain stays away!!!
Now I realize that my last entry ended in November. I've decided I'm not going to write up a huge thing about December/New Years. One of my goals for the New Year was to update this blog more frequently, therefore have shorter entries, easier for ya to digest. A comment I just had from my mom confirms this as a good idea. Here's the highlights from the end of 2009:
- weekend Christmas shopping in Seoul (ate 2.5 feet of subway sandwiches while there, I'm not ashamed!)
- finals at school + Christmas holidays coming up = lots of watching "Merry Christmas Mr. Bean" and singing carols in the classroom
- had a REAL turkey dinner at Jodie and Stephen's place with a few friends, soo soo good!
- Skyped with family back home
- toured around SK with my friend Mike (who was visiting all the way from San Francisco!), showed around Gwangju, Suncheon and Seoul. We went up Namsan Tower (the Seoul equivalent of the CN Tower) and did a temple stay at HwaGaeSa.
- Snowball fight with Zen Master and 3:00 AM meditations at HwaGaesa
- 5 days of "Additional In-Service Teacher Training" at Seoul's NIIEC centre
- Desking warmingin a cold teachers office (but you've heard my take on that!)
Here's the pics from it all, they tell the story better than I do anways. December
Also, here's some pics of me teaching (as you requested Uncle Mel!), a cornucopia of hilarious Korean signs/stuff, and the outcome of a funny student assignment. Enjoy
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming...
Ok, so landed in Kota Kinabalu around 3:45pm local time. Getting off the plane, the humidity and sweet smell hit me immediately. My guidebook gave us a good tip on looking for 'minibusses' (ie. minivans) to get into town for 2 Ringgit (60 cents) rather than taking a private taxi from the airport for 30 Ringgit ($10), so we hopped in one going the right direction. One of the passengers was a friendly local who helped us get on the correct city bus to get to the heart of downtown KK, where we could walk to our hostel. Everyone here is really friendly, and in a sincere way (as opposed to the "Friendly" people in Thailand who were happily trying to con you). We're sticking to a budget this trip, so we're staying in a dorm-style room with bunkbeds for 10 people and only fans, no air-conditioning. No privacy, but you meet lots of backpackers from all over. After checking into our hotel and changing out of our winter layers (because it was -5 when we left Seoul), we deided to hit the waterfront nightmarket for some local food for dinner. We ate fried noodles w/ chicken and veggies for $1/plate and drank ABC Miah's, the wierdest thing I've ever tried to suck through a straw. Ingredients included canned corn, condensed milk, grenadine, chopped nuts and some green stuff soaked in syrup for good measure. Shari and I also tried some mystery meat - the vendor told us it was pork, so our best guess is that we ate sections of pig tail. We wandered through the craft market and the fruit market in the hot rain. I tried two new tropical fruits: Mangosteen (very sweet and strange looking) and Duku-langsat(which is like a big grape except that you peel it and the inside comes out in sections like a citrus fruit). We loaded up with fruit to eat for breakfast the next day and made our way back to the hostel. I was exhausted - the trip had started at 10:00pm in Suncheon to catch a midnight bus from Gwangju to Seoul and then get on a Plane at a 11:00am. I'm a light sleeper so I really didn't get much if any sleep on the bus or plane. I decided to hit the showers (a good way to keep cool at night is sleep with your hair wet after all. When I got in, a little pink gecko clambered up the wall away from me. I kept my eye on him as I soaped up, and good thing I did. The little bugger climbed until he hit the ceiling and then started making his way across the ceiling directly above me. He lost his grip right above me, naturally. He landed with a loud splat at my feet. I very gracefully squealed and huddled against the door. We stared at eachother dumbfounded for a moment. Then he spotted the exit, which I just happend to be blocking. I squealed again and hopped to the opposite side of the shower as he scooted out under the door.
Today we headed to Mamutik island by speedboat from KK harbour. We thought we would get rained out, but those ugly storm clouds stayed near the mainland and we got to enjoy some swimming and snorkelling (though, as can be expected in a public swimming area, almost all the coral was dead from being stepped on), Tom Yam Soup for lunch (spicy tomato and herb soup with veggies and chicken) and happened upon a HUGE monitor lizard lounging on the rocks. No seriously, HUGE. HUUUUGGGGGGEEEE! We thought at first he was Komodo dragon. Yeah, that big.
I just finished a big dinner at the food court of a big shopping complex and am heading back to the hostel to relax for the rest of the night. Tomorrow we going to Mt Kinabalu park to do alittle touring of the area (the wet weather makes any serious climbing too much trouble for us) and check out the poring hot springs! I'll let you know how it goes. I cannot WAIT to get into that beautiful jungle that is just pressing itself up against the city. Cross your fingers for me that the rain stays away!!!
Monday, March 23, 2009
SE Asia Chapter 3: The Road to Bangkok
Ok, so where did I leave you? Ah yes, the phenomenal week Amanda and I spent at Elephant Nature Park. I should mention that there was one casualty that week: my digital camera. I wish I could say it was lost when we ran to escape a stampeding elephant or was swept away by the river while we were dissembling rafts. But no, there wasn't even a breeze when my clumsy fingers fumbled it and it fell onto the sharp edge of large rock between my feet. So the rest of pictures of the trip belong to my friends Amanda and Ali.
We left the park feeling bittersweet and headed back into Chiang Mai on Sunday evening. We shared a room with a friend from England at Top North Guest house in the old city. We found the Sunday Market more lively than usual as the annual Flower Festival was being celebrated at Tha Pae Gate with a stage full with dancers and a chubby vocalist and substanstial live band all saturated painfully bright colors. We met the other volunteers we'd worked with over the last week at the Rooftop bar (whose decorating scheme had an unmistakable rastafarian influence) across from the market. On monday, Amanda and I headed into the centre of the old city looking for the temples we'd been diverted from seeing with Beer the last time we tried. First we stopped at a post office to ship from things back to Korea and lightened my backpack considerably. We found Ratchadamnoen Rd peppered with temples and shrines (and chickens and dogs and scrap metal sculptures Aliens and Predators!) but Wat Chedi Luang was the big one we were looking for and it didn't disappoint. It's an impressive structure on its own, but we were told by a friendly local that current commotion at the temple that day was due to a prominent Monk's death the previous week. His body was being kept at the temple for buddhist followers to come and pay their respects. Also on the grounds was a tree garden with Buddhist proverbs painted on sign posts. It was a great afternoon of sightseeing and some last minute shopping (Chiang Mai had the BEST markets of our entire trip!), but soon it was time to catch the 6:00PM sleeper train to Lopburi. Lopburi was the first leg of our trip south to Bangkok to meet up with Ali, Susan and Jennifer who'd left ENP on the third day and gone south to enjoy some time on Thailands famous beaches.
We kept entertained during the first few hours playing a make shift game of cribbage, while 3 of the train crew members watched us intently trying to discover the rules of our game. As night fell the crew made up the bunks. Amanda and I headed to bed, as we were scheduled to arrive in Lopburi at 4AM. I had no luck at sleeping though. The rattling and rocking of the train, the passenger snoring in the bunk beneath me, and the blinding light that defeated my curtain kept me tossing and turning until our train arrived in Lopburi at 5:30AM. The sun was not up when we left the station, which sits across the street from some beautiful ruins. A sign near the ruins pointed to a tourist information centre. We got some plastic wrapped breakfast from the 7-11 and, though it was a long shot, decided to see if the tourist building had some kind of map so that we could find our way to Phra Pramg Sam Yod. We didn't have much luck, but we did find a quiet spot to eat our pre-packaged pastries and watch some seniors practice thai-chi in bright pink exercise clothes. As we listened the drone of "hummmm-heeeee...." Amanda spotted something that looked promising: a monkey on a roof top. After a somewhat arbitrary deduction about what direction the city centre might be in, we headed down a main street. We didn't walk further than two blocks before we saw a monkey running along a telephone wire. And then two on a post, and then several more along the windowsills of a hotel's 3rd floor. Soon monkeys were everywhere and we knew we were headed in the right direction. When Phra Prang Sam Yod appeared before us, it was clear that my "lonely planet" had understated. It wasn't merely a "gang" of monkeys, there were hundreds of them! We were the only tourists onsite at 7:00 AM and the friendly gateman gave us a stick to whack away ambitious monkeys. It was a great morning. We were throughly climbed over and investigated by the youngsters. My notepad, M&M's and hand lotion were looted by one monkey who happily took my notepad to the top of the ruin and ripped it to pieces, letting the pages rain down on the other monkeys below, who made it their morning snack.
Across the street we found a temple complex where more monkeys were bouncing on vendor umbrellas like trampolines and picking their way through piles of fruit delivered by the locals. The monkeys are feed by the people and generally left undisturbed because they are considered lucky. I was running low on cash and my Mastercard hadn't been working, so after we'd taken a few hundred pictures with the monkeys, we headed further into the city to find a bank. We hopped aboard a brightly colored bus blaring loud music and hopped off again at a busy looking intersection. We found some goodies at a bakery and then found an internet cafe and was informed that my korean bank card was completely useless outside of Korea. Wonderful. The new mission for the morning was to call Mastercard to find out why I couldn't access those funds. This turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected. Convenience stores everywhere sold plenty of international cards, but none of the cards matched to correct brand of payphones on the streets. I was duped. And becoming very frustrated. By noon, Amanda and I were ready to move on to the quiet city of Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand and home to some fantastic ruins. I was sure I had enough funds to get to Bangkok and if there was anywhere where I could get connected to Mastercard, it would be there.
Getting off the train a tuk-tuk driver offered to take us to a cheap guest house near the cities priniciple ruins. We felt alittle weary, but we had not made plans ahead of time, and there was no harm in looking at a room. Luck was in our favour. "One Coffee Love" Guesthouse had paid drivers to fish for tourists because there were brand new and so would not be in any listings. The rooms were clean and bright, and directly across the street from Wat Mahathat. We spent the evening at the night market and ate dinner at an italian restaurant. I was feeling guilty about eating pizza in SE Asia, but Amanda reminded me we were on vacation from Korea, not Canada, afterall.
The next day we went bicycles for $1 and toured the major ruins of the city. There were moments that felt really transportative, like you could just imagine what the city had looked like 900 years earlier. We also took our bikes across the river that surrounds the city centre and saw some of the poorer side of town. We also stumbled across a temple being restored that housed a very large reclining buddha. It made us even more excited to head to Bangkok and see the world famous golden reclining buddha there. We stopped at a restaurant for lunch and I had their speciality dish: Joon Zap. It's a delicious soup you make yourself. They bring you a bucket of hot coals and place a large bowl with broth on top, then bring you all the veggies and seasonings on the side along with your meat (I had pork). It was one of the best meals I had all month! We were alittle sad to leave Ayutthaya. We'd found our short time there to be very relaxing and beautiful. But we needed to be in Bangkok to meet the girls at New Joe Guesthouse by 6PM that day, so soon we were back on the train. Despite not having a place to sit, I really enjoyed our times on the train. As I watched the landscape go rolling by I felt exhilerated to be doing more than staying in one place for this trip. And there was still so much more ahead of us!
We arrived in Bangkok and with a girl from Germany we'd met on the train, we got a cab to Kho San Road, the tourist centre of Bangkok, where Suze, Jennifer and Ali were meeting us. Immediately the traffic, noise and concrete of the city engulfed us, and Ayutthaya felt far away. We managed to get a cab driver who would put the meter on for us after a few attempts (tourist scam #1) and arrived at Kho San Road only alittle late. Kho San Road feels abit like a circus and a lot like a pond, where you are the fish and there are alot of hooks in the water. It was overwhelming to wander the market. Tour guides, tuk-tuk drivers, bars, restaurants, guest house owners, masseurs and street vendors all call out to you for your business. The streets are so crowded with people you can't see more than a few feet in front of you. We had been warned, but by the end of the evening I felt claustrophobic. And I had a very difficult time keeping my composure when we came across a street begging baby elephant, fear in his eyes. I had no desire to stay in Bangkok any longer than we had to.
We had a rough plan and we stuck to it. The following day we were up early to see the Royal Palace and Wat Pho, where the golden reclining buddha is housed. At the entrance some very legitimate looking gentle tried to divert us and tell us we could go in that gate. Going to another gate a man invited us to take a boat tour instead and come back when the palace was open (Tourist Scam #2). We went back to the main gate and walked in, ignoring the conmen trying to convince us to turn around. The buildings were absolutely exquisite, take a look at the pictures on the link at the bottom. I can hardly begin to describe it. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. Wat Pho was a short walk from the Royal Palace grounds and was equally breathtaking, even before we entered the main complex housing the reclining buddha. Jennifer had stayed back due to a stomach bug, and we had arranged to meet up with her at one of the largest malls in Bangkok. There I enjoyed some great shopping, including picking up two pairs of jeans that fit! (Finding pants for western women in Korea is a real plight, they just don't make pants for women with hips here!). We decided we would leave early the next day to make our journey to Cambodia, but there was one more thing we felt we needed to do before leaving Bangkok and that was of course: see a Ladyboy cabaret show! Thailand's drag queens are world famous, but I was surprised at just how openly accepted they were by the country itself. In the Thai language, there is actually a third gender included, so that women speak a certain way, men speak another and there is another set of words for the ladyboys to use. We were delivered to a fancy hotel for our show, and though there wasn't any actual singing (all lip-synched), I thoroughly enjoyed the campy show. We had a blast!
The end of the night was a real treat though. The alley in which you could find our guesthouse, was also the address of many massage parlours. I found one still open at quarter to midnight and went in for an hour long oil message. Faaaaantaaastic!
The pics are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2233529&id=122614903&l=d9a48d9761
I want to thank you guys for reading with these posts with so much patience, I know I'm very behind! Next Chapter: Cambodia. Coming soon, I promise!
We left the park feeling bittersweet and headed back into Chiang Mai on Sunday evening. We shared a room with a friend from England at Top North Guest house in the old city. We found the Sunday Market more lively than usual as the annual Flower Festival was being celebrated at Tha Pae Gate with a stage full with dancers and a chubby vocalist and substanstial live band all saturated painfully bright colors. We met the other volunteers we'd worked with over the last week at the Rooftop bar (whose decorating scheme had an unmistakable rastafarian influence) across from the market. On monday, Amanda and I headed into the centre of the old city looking for the temples we'd been diverted from seeing with Beer the last time we tried. First we stopped at a post office to ship from things back to Korea and lightened my backpack considerably. We found Ratchadamnoen Rd peppered with temples and shrines (and chickens and dogs and scrap metal sculptures Aliens and Predators!) but Wat Chedi Luang was the big one we were looking for and it didn't disappoint. It's an impressive structure on its own, but we were told by a friendly local that current commotion at the temple that day was due to a prominent Monk's death the previous week. His body was being kept at the temple for buddhist followers to come and pay their respects. Also on the grounds was a tree garden with Buddhist proverbs painted on sign posts. It was a great afternoon of sightseeing and some last minute shopping (Chiang Mai had the BEST markets of our entire trip!), but soon it was time to catch the 6:00PM sleeper train to Lopburi. Lopburi was the first leg of our trip south to Bangkok to meet up with Ali, Susan and Jennifer who'd left ENP on the third day and gone south to enjoy some time on Thailands famous beaches.
We kept entertained during the first few hours playing a make shift game of cribbage, while 3 of the train crew members watched us intently trying to discover the rules of our game. As night fell the crew made up the bunks. Amanda and I headed to bed, as we were scheduled to arrive in Lopburi at 4AM. I had no luck at sleeping though. The rattling and rocking of the train, the passenger snoring in the bunk beneath me, and the blinding light that defeated my curtain kept me tossing and turning until our train arrived in Lopburi at 5:30AM. The sun was not up when we left the station, which sits across the street from some beautiful ruins. A sign near the ruins pointed to a tourist information centre. We got some plastic wrapped breakfast from the 7-11 and, though it was a long shot, decided to see if the tourist building had some kind of map so that we could find our way to Phra Pramg Sam Yod. We didn't have much luck, but we did find a quiet spot to eat our pre-packaged pastries and watch some seniors practice thai-chi in bright pink exercise clothes. As we listened the drone of "hummmm-heeeee...." Amanda spotted something that looked promising: a monkey on a roof top. After a somewhat arbitrary deduction about what direction the city centre might be in, we headed down a main street. We didn't walk further than two blocks before we saw a monkey running along a telephone wire. And then two on a post, and then several more along the windowsills of a hotel's 3rd floor. Soon monkeys were everywhere and we knew we were headed in the right direction. When Phra Prang Sam Yod appeared before us, it was clear that my "lonely planet" had understated. It wasn't merely a "gang" of monkeys, there were hundreds of them! We were the only tourists onsite at 7:00 AM and the friendly gateman gave us a stick to whack away ambitious monkeys. It was a great morning. We were throughly climbed over and investigated by the youngsters. My notepad, M&M's and hand lotion were looted by one monkey who happily took my notepad to the top of the ruin and ripped it to pieces, letting the pages rain down on the other monkeys below, who made it their morning snack.
Across the street we found a temple complex where more monkeys were bouncing on vendor umbrellas like trampolines and picking their way through piles of fruit delivered by the locals. The monkeys are feed by the people and generally left undisturbed because they are considered lucky. I was running low on cash and my Mastercard hadn't been working, so after we'd taken a few hundred pictures with the monkeys, we headed further into the city to find a bank. We hopped aboard a brightly colored bus blaring loud music and hopped off again at a busy looking intersection. We found some goodies at a bakery and then found an internet cafe and was informed that my korean bank card was completely useless outside of Korea. Wonderful. The new mission for the morning was to call Mastercard to find out why I couldn't access those funds. This turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected. Convenience stores everywhere sold plenty of international cards, but none of the cards matched to correct brand of payphones on the streets. I was duped. And becoming very frustrated. By noon, Amanda and I were ready to move on to the quiet city of Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand and home to some fantastic ruins. I was sure I had enough funds to get to Bangkok and if there was anywhere where I could get connected to Mastercard, it would be there.
Getting off the train a tuk-tuk driver offered to take us to a cheap guest house near the cities priniciple ruins. We felt alittle weary, but we had not made plans ahead of time, and there was no harm in looking at a room. Luck was in our favour. "One Coffee Love" Guesthouse had paid drivers to fish for tourists because there were brand new and so would not be in any listings. The rooms were clean and bright, and directly across the street from Wat Mahathat. We spent the evening at the night market and ate dinner at an italian restaurant. I was feeling guilty about eating pizza in SE Asia, but Amanda reminded me we were on vacation from Korea, not Canada, afterall.
The next day we went bicycles for $1 and toured the major ruins of the city. There were moments that felt really transportative, like you could just imagine what the city had looked like 900 years earlier. We also took our bikes across the river that surrounds the city centre and saw some of the poorer side of town. We also stumbled across a temple being restored that housed a very large reclining buddha. It made us even more excited to head to Bangkok and see the world famous golden reclining buddha there. We stopped at a restaurant for lunch and I had their speciality dish: Joon Zap. It's a delicious soup you make yourself. They bring you a bucket of hot coals and place a large bowl with broth on top, then bring you all the veggies and seasonings on the side along with your meat (I had pork). It was one of the best meals I had all month! We were alittle sad to leave Ayutthaya. We'd found our short time there to be very relaxing and beautiful. But we needed to be in Bangkok to meet the girls at New Joe Guesthouse by 6PM that day, so soon we were back on the train. Despite not having a place to sit, I really enjoyed our times on the train. As I watched the landscape go rolling by I felt exhilerated to be doing more than staying in one place for this trip. And there was still so much more ahead of us!
We arrived in Bangkok and with a girl from Germany we'd met on the train, we got a cab to Kho San Road, the tourist centre of Bangkok, where Suze, Jennifer and Ali were meeting us. Immediately the traffic, noise and concrete of the city engulfed us, and Ayutthaya felt far away. We managed to get a cab driver who would put the meter on for us after a few attempts (tourist scam #1) and arrived at Kho San Road only alittle late. Kho San Road feels abit like a circus and a lot like a pond, where you are the fish and there are alot of hooks in the water. It was overwhelming to wander the market. Tour guides, tuk-tuk drivers, bars, restaurants, guest house owners, masseurs and street vendors all call out to you for your business. The streets are so crowded with people you can't see more than a few feet in front of you. We had been warned, but by the end of the evening I felt claustrophobic. And I had a very difficult time keeping my composure when we came across a street begging baby elephant, fear in his eyes. I had no desire to stay in Bangkok any longer than we had to.
We had a rough plan and we stuck to it. The following day we were up early to see the Royal Palace and Wat Pho, where the golden reclining buddha is housed. At the entrance some very legitimate looking gentle tried to divert us and tell us we could go in that gate. Going to another gate a man invited us to take a boat tour instead and come back when the palace was open (Tourist Scam #2). We went back to the main gate and walked in, ignoring the conmen trying to convince us to turn around. The buildings were absolutely exquisite, take a look at the pictures on the link at the bottom. I can hardly begin to describe it. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. Wat Pho was a short walk from the Royal Palace grounds and was equally breathtaking, even before we entered the main complex housing the reclining buddha. Jennifer had stayed back due to a stomach bug, and we had arranged to meet up with her at one of the largest malls in Bangkok. There I enjoyed some great shopping, including picking up two pairs of jeans that fit! (Finding pants for western women in Korea is a real plight, they just don't make pants for women with hips here!). We decided we would leave early the next day to make our journey to Cambodia, but there was one more thing we felt we needed to do before leaving Bangkok and that was of course: see a Ladyboy cabaret show! Thailand's drag queens are world famous, but I was surprised at just how openly accepted they were by the country itself. In the Thai language, there is actually a third gender included, so that women speak a certain way, men speak another and there is another set of words for the ladyboys to use. We were delivered to a fancy hotel for our show, and though there wasn't any actual singing (all lip-synched), I thoroughly enjoyed the campy show. We had a blast!
The end of the night was a real treat though. The alley in which you could find our guesthouse, was also the address of many massage parlours. I found one still open at quarter to midnight and went in for an hour long oil message. Faaaaantaaastic!
The pics are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2233529&id=122614903&l=d9a48d9761
I want to thank you guys for reading with these posts with so much patience, I know I'm very behind! Next Chapter: Cambodia. Coming soon, I promise!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
SE Asia, Chapter Two: Elephant Nature Park
I have no idea how I am going to write about this part of the trip. There are no words or pictures that will do it justice. The experience is lodged in my guts and my bones now. But I will try. I will just preface it by saying, my week at Elephant Nature Park as a volunteer was the best week of my life.
After signing some additional paperwork, donning our free t-shirts and playing with the office puppies, Amanda and I got in a van with about 8 other volunteers and our guide, Brad. Brad does his best to warm us up, but his jokes are stifled by a mix of eagerness and summer-camp-esque self-conciousness from being around new people. Well I speak for myself, Amanda was shaking hands and introducing herself to everyone like a prostar! The 1.5 hour drive to the park went by quickly, I was engrossed by the beautiful scenery of small rolling mountains and lush jungle encroaching on plantations and farmers fields. Imagine how much more beautiful it must be outside of the dry seaon!
As we come around the last bend in the battered road, the park reveals itself like the "Great Valley" at the end of "The Land Before Time": nestled between jungle-covered mountains and a river running through it that reflects the morning sunlight beautifully.
The park's mandate is to promote ethical Elephant Tourism in Thailand, where the wild Asian Ele has dwindled to as little as 1500, and the domestic Ele population has the same legal protection as any livestock: none. The economics of the Ele tourism industry combines with tribal traditions for "taming" the elephant to create conditions that are truly cruel and apalling. An unaware rich tourists create demand for it by going to elephant trekking camps, watching elephant shows, buying elephant paintings or buying food for "street elephants" in the larger cities. The crazy part is that none of these Ele Tourism options offer the level of interaction with these beautiful animals that a visit to ENP does. I won't go into it at great length, but there are some excellents videos worth watching on the subject that feature the work the Park and Lek, ENP's founder. You can see once released by National Geographic here:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0510/feature5/video.html
At the park, the elephants are never forced to perform circus tricks or trek for miles with guests on their backs. Instead, guests and volunteers are involved with basic elephant care by feeding the elephants by hand and bathing them in the river twice daily. And in participating in these activities, guests can get the kind of up close and personal contact they want but would never get on a trek or from watching a show. On my first day, I quite literally hugged an elephant while I scrubbed it's hide in the river, as it calmly lay in the water. At the end of the day, Amanda and I sat up in our bamboo hut, thrilled we'd be there for six more days, and the other girls had extended their stay for another night.
The entire week we ate amazing food, the best food we had the entire time we were in south east Asia. And we learned alot. As volunteers, Amanda and I had signed up for pitching in on chores and projects that the park needed some extra hands for. Our daily tasks included:
1) Participating in an Elephant rescue from a trekking camp just up the road from ENP. Two of the elephants there had fallen very ill from malnutrition and a skin fungus infection. The manager of the camp had asked Lek to care for the sick elephants, as ENP also acts as a free hospital for these gentle giants. Providing free medical care ensures the Eles will get the care they need and creates opportunities for Lek to influence trekking camps and teach them about humane Ele care. As with every elephant that comes to the Park, Lek will try everything to buy the elephant from the owner so that it can stay at the park. Sometimes she is successful and the animal never goes back to work. Sometimes though, the owner knows they can still make money by leasing the elephant to a Tourist camp and won't sell her until she is too old to earn any money. Going to this camp, after spending just a few days at ENP, was heartbreaking. The elephants were kept chained in close quarters when they weren't trekking, babies chained to their mothers and working alongside them. Many of the elephants were underweight, often kept this way so that they are not too fat for riding. Our first rescue, named Golden Leaf, went into the truck without a fuss and we successfully transferred her to the park without a problem. After the vet had a good look at her, we bathed her in the river with medical soap and then rubbed a medicated location on her skin to treat the fungal infection. The next day, the second elephant was brought to the park and both Ele's were docile and subdued as we bathed and treated them. And several of the resident elephants insisted on joining us in the river, in order to meet the newcomers. However, Amanda and I weren't actually there for the second rescue because....
2) We went up to the Elephant Haven overnight. Elephant Haven is where Lek began, with four Elephants she had rescued from tragic circumstances (Two babies and two aunties, three of which accompanied us: Hope, Mae Perm, and Jokia. Another family of four, Mom and two aunties of baby Aura, also went with us.) It is a small bamboo hut nestled in the jungle on a mountain side that is a 2 hour hike from where the park now exists. Here the elephants can roam in the jungle and forage for food naturally. It was surreal enough hiking along with the Ele's, but it was a real treat to go out at night to find Hope with the mahouts, as Hope sometimes wanders too far from the safety of the Haven mountainside at night. We located him fairly quickly, but discovered it was best friends Mae Perm and Jokia (blinded by her previous owners) who had wandered off. No problem. Hope's mahout, Dam, tracked them down within a few minutes, stopping to show us the snapped vegetations and tracks in the ground that led the way. Nothing but moonlight, jungle and a couple of the worlds largest mammals. The mahouts also played music for us after cooking an amazing dinner. That night we slept on the floor, under mosquito nets, listening to Hope's family trumpeting from above us back and forth with Aura's family, who had settled in further down the mountain for the night. On the hike back the next morning, we were given orange scarves blessed by buddhists monks to tie around the trees around the haven to protect them from logging.
Other park highlights:
Album #1 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2229057&id=122614903&l=8b5dbaa399
Album #2 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2229061&id=122614903&l=89a17a8668
There were so many special moments, I'd be happy to recount them for you at any time. I just need to bring this entry to a close. I know I will return to the park. Being there was like realizing a childhood dream. I hope after I have paid off my school debt, I will be able to stay there and work there for longer than a week.
Stay tuned for Chapter 3: featuring pick pocket monkeys, reclining Buddha's, tourist scams and drag shows!
After signing some additional paperwork, donning our free t-shirts and playing with the office puppies, Amanda and I got in a van with about 8 other volunteers and our guide, Brad. Brad does his best to warm us up, but his jokes are stifled by a mix of eagerness and summer-camp-esque self-conciousness from being around new people. Well I speak for myself, Amanda was shaking hands and introducing herself to everyone like a prostar! The 1.5 hour drive to the park went by quickly, I was engrossed by the beautiful scenery of small rolling mountains and lush jungle encroaching on plantations and farmers fields. Imagine how much more beautiful it must be outside of the dry seaon!
As we come around the last bend in the battered road, the park reveals itself like the "Great Valley" at the end of "The Land Before Time": nestled between jungle-covered mountains and a river running through it that reflects the morning sunlight beautifully.
The park's mandate is to promote ethical Elephant Tourism in Thailand, where the wild Asian Ele has dwindled to as little as 1500, and the domestic Ele population has the same legal protection as any livestock: none. The economics of the Ele tourism industry combines with tribal traditions for "taming" the elephant to create conditions that are truly cruel and apalling. An unaware rich tourists create demand for it by going to elephant trekking camps, watching elephant shows, buying elephant paintings or buying food for "street elephants" in the larger cities. The crazy part is that none of these Ele Tourism options offer the level of interaction with these beautiful animals that a visit to ENP does. I won't go into it at great length, but there are some excellents videos worth watching on the subject that feature the work the Park and Lek, ENP's founder. You can see once released by National Geographic here:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0510/feature5/video.html
At the park, the elephants are never forced to perform circus tricks or trek for miles with guests on their backs. Instead, guests and volunteers are involved with basic elephant care by feeding the elephants by hand and bathing them in the river twice daily. And in participating in these activities, guests can get the kind of up close and personal contact they want but would never get on a trek or from watching a show. On my first day, I quite literally hugged an elephant while I scrubbed it's hide in the river, as it calmly lay in the water. At the end of the day, Amanda and I sat up in our bamboo hut, thrilled we'd be there for six more days, and the other girls had extended their stay for another night.
The entire week we ate amazing food, the best food we had the entire time we were in south east Asia. And we learned alot. As volunteers, Amanda and I had signed up for pitching in on chores and projects that the park needed some extra hands for. Our daily tasks included:
- scooping elephant and buffalo poo and cleaning shelters
- cutting down spent corn fields with machete's for Ele dinner
- working on the fire break (cutting an 8 foot path through brush to stop fires from crossing into park land)
- dismantling bamboo rafts to use as building supplies at the park
- cutting down banana trees (with machete's once again!) for Ele dinner
- hauling rock and reinforcing a water resevoir
- shucking corn in the elephant kitchen
- picking up garbage around the park
- teaching at the nearby village elementary school
1) Participating in an Elephant rescue from a trekking camp just up the road from ENP. Two of the elephants there had fallen very ill from malnutrition and a skin fungus infection. The manager of the camp had asked Lek to care for the sick elephants, as ENP also acts as a free hospital for these gentle giants. Providing free medical care ensures the Eles will get the care they need and creates opportunities for Lek to influence trekking camps and teach them about humane Ele care. As with every elephant that comes to the Park, Lek will try everything to buy the elephant from the owner so that it can stay at the park. Sometimes she is successful and the animal never goes back to work. Sometimes though, the owner knows they can still make money by leasing the elephant to a Tourist camp and won't sell her until she is too old to earn any money. Going to this camp, after spending just a few days at ENP, was heartbreaking. The elephants were kept chained in close quarters when they weren't trekking, babies chained to their mothers and working alongside them. Many of the elephants were underweight, often kept this way so that they are not too fat for riding. Our first rescue, named Golden Leaf, went into the truck without a fuss and we successfully transferred her to the park without a problem. After the vet had a good look at her, we bathed her in the river with medical soap and then rubbed a medicated location on her skin to treat the fungal infection. The next day, the second elephant was brought to the park and both Ele's were docile and subdued as we bathed and treated them. And several of the resident elephants insisted on joining us in the river, in order to meet the newcomers. However, Amanda and I weren't actually there for the second rescue because....
2) We went up to the Elephant Haven overnight. Elephant Haven is where Lek began, with four Elephants she had rescued from tragic circumstances (Two babies and two aunties, three of which accompanied us: Hope, Mae Perm, and Jokia. Another family of four, Mom and two aunties of baby Aura, also went with us.) It is a small bamboo hut nestled in the jungle on a mountain side that is a 2 hour hike from where the park now exists. Here the elephants can roam in the jungle and forage for food naturally. It was surreal enough hiking along with the Ele's, but it was a real treat to go out at night to find Hope with the mahouts, as Hope sometimes wanders too far from the safety of the Haven mountainside at night. We located him fairly quickly, but discovered it was best friends Mae Perm and Jokia (blinded by her previous owners) who had wandered off. No problem. Hope's mahout, Dam, tracked them down within a few minutes, stopping to show us the snapped vegetations and tracks in the ground that led the way. Nothing but moonlight, jungle and a couple of the worlds largest mammals. The mahouts also played music for us after cooking an amazing dinner. That night we slept on the floor, under mosquito nets, listening to Hope's family trumpeting from above us back and forth with Aura's family, who had settled in further down the mountain for the night. On the hike back the next morning, we were given orange scarves blessed by buddhists monks to tie around the trees around the haven to protect them from logging.
Other park highlights:
- traditional Thai massage for $4/hr
- over 50 dogs to hang out with
- cuddles from Mae Keaw and Kha Moon and others
- waking up to the sunrise hitting the Ele shelters behind our hut
- baby elephants checking us out freely on our Park walk around.
- learning the elephant song and legend from Pom, Lek's second in command.
- welcome ceremony including music performed by village teenagers and a blessing from the Shaman.
Album #1 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2229057&id=122614903&l=8b5dbaa399
Album #2 - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2229061&id=122614903&l=89a17a8668
There were so many special moments, I'd be happy to recount them for you at any time. I just need to bring this entry to a close. I know I will return to the park. Being there was like realizing a childhood dream. I hope after I have paid off my school debt, I will be able to stay there and work there for longer than a week.
Stay tuned for Chapter 3: featuring pick pocket monkeys, reclining Buddha's, tourist scams and drag shows!
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