ELEPHANTS!

Hey everyone!
I am currently in AoNang, Thailand. I just arrived today, and found a lot of GPHYers had been e-mailing updates. I'm glad ot hear that everyone is still alive. Books - if Memoirs of a Geisha the book is better, read it NOW, because the movie was so good I actually considered trying to become a Geisha. Also, Teacher Man, which I haven't read, but I have heard that it will make you cry.
For the whole vacation story, check out my blog. I'll pick up with last Sunday.
Jessie and I were in Chiang Mai, which is pretty far North, but is incredibly touristy. On Sunday, we did a temple tour (three temples), which ended with Wat Su Mong, a forest temple, where an Australian monk gave an informal talk on Buddhism that was really interesting. The temples in Chiang Mai are much older (it is an ancient capitol) and seeing them all would take years (there are something like 180 within the square of the old city, which takes about 25 minutes to walk across, to give you an idea). So we just picked three temples that sounded the coolest.
In the afternoon we went to the Chiang Mai Night Safari, which was awesome. It had a lake with small enclosures for small animals and some bigger ones that were unfinished (it only opened this month) and a nice boardwalk that took about an hour to walk around. As we were leaving the bird enclosure, the door jammed, and when I finally jerked it closed, it slammed really loudly, and woke up all the slumbering birds. They squawked really loudly and Jessie and I ran away from embarrassment. The ride was really cool. Because it was night, you could not see many of the fences, so it felt like Hyenas were really just walking around the car. That feeling was made even more real by the fact that there were many animals on the route that were not in enclosures and just walked right in the road, including ostriches, some of which looked like you could touch from your seat in the tram.
AFter that we went to the Sunday Walking/craft market. There I made my big purchase for the trip, a Thai guitar. I have no idea how to play it, but it will be my project when I return to Korea. It is really intricately carved, but it actually plays too. If nothing else, at least it'll looks good hanging on the wall.
I followed that with a second big purchase... a gameboy advance. Now I'll have something to entertain myself with after classes are done at school, without having to fork over $400 for a PSP2.

We got up early on Monday morning, because that was the first day of our week at "Elephant Nature Park". That place was amazing. There were seven other volunteers, and by the end, we had had just enough time together to start to annoy eachother. There was Nancy, the 58-year old elephant lover whose globetrotting adventures led to many interesting stories, and whose worldwide chasing of elephant-viewing opportunities amazed us all. There were Terry, Kate, and Martha, three Canadians living in China who were just really awesome and fun to hang out with, and who drew out my most sarcastic side constantly. And there was Lucinda, the lone American traveller, whose travels rivalled even Nancy's.
There were thirty-one elephants at the park, ranging in age from one month to 85 years! They were all rescued from abusive situations, from trekking companies that over-worked them (to the point where the babies died of exhaustion), logging camps (where one elephant was blinded with elastics in one eye for being "lazy", and then blinded in the other with an arrow when it refused to work), and mine fields along the Burmese border. I learned a lot about the way they interact (they form family groups, and non-mothers become aunties to babies and even to blind adults!) and their incredible intelligence and emotion (did you know that elephants will commit suicide when depressed by standing on their trunk, or kill their babies in abusive situations (perhaps to "save" them)?). Being a volunteer was not exactly "taxing". We slept until about 8:30 or so every day, and then had breakfast. We worked on a mudpit for three days in the morning, and then stopped when the food truck arrived. That was the hard part. It was usually anywhere from half an hour to 45 minutes of moving huge bags of fruits and vegetables to be cleaned and cut for the elephants, and then distributing them. That was a lot fo work, but then it was time to feed the elephants! Some couldn't wait, and would reach over the deck to grab their basket (or whichever one was nearest). I fed SomBoom three times. Her Mahoot (handler) and I had to carry her food way out into the field, because she was fighting with one of the new elephants, and wouldn't eat near her. One day she wouldn't eat at all.
There was another elephant who only got four pieces of pineapple, because she refused to eat anything else! It was realy funny, actualy, because she would pick through huge piles of pumpkins, pull out a pineapple rind, and then walk away. There was another elephant that was in must (a heightened sexual period that happens when elephants are happy and healthy) that unfortunately made him dangerous to the others, so he was chained at the far end of the property. It might sound cruel, but the typical solution here is to starve them until they are too unhealthy for must and then to send them back to work. There was the land-mine victim who was auntie to the newest baby, and whose bad leg was constantly swinging back and forth, no matter what she was doing.
On our first day, the introductory speech was interrupted by a huge racket from accross the field. An elephant was trumpeting and talking, and sounded pretty panicked! A second elephant began running accross the field towards her, and talked to her (high pitch squeaking) and they wrapped their trunks and rubbed against eachother. The one who called first was the blind elephant, and the one who ran to her was her new friend who took care of her at the park.
After the elephants ate, we ate. Lunch was a huge buffet of fifteen or so dishes, every day! It was so good... So good.
After lunch, we led the elephants to the river, where we bathed them. We got into the cool, fast-moving river that surrounded the camp and then got our buckets and brushes and went to work! That was a lot of fun! I'll post some pictures to my blog as soon as I get home!
There was another elephants named Max who is the tallest elephant in Thailand. He was head and shoulders above the rest. He was a victim of a traffic accident in Bangkok. Some Mahoots take their elephants into the city, and tell tourists that their elephants will starve unless they buy fruit from them to feed it. Anyways, it's really bad, because elephants get freaked out by the city, and may even go deaf. Max was unfortunately hit by an eighteen wheeler, and now ambles aruond the park pretty slowly.
After the elephants have had their bath, we all move back to our cabins to nap/read/rest. It gets really hot even that far north in the midday, so there's no way that anyone was going to do work.
Around five, the elephants would have their second bath of the day. I actually made it to the second bath only once in my whole first week, because the naps just went way too long.
We had these great little huts, with thatched roofs and bamboos floors. It was very rustic, and the wind blew through them like nothing at night (which was surprisingly cold!). Every once in a while, at night, we would be awoken by the trumpeting of a frightened elephants, followed by the barking and howling of the Park's 40 dogs. And then... the cold bucket showers. yikes.
Then, we stumble to dinner, which is another huge, amazing meal, with a lot of choice, and it's more fun, because you get to actually talk to the staff, because they aren't taking care of the day trippers.
The staff were pretty great, actually. There was a woman named Michelle, who actually reminded me a LOT of my friend Jane, to the point where I may have cracked a couple of jokes that were overly familiar because I felt so comfortable so quickly, she was so much like Jane in both looks and personality. Her husband was Carl, and he was actually the only non-Thai mahoot, and was the Mahoot for Max. He had a lot of good stories, and was really friendly. Pom (spelling?) was another woman who worked at the park, and she was Koran (spelling?), which is a local Thai hill tribe.
Pom led us on our trip to elephant haven on Tuesday night. It was a two-hour trek from the Park to the haven, which was up on the side of a mountain. There was a big cabin up there, and we all hung out for the night with "Jungle Boy"'s family overnight. Jungle Boy was a young "tusker", about five or six years old. There were the seven of us week-long volunteers, as well as a Danish family. Their kids were hilarious, and we invented a game called "grabber monkeys", which basically involved me walking around with one on each leg until their dad yelled at them. FUN!
In the morning we had to hike up the mountain to find them. The whole point of the haven is basically to let the elephants go and feed freely, so sometimes it takes more than two hours to finally track them down! Luckily, we fonud them in about half an hour, because it was REALLY hot, and we still had a long walk (including a scary Indiana Jones-esque bridge) ahead of us.
Elephant Nature Park is an experiment, to see if "natural" elephants can be used as a tourist attraction like they are in Africa . We learned about "Pajong", which is a torture procedure that is performed on elephants to "break" them, which involves putting them in a small enclosure and stabbing them for five to seven days. The mortality rate for this procedure is about 50%, although the government apparently officially denies that it exists. Logging was the elephants' main use, but it was banned in 1989, so the elephants were switched to tourist vehicles, and they needed a way to tame them quickly. Domestic elephants are considered livestock here, so they have no laws in place to protect them. The numbers of wild elephants are greatly exaggerated, so when a livestock animal dies or is killed, they just go get another one and "break" it.
A lot of the elephant-related attractions that appear harmless here actually have brutal training methods (knives in the trunk to teach painting) or enforcement (knives in the reins to prevent them from turning too fast and startling tourists). One of the elephants at the Park, Lily, was actually fed amphetamines by her former owner so that she could keep working past exhaustion.
In the park, there is no riding (except for the children) and no tricks. You just get to see how elephants act in their natural way, which is actually pretty entertaining in itself, and is a big money maker with African elephants.
Our big project as volunteers was a mud pit. It took much longer to make than our original estimates, and tempers were flaring and egos were clashing (quote: "This is why construction sites have foremen"), but on Sunday, we finally got to see our hours of hoeing and digging rock hard dirt pay off.
All the babies got in on the action, and a few of the moms and aunties too. It was pretty hilarious, and Terry, for whom the pit had become a personal crusade got right in there, smearing the babies and pushing them over in the pit. They were surprisingly flexible, and it was hilarious to see them chasing eachother and slipping in the mud. Nancy and Martha both cried, and Terry was beaming more than I had thought humanly possible.

And I forgot to mention Steve! He was a really cool Australian guy, who it turns out repaired sewing machines, which was a big surprise, because he was the butchest guy in history. He offered to put us all up if we came to Australia, and was great to cut someone down when they were getting ahead of themselves. Never hurtful, just really smart and honest. Great guy.

What will I miss most about the park, you might ask. Well, it's not the elephants. It is the dogs. Those were such nice dogs, they followed us everywhere, and they were playful, and there was one for every mood. Old dogs, puppies, hungry dogs and sleepy dogs. And there was one in particular, who followed us to the haven, and fell asleep on my leg at night. Very nice. And such a break from the shell-shocked dogs in Korea.

Yesterday, we said goodbye to Nancy and Lucinda, and we decided to stay in the same place as our new Canadian friends, Terry, Kate and Martha. It was pretty swank, but it was nice to have air conditioning and hot showers after our week in a jungle hut. We all went out for Gyros, and shopped at the Sunday craft market (no more guitars). We ended off in the night market, where I filled out my growing collection of Thai/red bull shirts. Seriously, that is the coolest logo ever.

So now we are in Ao Nang. It's a bit of a culture shock, as here the tourists outnumber the Thais about 50 to 1. We are hoping to get out of here for the days at least, and I think that I am about shopped out, so the markets aren't too appealing to me anymore.
Tomorrow, we are going to try to go hiking on an island (take a longboat taxi out), and maybe rent a scooter for the afternoon/evening. On Wednesday, we will be horseback riding on the beaches and through some country side, which should be pretty amazing. We're also looking into a kayak tour of some beach caves, where Thais used to live, and they have left some cave paintings behind. Also, there are monkeys. Yes!

Well... that's all for now. I'm kind of screwed... I think that my bank thinks my card is stolen, because it will not let me withdraw any more money... so how I will pay for the next few days is a mystery. Credit cash advance? I hope not.

Pictures will be posted as soon as I find a computer with a CD rom!