elephant nature park

so i had heard a lot about elephant abuse in thailand but didn't really know that much about it. turns out there is an excellent elephant hospital/sanctuary/park an hour north of chiang mai. you can pay them a fee and you can volunteer there for one day up to two weeks. all housing and meals are provided and you help the permanent volunteers with their daily chores.

there are about 15 elephants in the park. most of them had been abused and come to the hospital sick, and some have been purchased by the amazing park owner, Lek. some of the stories of the elephants are truly horrific. one of the elephants, Jokia, used to work in a tourist camp. she was pregnant and probably because of the harness used to carry tourists on her back, she mis-carried. she became depressed and refused to work. so, her owner took a slingshot and blinded her in one eye. still not working (obviously) the owner sold her. the new owner, unhappy that she wouldn't work, blinded her other eye. so now she is completely blind and wanders around only by aid of another elephant. this is just one story. there are 14 others with equally horrific tales.

we also learned about the way the elephants are trained using the pedjan, or "crush". when an elephant is about 3 years old they are put into this bamboo contraption that totally immobilizes them. then they are beaten for many days and nights (usually 3 days for females and 7 for males) without food or water until they are able to do some rudimentary skills. this is commonly known as "breaking the will of the elephant." the videos we saw of this ritual are awful. the elephant screams and screams and is beaten constantly while men shout at it from all directions. The thing is, all domestic elephants in thailand go through this. This is likely why you sometimes hear of elepghants going on rampages and killing people later in their lives. Lek, the park owner, rightly objects to this treatment and is working to inform the Thais, and tourists about proper elephant care. In fact, there are two babies at the park that will never go through the pedjan, proving that elephants can be trained without it.

so after a week of volunteering, its been really great. we spend most our time feeding and cleaning up dung. but we also wash and ride the elephants (the proper way, along their neck) on occasion. i learned some thai commands for driving the elephants around. they eat constantly: pinneaple, cucumber, banana (trees, leaves, fruit, and stalks), papaya, figs, grass, corn. it never ends! i've taken care of an 80 year old elephant, named Mae Tong Bai. She is a real sweetheart.

Pictures here.
More info here.

i have a week left at the camp (unless they want me to stay longer), and then its on to a new adventure. i'm not sure yet what that will be.

night of the spider

so i recently had to change guesthouses. when you tell the thais that you expect to stay for "around 3 days" they take you literally. so, unable to extend my stay, i moved down the road to this semi-swanky place (i.e., $6/night instead of $2.50).

i immediately took advantage of the hot shower and went out for a bite to eat. when i returned, i found in the bathroom a very large spider. i'm not typically afraid of spiders. but then again california spiders had nothing on this guy. he was the size of my hand.

remembering that things like to kill you in asia, i took a .picture and went to show the receptionist to see if my life was in danger. the conversation went like this:

me: "is this spider poisonous?"
receptionist: {shakes head in the negative}
me: "good spider?"
receptionist: {shakes head in the affirmative}
me: "not bad?"
receptionist: {continues shaking head} "where you find?"
me: "bathroom"
receptionist: {laughs}

so i return to my room %30 confident that the spider will not kill me. besides, he'd have to crawl a long way out of the bathroom to get to the bed, and that seemed unlikely. he seemed happy sitting there doing what spiders that size do. eat water-buffaloes i thought to myself. i didn't want to kill him, so i fell asleep after some reading.

maybe because of this, i have a nightmare. think shaun of the dead without the comedy. i was killing (or at least running away from) zombies in some crappy suburban town. it was a bit freaky. i wake up and go to the bathroom.

i notice the spider is nowhere to be seen.

hmm

as i walk back to the dark room i sleep in, i'm spooked just enough to turn the light on and have a look around. sure enough, not 3 feet from my pillow is my new buddy. maybe because of my nightmare i wasn't super freaked out. i actually took some time considering my options:

1) pick spider up on paper and shoo him outside
2) leave him there and go to sleep (yeah right!)
3) shoo him away from bed and go to sleep (maybe)
4) kill him

i didn't want to kill him. really. mosquitos, yes - dead in an instant. maybe it ain't buddha nature to kill them but i hate those little bloodsuckers. this was a big, hairy, spider who probably ate mosquitos and, like i said, waterbuffaloes. but probably wouldn't bite me. 30% sure of that. so i attempt some combination of 1 & 3.

i approach him with some paper. he sees me move and twitches very quickly - closer to the pillow. wow, he's really fast. this makes me think he can jump and i'm suddenly reliving arachnaphobia with john goodman in my mind. that's it, i thought. the little, i mean big, guy has to go.

so after another hesitation - i really didn't want to do this - i smashed him with my shoe. picked him up with some tissue and threw his twitching lifeless body in the trash. i should mention that as he hit the bottom of the bin his heavy body landed with a thump. that's how big he was.

i fell asleep in about 5 minutes, despite learning that i now have a fear (or atleast dislike) of spiders.

welcome to thailand.

chiang mai (take 2)

ahh, chiang mai. cool(er) weather and awesome classes and markets. it was good to be back. i spent the first week mostly cooking - i continued the week long class i had started previously and made some really awesome (i mean really awesome kick-ass thai food). here are some highlights:

tom yum khung (clear hot and sour soup with prawns)
tom kha gai (coconut hot and sour soup with chicken)
gaeng phed pet yang (roast duck in red curry)
chiang mai curry with pork
som tum (green papaya salad)
cashew chicken sirfry
mango sticky rice

still, though there was something missing about the class. i guess i'll have to keep looking. shucks.

for now, i'm off to the elephant nature park where i will be volunteering for at least two weeks. picking up dung will consume the majority of my days i'm guessing.

pictures

i've posted more pictures of koh tao and chiang mai. unfortunately flickr isn't letting me create new groups unless i pay them money, so you'll have to live with the disorganization. ahh, entropy.

lying liars and the lies they tell

by al franken. this was a fun, and at times maddening, book. al franken is a funny guy and he spends the majority of this book going after the right wing media like bill o'rielly and sean hannity. these guys are idiots, but that's nothing new. what was new was learning about how john mccain got push polled, details about fox trying to sue franken, and how bush, although claiming to be a man of faith, really probably isn't. another interesting question franken asks is, why is john walker lindh such a big deal when there have been far more treacherous traitors in our past - they're called confederates, and they killed more americans than lindh.

ko tao

the island of ko tao is a mecca for scuba diving. i met sean and his friend rachel at the airport in bangkok. we spent a day hanging out and then we were island bound.

the island is pretty touristy in spots, and quiet in others. we chose the quiet southern beach to base ourselves at and got a failry decent room near the beach. the weather was pleasant and the water was as warm as a bath. sean got his open water certification, and i got my advanced. the dives on the advanced were really cool. we did a deep dive (30m = 100ft!) and a night dive that was absolutely surreal. we saw stingrays, batfish, damsel fish, urchins, moray eels, crabs, shrimp, and even an enormous puffer fish! i loved the diving there so much i'm considering going back to get my divemaster. in late march the whale sharks are supposed to be migrating and its supposed to be a life changing experience to swim next to those giants. getting my divemaster would require 4 weeks of diving, but after the certification i could lead dives and get paid to do so!

anyway, i hope to post some more pictures soon. sean and i are heading to chiang mai in a few days where i'll finally get to settle for a bit and take some of the classes i;ve been wanting to do.

radiant cool

by dan lloyd. i think this book may have been written specifically for me. i had just finished a conversation with someone that i had been reading too much non-fiction lately and what i really was hungry for was a good romp with my imagination. this book delivered in a big way, and is the first fiction/non-fiction hybrid i can remember reading.

the book has two parts. first is a fictional account of a philosophy graduate student trying to uncover the mystery of consciousness as well as her advisor's mysterious disappearance. it is a delightfully playful quest for knowledge where point and counter-point allowed me to recall nearlyevery lecture of my cognitive science undergrad career. mmm, nummy nostalgia.

the second part is dan lloyd's own manuscript, putting forth his novel (get it?) theory. this part was more technical, and probably not as much fun if you're not familiar with the history of philosophy of mind. however, i loved it.

secret's out: i'm a nerd.

escaping reason

most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these [skeptical] clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any farther.

-- David Hume

chiang mai

first, i've posted pictures! you can check them out here and let me know what you think.

scott and i took the luxury option to chiang mai - we flew. bangkok airways is really cool. very short flights and very tasty treats along the way. we arrived and everything was so pleasant, the weather, the prices, the town - wonderful. the old city of chiang mai is surrounded by a moat that is actually somewhat clean and not stinky. this was shocking because a lot of the water in thailand (and generally asia) is polluted and stinky. i was finally happy to be in a city that did not smell like feces.

the first day scott and i rented a motor-scooter and scooted our way around town checking out the various wats (buddhist temples) in the area. every town has its own wat and each was generally built in a different era, for a different king, and for a different purpose. so even though they're all kinda similar, they're all uniquely different. chiang mai has about 3 wats in the city center and a very popular one on top of a mountain overlooking the entire city. brilliant views when the haze/smog isn't terrible, and it wasn't. after the flatness of cambodia, it was refreshing to be around mountains again. at the center of the wat a huge stuppa (spire) was coated in gold foil (real gold!). it shone brilliantly as the setting sun cast its final glows on its terraced pointyness.

the next day we did an introductory cooking class (the main reason i decided to go to thailand in the first place) that did not dissapoint. a thai man and his english wife runa class out of their home out in the burbs. they are well setup and the class is well organized so even novices can feel successful. we cooked thom yum kheung (hot and sour shrimp soup), green curry with chicken, pad thai (noodles with egg and shrimp), minced chicken on cucumber, and a water chestnut desert with sweet coconut cream. it was a lot of fun. i hope to be back to complete the week-long series course where they cover the curries in greater depth.

the next three days we went on a trek to a hill tribe in northeastern thialand. despite a horrible pickup truck taxi ride that took 3 hours, we were tramped our way about an hour to a village stocked with elephants. i was a bit nervous about riding the elephants after hearing horror stories about how they can sometimes be treated, but this hill tribe (the Karen hill tribe) treated them very very well. it was a blast. a bit uncomfortable after 1.5 hours on their backs, but well worth it.

after leaving the elephants we walked another hour to the Karen village. their language is not thai but sounds softer and more polynesian. we learned how to say thank you, "dub loo". it was amazing to see how simply these people lived. very basic huts and a diet of mostly rice. they all kept pigs and chickens but it was explained to us that those were only for special occasions. mostly they ate small fish, birds, frogs, and vegetables. we got a tour of the village and got to sit in some of their huts. each hut was the most basic bamboo flooring and siding with banana leaf roofs. at the center of each hut was the fire used for cooking and warmth. it gets very cold in the mountains at night. during the day it would be in the 90s, but at night it would be near 40!

the next day was spent walking through the jungle and across riverbeds. our lunches were noodles with egg bundled in banana leaf packets and we ate fresh pineapple often. another night in a hut, this time without a surounding village. the following day we took bamboo rafts about 2 hours down river. very quickly and expertly constructed and pilotes by some karen boys, these rafts were flexible enough to get us through some rapids and shallow enough to skim across the falling river line.

the trek was awesome. i could have gone for many more days, but it was time to get back to bangkok and say goodbye to scotty and get ready for sean. he'll be here tomorrow night and i'm island bound again! more diving, sand, and sun!