Rara Passed Away :(

I just found out that Rara, my favorite elephant at the Elephant Nature Park, passed away on January 6th.

She was only 7 years old, and had only been at the park for 4 months.  She had also just started bonding with her own kind, trumpeting for Mae Perm and Jokia when they went to Haven without her one night.    Her mahout, Gon, was utterly devoted to her, and I spent many feeding times chatting with him while Rara impatiently prodded me with her trunk for her next morsel.

I’m gonna miss her. 

Rara takes me for a walk.

Talking to Gon while feeding Rara.

Countdown

Top 5 Things I Love About Being Back in the “Real World”:

1. KITTY!!!!!!!!
2. Frequent, long, hot, FREE showers!
3. Living in a real-life house again and all the associated creature comforts such as:  (a)My own bed.  Mine.. all mine.  One that I can sleep in for several weeks or even months at a time!  One that does not have suspicious stains, a 10am check-out time or access via ladder.  (b)A kitchen stocked with all kinds of food I can stuff in my face without first seeing if it has my name written all over it in permanent marker.  Conversely, it is nice to look forward to eating something for lunch and actually finding it still there, rather than swiped or, even worse, sampled.  (Yes, this happened.  There was a mystery asshole backpacker in Iquique, Chile, who was routinely eating other people’s stuff.)  (c)A variety of clothes!  What a small but simple joy!  Even though most of my clothes are actually in boxes at my parents house, the small suitcase of clothes I had waiting for me at F’s house was a cornucopia of shirts, sweaters and pants.  No longer did I have to decide between wearing either the tshirt that has been worn 3 times but still smells ok or the tank top that is clean but looks moth-eaten.
4. Ease of access to everything my heart would desire.  If I need anything, I simply go to Target or get online.  I went to Target when we got back and was completely dazzled by the array of deodorants.  So many brands, smells, colors and application methods!  (Do we really need that many options?  I don’t think so.  I guess this is a love/hate thing for me I will have to explore on a different post.)
5. Not living out of a backpack.

Top 5 Things I Will Miss About Being On The Road:

1. Meeting people from around the world, of all types of backgrounds, shapes, sizes, ages, sounds, colors and the ease in which they became my friends.  Hearing about others travel adventures and being inspired to go see and do.
2. The simplicity of my life.  Where to eat, where to sleep, where to have a coffee.  These were my main worries in life, and to say I worried is a stretch.
3. Spending unlimited, uninterrupted time with my hubbly-bubbly.  Sure I share my life with F, but the sort of intimacy we had this year was something not a lot of people get to do (or could do.)  You’d think after a YEAR of being with F 24 hours a day, and I mean very literally 24 hours a day, that I would be sick of him.. but no.  I could still hang out with him pretty much all the time.
4. Living out of a backpack.  You meet someone who has a free spot on an Antarctic cruise that leaves in 3 hours, and you can go because everything you own is on your back.
5. Living a life FULL of possibility.  Every day I woke up, I never knew what to expect. I could wake up and see:

this!!

Oh yeah, we had another camera.

Duh!  What use is taking a big, heavy, cumbersome SLR camera if you don’t post the pictures you took for your travel blog?  Now that I’ve been home almost 3 weeks, I guess it’s about time I got down to doing just that.

I just have to post another picture of me and Faa Mai at the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand. Because I got to snuggle with a sleeping baby elephant!!

This is Lek and Matt trying to get Faa Mai to lay down for her nap. Cheeky ele has other ideas...

F caught this adorable little guy smartly dressed in his school uniform running down the stairs. Late for class maybe?

I finally paid a visit to the Harajuku area of Tokyo, which I've wanted to visit for-oooh-ever! All those years of drooling over Fruits magazine let to this and I was not disappointed.

The first line I read about Nara made mention of it's 1200 tame deer... and I didn't need to know anymore before I was determined to go.

Enterprising deer.. laying in wait near both the benches and Coke machine.

These designs and attention to detail is what made me fall in love with Japan.

Japan Tidbits

I’d heard of the Hachiko statue in Tokyo somewhere before, probably on a TV show back when I had a TV.  Hachiko was a Japanese dog owned by a professor in Tokyo in the 1920’s.  The professor went to and from work from the Shibuya metro station, and lovely Hachiko would walk with him to the station, and be patiently waiting for him in the evening.  Well, one day the professor had the nerve to up and die on Hachiko!  Despite this setback, Hachiko was seen faithfully waiting for his master everyday at Shibuya station.  This continued for 7 years after the professor’s death, during which Hachiko became something of a national celebrity.  When Hachiko finally passed, the Japanese put up a bronze statue in his honor.   Today, it is a famous children’s tale, as well as a really good meeting point near the metro.

Us with Hachiko. There were many people milling around waiting for friends.

One thing I wanted to try out when we were in Japan were the famed capsule beds.  Tokyo is HUGE and all of it is served by rail.  Problem is the metro closes sometime after midnight, which really puts a wrench in your late-night partying plans.  The solution?  Capsule hotels!  Places where you can cheaply rent a bed for the hours between the bars closing and the subway opening.  The beds kind of look like what you’d expect astronauts to sleep in,  like large people-sized filing cabinets.  (BTW a more obvious solution to me seems to be changing those times so they are aligned, but then all those enterprising capsule hotel owners would be pretty put out…)  Well I ended up finding a hostel with a 16-bed capsule style room so we stayed there a night just for the novelty of it.  Surprisingly comfortable and cozy!

The beds each had, thoughtfully, a reading light, shelf and lockable doors.

We met up with our friends Lyon and Sheila one night for a drink at an observatory in the Roppongi Hills.  Little did Sheila know she was about to get the surprise of her life – Lyon was proposing in a few days!!  (She said yes.) 

Congrats again guys!! And I'm glad I was able to keep it secret because I was worried that sherry was going to loosen my tongue...

Ok this is really hilarious… F was taking a picture of me in front of a kabuki theatre, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw, well, ME, bent over at the waist examining a bus schedule.  I was like, “hey, um, I’m standing over there.”  A slight, Japanese dude was wearing the same jacket, same shoes, same jeans, same bag.  My doppelganger!!  We HAD to take a photo.

How weird is that?

Japan…our last leg!

Arriving in Japan on December 4 was like the beginning of a countdown.  All of a sudden we were in our last country, knowing that the whole mess o’ bananas would be ending right afterwards.  And, for G, dreading like nothing else a 12 hour plane ride on United in Economy.  Some things have not lost their ability to terrorize despite our travel hardened hides.

Anyway, the first thing we noticed in Japan was that, unlike our last few stops…it was COLD!  The temperature hovered at about 18 degrees or so while we were there, and while it didn’t rain too too much, it was still a bit of a wakeup call.  Needless to say, both of us wore all of the clothing we had left all of the time…not much room to change outfits when you are wearing pretty much all you own!

G on Tokyo Metro wearing a borrowed sweatshirt from Rina!

Our first stop was Tokyo, where we spent about 3 days seeing sites and friends.  We visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which was interesting for me because of its political importance.  This is the shrine to Japan’s war dead which causes such an outrage everytime it is visited by a Prime Minister.  The problem is that several military leaders who were later classified as war criminals have been enshrined, and the monks who run the place claim that their Kami, or spirits, can’t be de-enshrined (unlike the case in other shrines, apparently).  I was definitely struck by the defiant not in most of the displays.  Basically the point of the shrine is “just because you won you can’t take revenge on us by re-writing history.”  Perhaps…but it still seems to me there were some pretty bad people in that group.

Entrance to Yasukuni Shrine

While in Tokyo we also got to hang out with my friend Andrew and his wife, Cindy.  Our evening got cut a bit short because G got sick (she has this weird thing that attacks sometimes when she has a drink).  But we did get to hang out with them and their FIVE dogs.  What fun!  Andrew’s company has this amazing free learning software…check it out www.smart.fm.  We also hung out with our friend Jacinta, who took us to perhaps our coolest eating experience on the whole trip.

This restaurant was in a TREEHOUSE.  Jacinta had her parents in town, and we all climbed this thing and had a witches cauldron full of Japanese stew.  Delicious!  As always, Jacinta was full of energy and had amazing stories to tell.  She had a really insightful thing to say about Japan, which is that when the Japanese decide to do something, they get completely immersed in it.  This really helped explain how everything you look at seems to strive for perfection, whether the hygiene in public toilets to the quirky 1950’s dancers dressing up and doing the twist in public parks.  What they get into, they get really into.  Jacinta’s main project is a creative/technology space called the Tokyo Hacker Space.

With JC and Friends

Hideaway Restaurant in Harajuku area of Tokyo

We left Tokyo on the JR (Japan Rail) bullet train, or Shinkansen.  Even though these things have been around for many years, they still are pretty damned futuristic.  Actually…that was a comment I wanted to make about Japan generally – that everything there is futuristic, but much of it is futuristic in kind of a 1980’s sort of way – like the perception of the future got locked in then.  Perhaps this is what the “lost decade” thing is all about.  Back to the trip.  Our JR ride (yes, it was VERY fast)  was part of a great program that Japan has for tourists – you can buy an all you can eat railpass that lasts a week for the price of a single ticket, pretty much.  The only catch is that you have to purchase it prior to entering the country, which, thanks to G’s foresight, we did in Singapore.

Getting on the bullet train.

We got off in Kyoto, which fully lived up to its reputation as site of some of the most beautiful shrines and parks in all of Japan (or at least what we saw of it).  Even though it is a big city, it feels quite small.  We had a fantastic hostel – possibly the best on our trip – K’s House Kyoto.  Actually – a note on hostels in Japan – very expensive, but unrelentingly clean and cheerful.  While in Kyoto we got to see some Geishas in the Gion district, which has been maintained in the old style.  We also walked unsuspectingly into the red light district…with both of us going “oh!” at some of the wares on display.

K's Hostel in Kyoto

Kyoto

Pretty garden in Kyoto.

From Kyoto we took a day trip to Osaka, which is the second biggest city in Japan.  I have to say I was unimpressed.  Supposedly there’s a really good nightlife scene, but we were there during the daytime, and it was raining, so we pretty much visited some malls and went “home” to Kyoto.

Our next day trip, to Nara, was far more successful.  Nara may have many important shrines and history, but really what made it interesting was the fact that it has a herd of about 1500 deer which run around town and beg the tourists for food.  They are cute, aggressive, poop all over the place, and provide pretty much endless entertainment.  G, needless to say, was enthralled.  We spent half a day getting headbutted, chased, and mobbed by hungry herbivores.  It would have been scary if we were the height of, say, a 12 year old!

Temple in Nara.

Hand feeding a baby deer in Nara!

Our last stop before returning to Tokyo was Hiroshima.  I have to say – even though Kyoto is beautiful and Nara had deer, Hiroshima was far and away the most memorable experience for me in Japan, for pretty much the reasons you would expect.  The memorials are so beautiful and dignified (which stands in stark contrast to the way they’ve been done at a couple sites in the US in my view).  Unfortunately, we ran low on time and had to hurry through the second part of the Peace Museum, which is where all the most impactful collection is.  Perhaps it’s just as well.

The only remaining building that was destroyed in the bomb, Hiroshima.

Tree affected by nuclear bomb in Hiroshima.

We also had a pretty fun time visiting the Mazda Museum, which is on the site of the Mazda factory at Hiroshima.  The company owns a piece of land about 7Km long, their own port, their own bridge (one of the largest private bridges in the world) and, of course, a big old production line that we had a fun time watching.  I didn’t particularly enjoy the whole Corporate Social Responsibility angle to most of the tour – I’ve got a finely tuned BSmeter – but it was pretty neat to see how the manufacturing works.

F's new ride.

Our last few days were spent in Tokyo…SHOPPING!  We had been holding off on buying things for the past 11 months, and we cut loose a little bit.  Nothing more than what fit in our backpacks, but we did buy some secondhand clothes at some really hip places, and lots of gifts for Christmas.  One morning we decided to brave the famed Tokyo fish market, and had a fresh sushi breakfast afterward! We also visited the Ghibli Museum, which is dedicated to the animated films directed by Miyazaki…the best known of these in the US was Spirited Away.  These films have a bit of nostalgic value for G and for me because Princess Mononoke was the first movie we ever saw together.  The museum, by the way, is well worth a visit!

Fresh sushi at 8am!

The Ghibli Museum

And that’s it!  The 12 hour plane ride home was about as bad as we expected…but that’s just a footnote to what really, really, was the trip of a lifetime.  I’m sure we’ll add a post or two when we’ve had some time to digest the trip…but that’s it for now.  Hope you’ve enjoyed reading!!!

Oh – and Merry Christmas!

Bali and the Gilis

Some places you just have to go back to.  There is something about Bali that makes you relax.  It is beautiful, artistic, creative, cheap, smiling, and more.

Our friends from both Singapore and Chicago joined us for a fantastic couple weeks of beach, pool, and partying, to say nothing of amazing meals.  Below are Pinki and Rina, G’s college friends who came out from Chicago and New York.

Yes, this is what it’s like.  The shot above was taken on the Gilis, which we went to after having spent a week in Seminyak, Bali.

It turns out that there are no cops on the Gilis, and the local tourism business has taken note…

Our modest villa in Seminyak…

Did I mention the pool?

Cafe Bali is G and my favorite place in Seminyak.  The gang here is posing below this cool chandelier, which we used to think was ostrich eggs, but which we’ve since decided is plastic.

Magical, no?

Singapore

Coming back to Singapore culminated a feeling that has been growing on me for awhile – that we’ve come full circle and our trip is winding down.  This started when we got to Thailand, but being back in good old SG really brought it home – as if we never left!

Of course, we spent the whole week hanging out with our friends.  Thanks go out to everyone who put up with our messiness while we crashed;  Pontus, Gerald and Amy, Eric and Amy, and Lyon!

Oh – the other thing we did a lot of was EAT!!!  Surprise surprise.  Nothing like our Singapore favorites.

Our first night out was at a Japanese grill.  EVERYTHING had pork in it!

Crappy picture of me, but one of our favorite hawker center meals is Murtabak – a roti prata with onions, egg, and sauce…we split the one above.

Pontus knows every good restaurant in Singapore…in addition to letting us crash at his place he pointed us to some new food haunts in Singapore…and Bali!

Believe it or not, one of Singapore’s yummiest things is whipped instant coffee, or Kopi.  Expect a buzz after one of these!

During a dinner one night I turned to Katy, Cedric’s girlfriend, and said ‘wouldn’t it be great if you guys could join us in Bali?’  Cedric turned and said ‘hell yeah!’ and then actually went and did it!  We ended up planning a huge party in Bali, which I’ll tell about later.  Point is – people often say sure, that sounds great…but this was one of those awesome times when everything, as they say, comes together!  Such a cool group…

Here’s me DJing at one of our reunion nights at Lyon’s…we used to meet up for Rock Band, now it’s DJ party!  Those glasses I got in South Africa and have since joined the Lost List.

The gang at a super swank place called Le Noir.  I almost didn’t get in because of my ratty patched shorts – which G finally convinced me to throw out.  Thanks to Matteo for knowing the bouncer!

Railay Beach, Thailand

The trip with Tida finished up at Railay beach, which sits on a peninsula just near Krabi.  You have to get there on a boat, and it is probably one of the more beautiful places we’ve been – or in this case, been back to.

The natural beauty was breathtaking, but it’s amazing how quickly that fades into the background.  It’s the human stories that you remember.  While we were in Railay we went to a Muay Thai contest – which was held in a bar.  One of the owners of the bar was a guy named Eek.  Let me describe him to you.  Probably about my age, but looks 40.  Kind of a Thai Captain Jack Sparrow, from Pirates of the Caribbean.  Covered in tatoos, including tattoed eyeliner,  a long time muay thai fighter with the broken hands to prove it…. but, amazingly, a really gentle soul.  You could see it in his eyes.  Certainly both G and Tida felt comfortable with him.

Anyway, he showed us this amazing video of what was called The Vegetarian Festival.  I had heard something about this while in Krabi, and had heard the fireworks, but I am not really interested in vegetables.  Well – I missed out.  It turns out that during the Vegetarian Festival, devotees are taken over by spirits, and are able to self mutilate without any pain.  No joke.  So, the video he showed us was of himself, covered in blood, slicing himself on the tongue with razor blades, piercing himself with skewers through the cheeks and chest, and generally carrying on.  The date on the video was three days prior.  He had no marks to show for all that carnage, which was bad enough that Tida and G had to turn away from the screen every so often.

Eek wanted to show us some monkeys the morning before we left, but I was tired and slept in.  G and Tida had a great time though.  That said…if they had somehow gone missing, my statement to the police would have read that I last saw them with a guy covered in tatoos, who self mutilates…looks like a pirate.  He was a gentle soul, I tell you!

Just as we were getting on to our plane in Krabi, a Thai Boy Band – was it Boyz A Plenti? – descended on the airport. Chaos and high pitched hilarity ensued.

Here’s G in front of a dogpile on Boyz a Plenti.

Elephant Nature Park – Help Save Working Elephants!

I just spent a week with Tida volunteering our time at an elephant rescue and sanctuary called The Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  I first heard about the park from another RTW blog.

The first day of volunteering we went to the ENP’s head office in Chiang Mai to sign in and meet the other volunteers.  There were tons of people from all walks of life, of all ages and all excited to be there and start working!  We got volunteer tshirts that first day, and many of us wore them continuously for the next week. 

We drove 2 hours away to reach the park, a drive that took us through a very scenic valley in which the park is located.  The first thing we did upon arriving at the park was feed the elephants their breakfast!!  There are large platforms throughout the main hut, both for safely viewing the elephants and park, and for feeding.  Large baskets full of fruit were brought out and we got to give handfuls at a time to eagerly waiting (and sniffing) trunks, stretched across the railing.  A very fun introduction to the park.

Hungry Ele

In the "elephant kitchen."

We then got together to view a documentary to learn about the park, and why elephant sanctuaries are needed in Thailand.  The park (and foundation) were started by a Thai woman named Sangduen “Lek” Chailert.  Having been around elephants since she was a little girl, she saw first-hand the horrific abuse and neglect that working elephants were subjected to.  She has been campaigning for elephant’s rights and welfare, a sole voice in a country where elephants bring in tourist dollars.  Elephants are used for illegal logging, street begging, circus shows and trekking, all which have severely negative mental and physical effects on the elephants.  They are kept in line using metal hooks, chains, whips.

All working elephants go through a training ritual called “pajan” which Thai owners put their elephants through, supposedly to domesticate them and make them afraid of people, and therefore obedient.  What really happens is no less than torture.  The young elephant, aged only 6 years or less, is dragged by at least 20 men using ropes around its legs into a “training crush,” a tiny bamboo cage which just barely fits the elephant.  Its legs are restrained, its head is tied so that it can’t move, the trunk is tied, even the tail is restrained.  It is a prisoner, unable to defend itself.  Then the “training” begins.  For 5 days and nights, with no food or water, the elephant is repeatedly stabbed around the ankles, the trunk, the head, the rear, the mouth, the eyes.  Their flesh is whipped.  The ears are ripped and they are even stabbed in the sensitive inner ear.  The elephant, just a toddler, since elephants live as long as we do, screams and trumpets in pain and fear.  Blood is everywhere.  I remember very clearly a shot of an elephant’s eyes while being tortured in the pajan, and seeing the absolute  terror in them, the memory of which still haunts me.  After that image I had to look away from the documentary, and my sister Tida says she saw footage of a mahout beating his tiny elephant on the head with a metal hook, and then forcing the baby to pick it up and hand it back to him when it fell to the ground.  The village shamans claim this “breaking of the spirit” is necessary to domesticate an elephant.  However, Lek wants to educate locals about how they can train their elephants using positive reinforcement, and that the pajan is a barbaric, unnecessary ritual.

Almost all of the elephants at the park have horrible histories of abuse and neglect by their owners and handlers.  Some were born at the park and therefore have only experienced loving hands and the freedom to run and forage and scamper like cheeky baby elephants are wont to do.

• Trekking elephants take up, by far, the largest number of working elephants used in tourism.  I don’t think the people who sign up for elephant treks are evil.  They simply don’t know how cruelly the elephants are treated, and the tourism industry wants to keep it that way.  A typical backpacker might think an hour trek couldn’t possibly be bad for an elephant, it’s just a walk isn’t it?  But what tourists don’t see are the metal hooks, the beatings, the chains and soulless elephants.  What they don’t know is that the elephant they are riding has been put through the pajan.
• Using elephants for street begging is illegal.  However, every day, across the city, street begging elephants trek 30 miles to and from Bangkok , where their mahouts (handlers) pay a corrupt police officer 500 baht (US$ 15) to look the other way.  They drink filthy water from Bangkok’s polluted canals, routinely get hit by cars, and essentially starve to death since they do not receive anywhere near the amount of food they require daily.  I learned at the park – elephants eat A LOT, about 300kg daily.
• Circus elephants are routinely beaten, and savagely, in order to train them to perform unnatural tricks in front of screaming crowds and blaring music.  When they are not performing, or being beaten during training, their legs are chained together so tightly they can’t move.
• Logging elephants routinely have broken backs from hauling heavy loads up and down mountain-sides and are worked around the clock without rest.

We had a routine in the park which was something like this:

• 7am:  Wake up
• 7:30am:  Have yummy breakfast and BIG cup of coffee
• 8am:  Start morning chores.
• 9:30am:  Start the morning project.
• 10:30am:  Start to bring out food baskets to different areas around the park where the elephants are fed
• 11:30am:  Morning feeding!
• 12pm:  Volunteer feeding!
• 1pm:  Elephant bath time
• 2pm:  Start the afternoon project.
• 4:30pm:  Afternoon ele feeding
• 6:30pm:  Dinner
• 8pm:  Evening entertainment (or free nights)
• 9pm:  Dead asleep in bed

During bathing time!

Cleaning out the shelters.

Our morning chores were either:

1. Preparing the elephant’s morning meal and helping out in the “elephant kitchen,” which is tougher work than it sounds.  Hauling endless bags of heavy fruit around, cleaning and sorting them is a great workout.
2. Going to the plantations to cut corn or bananas for the elephants.  Again, pretty fun!  Everyone gets handed a machete and goes to work cutting down rows of corn.  The hard part is carrying the heavy bundles back to the truck.
3. Cleaning out the elephant shelters (read: shovel poop).  This was actually quite relaxing, messy as it sounds.  Elephant poop is essentially balls of fiber.

There are many projects and errands to be done throughout the day, as the park depends on the work of its volunteers to keep the park running.  Volunteers help out doing things like keeping the shelters clean, building new shelters, varnishing buildings, cutting fruit and plants for the eles and so on.  Each week there are trips to Elephant Haven, a secluded piece of land the park owns, where 5-7 elephants at a time are taken so they can forage and roam in freedom.  We volunteers got to take a group, and spend the night up in Haven, on a simple but cozy platform in the middle of the jungle.

The gang at Haven.

Waiting for Jokia to finish foraging during our hike up to Haven.

We got to know so many awesome new elephants, people and dogs during our week there.  Of course among the favorites were the two babies, Faa Mai (6 mos) and Chang Yim (3 mos.)  Mae Bua Tong and Dok Ngern, the respective mothers, are very close and the day Chang Yim was born, Mae Bua Tong even broke through the fence to be near Dok Ngern as she gave birth.   Today their stable are right next to each other, and as Faa Mai falls asleep for her morning nap, cheeky Chang Yim continues playing next door, usually trying to eat Pom’s hair, (Pom is Lek’s unofficial next-in-command).  Faa Mai and Chang Yim are fully owned by the park, and will therefore never have to endure the pajan, and are trained using only positive reinforcement, so they can be handled during feeding, bathing and medical exams.

Cute explosion!! Six-month-old Faa Mai sucks on her trunk like a baby sucking her thumb.

Pom trying to get Chang Yim to sleep. He has other ideas.

The intertwining stories of Mae Perm and Jokia simultaneously break my heart and mend it back together.  Mae Perm is Lek’s first rescue, thought to be originally from Burma and used in Thailand for illegal logging.  She is 89 years old and one of the gentlest souls in the whole world.  Jokia was also rescued from a brutal life as a logging elephant, one that ultimately led to her being blinded by her handlers.  Jokia, heavily pregnant, was still forced to work around the clock, with no rest and insufficient food.  When she was tired and slow to work, her handlers shot rocks at her eyes with slingshots.  She lost her sight in that eye.  Her baby was born while she carrying a log up a steep hillside.  The baby, still in it’s umbilical sac, rolled down the hillside but Jokia’s handlers refused to let her rescue it, despite her cries.  The baby died, and Jokia plunged into depression,  so emotional are elephants.  When she refused to work, her handler shot her other eye with an arrow, and with that cruel act, she was blinded forever.  Jokia came to the park, where Mae Perm immediately took her under her wing.  They are now inseparable.  Mae Perma and Jokia communicate using low grumbles, as elephants commonly do.  When Jokia trumpets because she no longer knows where Mae Perm is, Mae Perm will come literally running to her side, trumpeting all the while.  They greet each other by lovingly running their trunks all over the other’s face and and trunk, reassuring the other and making what can only be described as happy squeaks.  How good does your heart feel right now?

Jokia (L) and Mae Perm (R) on their way to Elephant Haven

Hope, Jokia and Mae Perm come to greet us

Medo and Mae Mai are another bonded pair at the park, with Mae Mai serving as Medo’s unofficial bodyguard.  Medo, tiny compared to the other elephants, broke her ankle working as a logging elephant.  When she was no longer able to work as a logging elephant, she was sold to a new owner who used her as a breeding elephant.  She was restrained and tried to resist a large male, who attacked her, and broke her back.  The horrific nature of her injuries are obvious when you see her.  Her back is severely crippled.  But she was rescued and came to the park, where she can now roam freely, if slowly, and safely.  When walking through the park one day, I saw Mae Mai watching Medo from a distance.  She, without prompting from Medo, moved herself slowly between Medo and the path some of the park dogs which were walking down.  Medo is afraid of dogs.  Mae Mai slapped her trunk against the ground towards the dogs, an aggressive gesture that means, “stay away.”  The dogs, living at an elephant sanctuary, know this, and immediately steered away.

Tiny Medo has a broken back and ankle which was never treated before she came to the park. She is bonded to Mae Mai.

Speaking of dogs, I was officially and securely in dog heaven while at the elephant sanctuary.  Dogs find their way to the park in the most peculiar ways.  Some dogs are rescued to come stay here, some simply find their way and never leave, and some are village dogs that come floating down the river, stay a few days and then make their way back home.  The dogs have made natural packs, one of which stayed near our huts.  This meant we had a guest in our room every night, sleeping peacefully and sometimes snoring from underneath our bed.

Number One (yes, that is his name) makes himself comfortable in our room.

Phet, which means diamond in Thai, who would always greet me like this on my way back to the huts. Stick in mouth, wagging tail, curled down ears. What a heartbreaker!

It was a lot of hard work, but soooo satisfying to feel tired at the end of the day, watching big, beautiful, safe elephants in the distance as the sun sets.  I can’t recommend this experience enough.  For anyone that loves animals, loves Thailand and wants to do some good in the world, please consider volunteering at the park!  The foundation is developing a new sanctuary located in Surin, and they need your help more than ever.  The foundation would like to show the government and people in tourism that a sanctuary is possible!  And even if you can’t volunteer, please help spread the word about elephant welfare in Thailand and beyond!

Me and Tida with Lek, the Elephant Nature Park's founder, and an amazing woman!!

Back from Elephant Heaven

Well, Tida and I just finished our week volunteering at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, and I can’t fully express what an amazing experience it was.  I have so many thoughts and emotions tumbling around my head about it.  I’ve started writing a blog post in greater detail, but it will take me a while to fully flesh it out.

Until then, let me whet your appetite with this:

Me feeding one of my favorite eles, Rara. Rara is also the park's newest rescue, saved from the Sheraton in Krabi, where she worked in the lobby greeting guests.

Me and Tida snuggling up with Faa Mai during her nap. Faa Mai is only 9 months old and adorable!!