Elephantastic

Having lived in Chiang Mai for about three months now, and given the fact that Chiang Mai is known for it's eco-tourism, we decided to spend our day off enjoying one of these attractions. We've had plenty of time to research and we decided on a slightly more expensive, but environmentally and animal friendly elephant park. And it was WELL worth the splurge.

This park houses elephants are rescued from either street begging, logging operations, or other bad situations and given the chance to lead a healthier life. Because the Park is trying to let them live as naturally as possible, we didn't get to ride them or see many tricks, but we did get to feed them and play with them and watch them all day.

Plus, we got to hear some amazing stories about these elephants. Here's one of the most heartbreaking about one of the sweetest elephants in the camp, Jokia. She was working in a logging operation, and was forced to work through everything, even while she was giving birth. Born on the trail, the baby fell down the hill and didn't survive. Jokia refused and refused to work because she was so sad and her owner beat her to keep her working. He beat her so hard that she became blind in both eyes. After working this way for a long time, she was finally rescued by this camp. When she was brought in, another of the elephants immediately recognized that she was blind and sort-of "adopted" Jokia. They are never apart and usually are close enough so that Jokia is always aware of what's going on and looked after by the other one.

Amazing huh? So dry your eyes and get ready for some pictures. We took LOADS. Here are some of the highlights:

a single elephant tooth

They eat a lot, a LOT of food. They have to eat 10 percent of their body weight every day, and given the fact that most of them weigh about a ton, this means they spend 18 hours a day chewing. But what's cool is the park uses all seasonal food grown in the surrounding communities, so they are also supporting the hill tribes and communities in the area. Right now (in case you couldn't tell...) it's banana and pumpkin season.

Learning to feed 'emBaby!

love me some elephants

Tong Dee with Mae Tong Dee, the elephant. Chillin.

giving Jokia a bath
Jokia the sweetheartTwo elephants coming back from sneaking across the river for a snack of long grass.
Like I said... always eating.

can't get enough of the babies

a dirt bath for "Elephant Smile" right after the real bath

The pictures can't even do justice to how cute and spunky this little guy was... here he's chewing on my leg.

Needless to say, we were pretty envious of the people spending the night or the week there, but it was an amazing, amazing day and it made us very appreciative.

The End.

Help Me, Ronda

I've been thinking about writing a blog about motorbiking for a while, but I have been too afraid that I'd scare the begeezus out of my mom. However, it has become part of my life, and it is largely the common majority's means of travel. So this has to do with Thai culture and life for us in Chiang Mai.

Ronda and I. Don't let the faded color fool you.

My motorbike's name is Ronda. Red Ronda is her full name. She's a Honda Dream. She has a sticker that says "exces" on her frame, which I find funny because there's nothing "excessive" about Ronda. And I think Honda forgot how to spell "excess". Ronda and I met back at the beginning of July at a motorbike rental shop, though not in front of the shop where all the expensive, shiny new bikes are parked to attract the eye of passersby. My good friend Pi Pae came with me and assisted me in negotiating with the shop owner to let us rent an older one for cheaper than normal (comes out to about $1.87 a day). Ronda was tucked in the back of the shop next to a completely rusted bicycle and half of another motorbike. It was her deep, slightly faded red, beautiful wheels and chipped, scraped, and cracked plastic frame that caught my eye. And no the speedometer didn't work. These trademarks only show her maturity in my eyes. I asked if the bike worked and got a shaky "chai...chai" (yes...yes) back from the owner. "Give me an hour" she said, so I left and came back. Sure enough she was purrin' like a kitten. A kitten with emphasema but, nevertheless, a kitten.

"Dream Exces". Notice underneath it says "..(something)..rter Honda". I like to think it used to say "Smarter Honda".

Ronda didn't hesitate to put me to the test at first acquaintance. Like breaking a young horse, Ronda bucked me off briefly, but only once. I had underestimated her first gear. I won't be fooled again. This reminds me of a spring break trip I took with a few friends to the Bahamas when JJ and I rented mopeds from a guy with a glock tattooed on his arm. JJ soared off his bike on the practice loop in front of a crowd of people waiting to rent them. Ronda didn't treat me that badly. We merely tipped over pretty much at a standstill, but the scratches went unnoticed when I brought her back in due to previous scars.

Ronda and I have been together now for three months. As long as I keep her filled with $3 - $5 worth of fuel a week she doesn't complain, though sometimes she cuts off at stop lights. She is strong enough to take me a solid 30-40 minute drive down the "super highway" to my Burmese school and a 15 minute drive to my Thai school. What's it like to drive down a super highway in Thailand on a motorbike you ask? Motorbikes drive on the left of the solid line of the shoulder. Cars don't usually abide by any speed limit, but there are people pulling out in front of you so often that 80% of cars and motorbikes don't go over 40 mph. Thus, there are about as many highway police cars and speed limit signs as there are teeth in West Virginia (badoom pshh). I've seen one so far. Yesterday I stopped to buy bananas while leaving work, which is in the back of a very quaint village. A tiny woman, probably 90 years old, asked where I was going, and I said home. She asked if I could give her a ride to the front of the village, so she hopped on side-saddle style - all 80 pounds of her. She grabbed my hands and hugged me when I let her off. I knew her for a total of about 4 minutes.

Driving in the city is a mixture of chaos and fluidity. The farong tourists who drive really slowly on the side of the road look as terrified as I did when I started driving because they don't realize that they are in the motorbike lane, not the slow lane. There isn't a slow lane. Once you understand the flow of traffic, things start to make sense. I am a very careful driver, but I have still been knocking on wood this entire entry.

View from the apartment during the afternoon rain today.

The other day at my school I was sitting on a hammock by the pond during a class break and saw a rat the size of a full grown dachshund. By far the biggest I've ever seen. One of my students killed it with a fishing spear. They were happy because it has been eating their veggies and rice.

The rat was under this chair.

Everybody's Workin for the Weekend

Given the fact both Phil and I teach on Saturday and Sunday, we usually do our weekend things on Thursday and Friday. And this "weekend" was great.

On Thursday, I went with Phil (or Tong Dee) to the farm where he teaches to hang out and help out. In the morning it was too hot to do any real work, so I hung out while Phil taught some past tense and some tongue-twisters, which they loved. Then we had some lunch where I learned to eat with my hands Burmese-style, quite challenging with regular rice as opposed to sticky rice. I would say I was halfway successful whereas Phil is approaching professional status.

Their pet beetle munchin on some sugar cane. Please check out the leash on the horn.

The next tomato crop

After lunch, we were able to help on the farm by turning an old compost pile and making a new one! We did this by using machetes to chop piles of old rice stalks and some water plants into small pieces and alternating layers. It was a great way to put in some hard work, and the resulting blisters on my hands proved that this English teaching gig is turning me into a softie.

takin rice-straw to the house

Phil's students liked the "music" he made with his knife

layering and piling

After the compost was piled and the vegetables progress was inspected and the cows were pet, we went and spent the night with Phil's host family. I'm not sure what else to call them even though they are turning into my host family too. We brought some dinner and then spent the evening playing with Pop, who is becoming quite an accomplished walker as well as dancer.

the farm- so sabai

Phil, Pop, and Poh Thai

The next day, Phil and I went to the market and helped out with some chores before making Kao mon Gai, which translated literally is Chicken with Rice in Oil, and is SO delicious. It's boiled and chopped chicken served over rice that is specially prepared with ginger and garlic and then served with broth and a really spicy chili-ginger sauce. I think I've got the recipe down and will try and re-create it when I get back but it is truly delicious. The secret to the special delicious rice, as I discovered this time, is to mix the dried rice with garlic and ginger, and then stir fry it for about ten minutes before steaming it. It really makes it something special- a little tip for you all making Thai food at home...

Our hard work pays off: kao mon gai, complete with chicken blood (the dark meat in the bowl) and cucumbers sliced to perfection
Me and Pi Poi, after our hard work

Well, that's about it for our days off in the countryside. Now back to Chiang Mai for some more 'Ainglish teachin'- which will probably be the subject of the next entry. Hope all is well with you readers!

Where You Been At, Preposition?

I took a long unwanted break from Blogger, mostly due to my increased workload at my two schools. As you know, I've been teaching at a Thai school, "Gain English Easily" it's called, part time. Now I teach a variety of folks. A pair of private lessons, one to a 14 year old who's already smart, learns fast, and one who's 23, learning English for the first time and plans to go to the US. I asked him what he'll do when he gets there in 6 months, and he has no idea. Gotta do some work with this one. I also teach a group of nurses who drive for 3 hours from a mountain village called Wiyah Hang to Chiang Mai for an hour and a half class Saturday night and another one Sunday morning. Chiang Mai is the closest place that teaches English. Still, it puts me on my A game so they get as much out of it as possible. They were half an hour late last class because of traffic but I felt so bad I stayed an extra 45 minutes.

My other school is a little different to teach because they don't speak Thai... It's a 30-40 minute commute outside the city on my motorbike to get to the school, which is on a model organic farm. We're covering prepositions right now, which makes me think of Mom flicking me with a towel every time I deliberately ended a sentence with "at" as a youngster. I just added math to my curriculum because currently I am their sole teacher for, well, everything. If I don't go to school they don't go to school. Although this is an unpaid volunteer position, their unfortunate situation helps me spend more time there than in the Thai school. I stay out there with them occasionally to give them some outside contact, as they are currently limited to themselves, their families, and the few laborers that also work at the organic farm. The last time I was able to stay there, we planted beans in the afternoon along this snaking fish "pond" system they have built, and the beans are now about two feet high. The farm is a small organic island in a sea of chemicals (to take a quote from the local sandwich shop here "A shady island in a sea of rice") that is establishing a small-scale fish farm winding through the property. It's incredible what they've built so far: one very large pond that houses a lot of large fish and a dozen ducks (they go into the rice fields in the day and eat the snails that migrate to eat the organic rice), three small stock ponds where they have either cat fish or snake-head fish, and two feet-wide streams coming off the stock ponds that wind back and forth throughout the vegetable plots. The theory is that the fish will be able to live in the smaller stock ponds while being able to travel about the farm eating bugs and vegetable seeds that fall into the streams, and the veggies/fruits planted on the edges of the streams don't need to be watered if they grow so close to the water. There's a thousand fish in there now, who knows if they'll survive when it gets hotter than Hades in those little streams.

I eat lunch every day at the non-Thai school. Today we had chicken curry, an awesome Burmese-style salad with duck eggs, banana flower soup, and some kind of water sprout veggie. Everything but the chicken was from the farm. My students can eat chicken bones, though. Their teeth definitely out-compete my teeth, one of which chipped on a dried kiwi. The last time I stayed at the school we made compost out of rice straw, manure, and freshly chopped water plants. I don't know what these particular plants are, they grow in the water and look similar to lili pads... they call it watergrass. A thick storm rolled in on us as we worked but it didn't matter, though they offered me a baseball hat as it started pouring. We made our pile and played takraw, which is a hybrid of hacky sack and soccer. You juggle a bamboo-woven ball barefoot in a circle until your feet start bleeding. No surprise mine went first. There's something about manual labor and playing takraw in the rain. That may have made my entire trip. After that we ate yet another incredible meal. I'm excited that they are finally serving their normal spice level after lowering it considerably for me at first expecting me not to eat the "Burmese spice". If you want to see their website, email me and I can give you the link, but I can't put it on the blog. Same goes with the pictures!

I have more to talk about since I've been away from the blog for so long. Sorry about that, but if you're still reading this, we're going to get back to regular posts! Peace

The Remainder of Johnny's Visit

Well, as with the rest of this trip so far, John's visit flew by. After getting back from the jungle, we decided to spend the rest of his time in Chiang Mai, even though that meant a pretty horrendous flight schedule back for the poor boy. But, we hope that the last few days of his trip were enjoyable! Here are the highlights:

Went to the ZOO! Where the object is to feed as many of the animals as possible without getting your own hand added to their diet.

did you know hippos like bananas?

the elephants

giraffes too

and- possibly the most exciting- feeding a leopard with a piece of raw meat on a stickWe did our fair share of eating ourselves... I mean, we had to show John the variety of Thai delicacies- including the best pad thai in Chaing Mai followed by a waffle and coconut ice cream with Pi Pae, Jang, and Som:We paid a visit to Phil's host family where John was able to see the toy shop first hand, meet Pop (who he thinks is way cuter than our pictures can do justice to), ate mangoes right off the trees in front of the house (LOVE mango season here), and took a bike cruise of the country side..

forgetting sunscreen and going on a bike ride in the afternoon in Thailand means you get to wear a sweet hat of Paw Thai's

And we went to some Wats, of course, where John prayed to the sky gods to thank them for a fabulous Mongolia trip and safe passage home...

Which wound up coming true. He made it back in one piece with some serious jet-lag. Not sure if the sky gods got enough of an offering to cover that down-side of traveling over the Pacific. We had a blast showing him around from the jungle to the city, and were psyched he was able to squeeze us in before heading back to school.

Phil and I, meanwhile, are on our way to Myanmar (Burma) tomorrow to renew our visas and check out the border towns. You should be getting another post soon about this adventure!

Mother's Day

Johnny happened to arrive in Thailand on Thailand's Mother's Day, decided as such because it is the Queen's Birthday. To celebrate, everyone dresses in light blue (the Queen's color), visits the temple to well-wish their mother, and watches the firework show.

We also spotted this statue at a temple (not the same one where we made very generous offerings of incense and flowers to our mothers) and, though it doesn't in any way represent our mother dearest, we thought it pretty funny all the same...

Happy (Thai) Mother's Day!

also... check the post below- finally able to upload more pictures!

Spiders and Tigers and Snakes- Oh My!

Alright, folks, get ready for a long one. (Also, I am really having trouble with the formatting in Blogger right now... so I apologize for that and hopefully will fix it soon...)

Well, my brother Johnny has paid us a visit from the cold, northern steppe of Mongolia to the hot, humid tropical jungle of Thailand. *Insert culture shock here*. And to really give him the full jungle experience, we headed up to Mae Hong Son for a trek through that very jungle.

Mae Hong Son is nestled in the heart of the mountains- a fact we were made well aware of by the nausea-inducing-six-hour van ride through the windiest roads I’ve seen- and it was worth every twist and turn. We stayed at a guest house near the big lake in the center of town and found a great tour-guide operation which drew us in originally because the woman behind the desk had a pet lemur. While we fed the lemur fruit and it licked our fingers, we decided on a two day trek up a mountain and through the jungle.

Our buddy, the lemur

The next morning after breakfast we were picked up and taken to our guide Paw Di’s house in a village on the edge of the jungle where we outfitted for our trip. As John pointed out, it was the first camping trip we’ve been on where we packed solely fresh vegetables and raw meat to eat for the next two days. After safely stowing the bananas and cauliflower and pork, we shouldered our bags and set out from the house, through the village farm, right into the woods.

Packing the supplies

While we hiked through the dense forest full of mud and slippery rocks, Paw Di (who was wearing rubber slip-on shoes) would whip out his machete and make us little souvenirs- like a leaf cap, or a bamboo pipe and spoon. Eventually our path along a stream bed took a sharp turn up a hill and that hill turned into a small mountain and we reached one of the most beautiful lunch spots in history. We had emerged from the humid, wet, muddy jungle onto a small dry ridge where we could see the rest of the surrounding hills and then off in the distance where the mountains of Thailand ended and the mountains of Burma began. It was breathtaking. And the breeze that we could feel on the top didn’t hurt our opinion about the location either.

View from the top

While this was all happening Paw Di was telling us (through Phil's translation) that in the jungle there are a lot of wild boars. And we were like hmmmm, wild boars, I heard those could be a little dangerous. And then Paw Di mentioned that there were also tigers. And we were like tigers? And he was like yes, big tigers with the yellow and black stripes. And then went on to tell us that some of the cows and buffalo owned by the local people had been getting eaten. We hadn't realized that we were in a current-day tiger range, but following Paw Di and his machete, we trekked onwards and upwards. This onwards and upwards trekking took us to more spectacular views and better breezes.

But, as it turns out, tigers weren’t our biggest concern. When we reached the top of the mountain and Paw Di told us a story about a cobra he had seen that was three meters long and as thick as his calf (cobras are the ones with the hoods and the fangs and the poison). We decided that we might have more success against a tiger with our strong bamboo walking sticks than we would against a spitting, striking cobra. Starting our decent to the village where we would stay that night, we didn’t –thank goodness- run into any cobras, but we did find some jungle millipedes, which are pretty benign but very large...

And then, finally, after hiking all day, we ran into a member of the village we were heading to showing us we were very close, which was reassuring, but he was holding a rifle almost as tall as himself, which was not so reassuring, remembering we were in tiger territory. But, they told us it was for wild boars and not for tigers and we went on our merry way with the jungle finally opening up into the village of six huts, one of which was for us. After showering and looking at the pigs and playing with some of the stray dogs, we went in to help prepare all the fresh vegetables and raw meat that we had brought. All the cooking is done over an open fire in the middle of the house and it makes for a very mesmerizing sight.

The village

Cooking dinner

The dinner was exceptionally delicious: lemongrass soup, sautéed veggies, and peas with pork. Our hungry selves gobbled it up while looking over the mountains (yes, we were on the other side of the ridge by now) and after dinner we joined back around the fire drinking tea and watching the men of the village smoke banana leaves. Being pretty tired from the day of hiking, we went to bed on the floor under the mosquito nets quite quickly reassured, as John pointed out, that there was a family of juicy pigs living under our front porch which would surely be more appealing to a tiger, should one come prowling. We slept well until about 4:30 in the morning when the roosters roosting under our heads woke up and were cock-a-doodle-doo-ing until we got up, ate breakfast, and prepared for day two.

Our "guard pigs" under the porch...

Before we set off, we had to protect ourselves against the leaches, which really just meant putting bug spray on our socks and boots and hoping for the best. Leaches were the main concern of the day because we were hiking down the muddy path to a river, which we would follow back to Mae Hong Son. Paw Di packed his rubber slip-ons with a certain kind of leaf which appeared to be more successful against the blood-suckers than the bug spray because he only came out with a couple while I had the record of twenty on my socks and boots, Johnny in second with nine, and Phil reeling in eight, but two had latched on making him bleed so he was the real winner.

Day two was beautiful and I will spare you more reading by inserting pictures below. I do want to talk about one more thing before this novel of a blog comes to a close, though, and that is about our lunch on the second day. While we were hiking Paw Di stopped to cut down a huge stalk of bamboo and whittled it while we were walking down to the river. He pointed out a nice swimming hole where we promptly jumped in and swam around. Coming back to the lunch spot (and it can’t have been more than fifteen minutes later) Paw Di had a fire going, a tea pot made of bamboo on the fire, cups and spoons carved for each of us out of bamboo as well as a serving tray filled with a pork-vegetable-dish. He then handed us little banana leaf bundles which we unwrapped to find rice. He made tea leaves out of a fern he found in the woods, and it was probably the best trail lunch I’ve ever had in my life.

Paw Di making tea out of jungle leaves in a bamboo pot

Phil enjoying the bamboo creations
From there, more walking down the river, more beautiful stands of bamboo forest, more Paw Di whittling things and pointing out tarantulas and telling about huge cobras, and then before we knew it we were down the mountain, and dropped off in Mae Hong Son. We quickly followed our showers with a Thai massage, a big dinner (where we toasted Paw Di for getting us off the mountain without so much as a cobra, tarantula, or tiger bite), and a great nights sleep.

I sincerely hope I haven't bored you too much... more on the adventures with John soon!

Mountains of Burma in the distance

"You eat ants?"

"You better believe it..."Another of Paw Di's (flattering...) creations

Phil and Paw Di

Adventuring down the River

Tarantula!
Another fearsome jungle spider

Ah, the Sabai Life...