Damon came to visit me for three glorious weeks. He left this afternoon and I have been brooding ever since. It is a rainy evening in Bangkok and I am holed up in my little studio with ice cream watching COPS while the other AYADS are partying God knows where.
We spent most of the time he was here living large at fancy pantalones hotels and restaurants. I didn't manage to drag him to Jim Thompson though.
A common example of a pretty display at one of the many restaurants at the Intercontinental.
Hi Chicken!
For the ladies: check out this sweet little silk dress from Ipa Nima in Hanoi. I like the fetching pocket on the side. I am posting this photo to make myself feel better after all the ones of me looking scummy in elephant land. On this night, we went to a restaurant on the 61st floor of Banyan Tree Hotel. It was open air and had breathtaking views of Bangers.
Damo trying to remain calm at Vertigo restaurant at Banyan Tree Hotel.
High tea at the Shangri-La.
Our awesome hotel room at Bandara Resort and Spa in Koh Samui.
Our remote resort on a remote island called Koh Tao, the snorkelling and diving mecca of Thailand. We spent a lot of the day snorkelling in that water.
Damon and me on the boat to the foreigners' clinic to get cream for my fleas (don't ask). It seems I can't go anywhere without getting bitten by crazy bugs. I'm getting good at self-medicating though. I love antihistamines!
The view from our bed.
Our little cabin.
We had to climb 124 steps to our cabin from the beach - not for the faint hearted.
About 70 steps up.
The restaurant where we spent a lot of time playing cards, eating and getting to know the local Thai staff.
That's about all about that. Oh, and Damon proposed to me on the beach at Koh Samui. Needless to say, I happily accepted. Now I can spend my weekends in Bangkok learning about jewellery and having a dress made. I will keep you posted on developments.
Now he has gone home and life goes on for now. I am planning a visa run to Cambodia in July with my trusty travel pal, Jaqueline, and maybe Avi if we can con him into coming. Asia cup is coming up, which means matches between Australia and Iraq and Australia and Thailand. I don't particularly care for sport but I felt compelled to represent, and it only costs about $8 to go. I have been doing a lot of representing of late, being the only aussie at work. I am constantly teasing my British supervisor for Britain's crappy beaches and anything I can really. He is a good sport.
I am in between work projects at the moment, having cleared things up before Damon and I went away. I have finished doing the research for the Africa global monitoring reports and I suspect I will now have to edit them. I have learned a lot in the process and my confidence was boosted when I was able to conduct legal research in French for the Benin, Mauritius and Cote d'Ivoire reports. I am also going to be developing a newsletter with some more in-depth articles from contributors in our global network on the ongoing battle to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The next batch of AYADs arrive in Bangkok in late July, so that should be interesting. I am told there are quite a few from Canberra so I am curious to see if I know any of them. As usual, females are over-represented - maybe they are better at writing applications?
About a week ago, I woke up at 6 am to put together the final entry on the elephantstay. Two hours later, I lost the whole post during a publishing glitch. So now you'll just have to make do with the photos and not the elaborate tales that went with them. Sorry!
The Kraal has eight babies at the moment - a pretty high number and a good indication of happy elephants as happy elephants breed. We were very lucky to have three newborns about six weeks old wondering around freely (since they don't stray far from their mums). Elephants communicate on a different frequency from humans, and it was funny to watch the babies scampering all over the shop, sticking their trunks wherever they could only to stop mid step to turn around and run back to mum, presumably because she had called her baby back. Mums are very protective.
It was also hilarious to watch the babies playing together. The bigger ones pushed the smaller ones around a lot but they seemed to delight in each other's company. We were very lucky to have the freedom to pat and play with them.
Baby elephants' trunks are soft and curious. It is quite a special feeling to have one wrapped around your arm sniffing about.
Baby elephants like to ram into you and don't mind if you push back.
They are also very clumsy.
Dok Mai's giant patouti. Look at that girth!
Elephants like to paint too. This particular friend was tagged to go to Melbourne Zoo last year in that controversial deal that went way over budget. In the end she was rejected by Australia because she knocked over five farang (no Thais). Michelle tells us it is because she was too intelligent to go. They try to send the less intelligent elephants to zoos as the smarter ones find it harder to deal with. Seeing her paint with her mahout, with whom she had a deep affinity, it is hard to imagine her anywhere else but in Thailand. She also has an endearing squeak when she is pleased with herself.
Clever girl!
Many mahouts train their elephants to perform various tricks. The elephants seem happy to learn and be stimulated. After work, the mahouts come back to the Kraal and have a training session where they re-enact battles and such.
The mahouts have a stretch.
Not a great photo, but this guy is throwing spears at a target whilst standing on the back of a running elephant.
Buddy the Aussie cattle dog, adopted from Melbourne's Lost Dogs home. He lives happily at the Kraal along with his Thai wife, Little Girl.
Elephant remains at a makeshift spirit house.
Elephant drive-thru. The elephant wears a sort of stick between its tusks and scoops up pineapple leaves for dinner on the way back from a shower. Elephants can also wear braces to straighten their tusks.
An awful photo of me, but I had to include it because the little baby burst in at the last minute to wrap its trunk around my leg. We took this photo five minutes before leaving, so it felt like a nice way to finish our stay. The other two are Ewa and Michelle, who run the program. You wouldn't believe it, but Damon says he saw tears in Michelle's eyes (on the left) when we said goodbye (of course I was crying at saying goodbye to dear Loong Sap). I hate goodbyes.
So I think that is all for elephants for now. I am sure you have all had enough of them by this stage. I will post some footage when I sort through it.
I don’t know where to begin. Many of you are aware of my longstanding obsession with elephants and will recall how I have been telling you all of my dream to someday spend some time with them and wash them in a river somewhere. I have waited years to do something like that.
Damon and I spent four days at Elephantstay at
Ayutthaya
, about an hour and a half out of
Bangkok
, and we can both confirm that it is one of the best things we have ever done together (along with snorkeling in
Borneo
and eating our way around
Provence
).
We arrived at at a very relaxed working elephant village and were greeted by Ewa and Michelle, two Australians who manage the elephant program. The village is the living vision of one man, Pi Om. In Thai, you refer to elders or people of senior standing as ‘Pi’ and those who are younger than you or of lesser standing as ‘Nong’. I don’t really know all that much about Pi Om except that he was a wealthy businessman in
Bangkok
before he started collecting and rescuing elephants. He started by buying an elephant for his daughter and then another for his wife. He now owns over 150 elephants, though not all of them live at the village. He buys them from mahouts (elephant carers) all over
Thailand
who can no longer afford them or from people who are mistreating them. Elephants are very expensive to maintain as they eat over 200 kilos of food a day. Back in the day, mahouts were very highly respected members of society and elephants were held in very high esteem, being used in battles and even being credited by some for the freedom
Thailand
enjoys today. Pi
Om
told us that, these days, Thai people don’t know much about elephants. His dream is to have a sustainable elephant village and restore the dignity of the Thai elephant, which is rapidly declining in
Asia
and, indeed the world. To this end, he has implemented many innovative initiatives, such as making paper from elephant dung and selling their dung as fertilizer. He has rented 100 acres of land to plant and grow elephant grasses (which he has experimented with) and corn for the mahouts to sell. The mahouts all live in the village with their families.
Our cabins.
I don’t even know where to begin describing the magnitude of the work these dedicated people are doing in the name of conservation and providing a self-sufficient sanctuary for the elephants to live in. They have elephants of all ages living in the village, which is a World Heritage site called the Royal Elephant Kraal. Most of the elephants are working elephants. They leave the village in the morning to take people on rides and perform at shows and such. It is quite a sight to see all the hustle and bustle as the mahouts and their elephants return home at from whatever they have been doing. I can’t help but think of Dolly Parton’s song ‘Working 9 to 5’ and giggle when I think about it. Some people would argue that it is not natural to get elephants to perform ‘tricks’. Elephants are very intelligent creatures, requiring stimulation, and having something to do during their prime years makes them happy. They are treated with love and well cared for. When the mahouts come back to the village of an afternoon, they practice training their elephants in a field nearby. Some of the stuff they get their elephants to do was amazing and makes you respect the connection they have with their elephant even more.
One of the things Damon and I enjoyed so much about our stay was that we felt like we were only a small part of what goes on in the village and not the primary objective. The village has a very relaxed vibe and we were largely left to our own devices in between taking the elephants to the river. It could have been a scenario where you step off the bus and are immediately ushered to a show followed by structured activity all day. Michelle and Ewa have thought about what people would benefit from and gave us a lot of time to soak the village up and observe the behaviour of the elephants that surrounded us.
We spent a lot of our free time sitting on this day bed watching the babies and their mothers.
People who come to volunteer are assigned either an elephant to share or their own elephant to look after. Damon and I opted to share as we wanted to share the connection we developed with our friend. Volunteers work with retired female elephants who have typically been retired from a hard working life and are happy to be looked after, bathed, walked to the river and so on.
Our elephant was dear old Loong Sap (which means prosperity), a 65-year old logging elephant. The scars on her head are the result of pushing logs and being beaten with a stick to the head (heartbreaking, I know). After a while, you start to pick up on each elephants little ways. For instance, Loong Sap has a habit of putting leaves and branches on her head to fashion a fetching hat. We could always pick her out from the crowd. She was also very communicative in that she peed when she was excited, nervous or confused – a trait I found most endearing, but which I am told had made her pretty unpopular with the other elephants in the past. Since becoming one of the elephants that volunteers look after, Michelle told us Loong Sap has a newfound sense of confidence and has become well-liked by the other old biddies. We were told that she now moves away from her food to pee, which reflects a higher sense of self-worth. What a complex thing!
Here is Loong Sap with the other old biddies.
We didn’t know this before, but elephants make a rumbling noise when they are pleased. I am sure they can rumble when unhappy too, but Loong Sap’s rumble was the equivalent of a giant elephant purr. It took us a few days of riding her and feeding her but, by our last day, she would turn her head right into mine, look me straight in the eye and give a slow rumble of appreciation while I stroked her trunk. It is an amazing feeling.The connection we shared was evident to all. She also had an affection for Damon. For some reason, she was happiest when we brought her back from the river and she was being tethered up and fed.
It feels very strange climbing on an elephant and sitting on its head for the first time. They are quite hairy and it doesn’t feel natural to sit that far forward on them, but it only takes a few minutes to get used to it. You have to ride barefoot and stick your feet behind their ears to give commands. We had only been there a couple of hours before I got up on Loong Sap and rode her into the river for a wash. She is not the biggest water lover. Another elephant there called Dok Ma loved the water and frequently dunked her head under. It took me a few days to fall into sync with Loong Sap’s ways in the river but I learned how to remain calm and not demand too much of her (she didn’t like putting her head under water and was quite strong willed about it. By the last couple of days, I didn’t have to ask her to do it as she knew she had to go under at least once or twice. My favourite part was just sprawling out over her head and being still with her in the water.
Loong Sap and I share a moment. Yes, I realise my hair looks terrible. That pigmentation on her trunk is from the sun and probably from pushing logs.
Scrubbing her down of an afternoon was hard work but a good way to get to know her.
Loong Sap was rumbling as this photo was taken.
Hi Loong Sap!
I have lots more pictures but I will split them up over posts for technical reasons.
