More irrelevant thoughts

More vaguely related thoughts about travel:

On getting a hair cut:  If you like a bargain, come to Thailand (or probably anywhere in SE Asia). A shampoo, head massage, haircut, blow dry, and style were $7.  I've never understood why hair cuts cost so damn much, so this is a price range I am comfortable participating in. If you are very particular about how it turns out (which, really...who cares? It's hair, it grows back) don't brave the language barrier.  Such simple words to describe what you want will get you nowhere.  For me it was a matter of saying this much, pointing to my chin. There was no saying "yes I want that much cut off, that's how short it usually is, I just haven't gotten a haircut in over a year." It was simply a point to my chin and consistent nodding when asked "this ok?"  A few weeks later when I was ready for the pixie cut I had a picture ready, but in the end I didn't know how to say "no, I want to keep my bangs long. Stop cutting so much off!" so I ended up looking more like Nate Reuss than Justin Beiber (because with hair this short I really only think of boys to compare to, not girls...).  Hopefully it will have grown into what I wanted by the time I see any of you, and any pictures will happen to be of things rather than me and things.

On restaurants:  I much prefer the SE Asian restaurant hospitality (except for when you are wandering aimlessly). What I mean is, before you decide where you are going to eat, the wait staff is milling about and they can be relentless in trying to recruit you to their restaurant.  But once you sit down to a meal, they are excellent.  They promptly bring you a menu, promptly take your order, and promptly bring you what you order.  After that you are free to eat and drink at your own pace without interruption.  They do not come up to check on you every two seconds to make sure everything is perfect. But they are milling about, you simply have to catch their attention and they come to your service. In touristy areas you may also be bombarded by locals (or fake locals) trying to sell you tourist crap, but as long as you don't show the faintest interest, they generally leave you alone.

An end to Thailand

With time to spare before I needed to get to the farm, I boarded some trains and buses and made my way to Krabi, a beachy area of southern Thailand. After recently recovering from a draining head cold, I was struck down again, as soon as I got to Krabi, with an ear infection. So some of the beauty of the gorgeous seas and limestone rock formations escaped me as I dealt with throbbing ear pain and an insufferable underbite. I did force myself to take advantage of the area a bit, spent some time on the beach, scaled some of the rock formations with a rock climbing group, and found some delicious food (that didn't require too much chewing), but I don't think southern Thailand had the appropriate awe inspiring affect on me.

I left Krabi for Ranong where I was embraced by Ta, a local Thai restaurant owner who sympathizes with travelers. She took pity on me as soon as I stepped off the bus and the taxi drivers started bombarding me with offers to drive me to the center of town.  Ta steered me away, made me dinner, took me out for drinks, offered accommodation, and helped me to catch my bus the next morning...such a sweet woman!

With Ta's help I found myself in PakSong, the tiny village where TCDF Eco-Logic Farm is located, and was welcomed (warmly) by Ingrid, the Dutch co-owner of the foundation. The Thai Child Development Foundation was established as a farm/guest house to help fund a local school where students with disabilities receive attention and education that is otherwise unavailable to them in such a remote location.  Additionally they help to fund raise for local families that require medical services that are just impossible to attain on their own. Understandably, volunteers aren't involved with the special school unless they are staying for a longer period of time, it's not good for any child to make connections that aren't going to be lasting.  I talked with Ingrid though about my desire to work in special education in the future and she brought me down to observe the classroom one morning.

So I signed up to volunteer on an organic farm hoping to do some organic farming. But...it's the rainy season in Thailand, so most of the work was more about general maintenance. The main project was rebuilding this clay house made of completely natural materials.  The work was pretty fun, but I also made myself busy with other tasks such as weeding, recycled art crafts, and spreading compost on pineapple plants.  This was the most farm related task of the week, but it's toll on my gag reflex and the lingering smell on my hands (long past an immediate shower and several rigorous hand washings) made it the least pleasant of the week.

The setting was incredible.  Located on a lush, jungle-y mountainside, there was plenty of hiking and much relaxing to be done.  The food was awesome: local, organic, delicious. The company, overall, was quite nice, passing the evenings with games of 'UNO' and some guitar. It was also a unique experience.  One of the volunteers, self christened 'Strong Wings,' was quite opinionated on energies, auras, government control, the end of the world...things like that. I chose to listen to his ideas for several hours one evening, but, like I said, it was very unique. Hopefully he didn't read my skeptical energy too easily.

And now I am headed back to Chiang Mai to collect my visa and carry on to India. While chatting with someone recently, I told him I was flying into Delhi.  He immediately started ranting about how I needed to get out of Delhi as soon as possible because it is loud, dirty, and depressing and I will hate it.  Thank you for the advice sir, but I am ONLY going to be in Delhi for the next three weeks with a volunteer program, but you've inspired great confidence in me. Regardless, I'm ready to move on from Thailand and I am very much looking forward to getting to India (to eat so much naaaaaaaaan!).

I'll report back soon(er or later) on how I handle the chaos.

General thoughts about travel

Musing about travel.

I did not get to go back to the elephant park because getting a visa was of course more complicated than filling in an application and paying a fee...why would we want things to be simple.  It involved filling in an online application, making an appointment for two days later to turn in a hard copy of the same paperwork, wait for an hour for them to approve the visa and collect the fee. The visa will be ready for pickup A WEEK LATER! I was not planning to spend this much time in Chiang Mai, and I have plans for being on a farm next week.  So let's make things more complicated!  I am going to catch a train to Bangkok to get a bus to Krabi to play on the rocks and beach, then another couple buses to the farm for a week to then catch a few more buses back to Thailand to catch a train to Chiang Mai for the sole purpose of collecting my visa, then catch the train right back to Bangkok to finally catch a flight to India (a day past my legal stay in Thailand). The leisure of traveling without plans sometimes leads you into a strange mess of traveling, but I guess it's alright...I've got a visa (next week).

Toilets:  I don't mind the squat toilet that is typical of southeast Asia, and I don't even mind the water stream instead of toilet paper (like the spray nozzle of a kitchen sink). Except that I always think of drinking fountains.  You know how you don't really want to take a drink from the same spout that a small child has just made out with to get a few drops of water down...that thought alway crosses my mind when I think about using the water stream and I wish for a little bit of western comfort in the form of toilet paper.  Which often there is, but sometimes...

Beds: Once upon a time I spent the weekend with a friend who was just moving in.  In one room there was a bed not yet properly assembled, the box spring was hastily left on top of the mattress. After a small number of cocktails I deemed this box spring a good place to sleep and did not recognize it's discomfort (or my stupidity) until morning. The beds in Thailand have been comparable to that box spring, and I have not had enough cocktails every night to mask that discomfort.

Bugs: I have gotten spoiled in Denver with its lack of bugs that bite.  There are a lot of mosquitoes here.  I have been sleeping with a tube of antihistamine in hand for when I wake myself up sleep scratching.  

I wear bug repellant, but if you miss one tiny centimeter of skin they find it.  At least the city is not as bad as the jungle areas. 

I have not come across bed bugs (yet!), but I dream about them sometimes, and worry I can feel them crawling on my skin.

I went rock climbing the other day. The views were incredible, very green. I had really nice guides, but it was the kind of adventure that could have used a friend to rejoice and commiserate with.  Commiserate because some of the routes were f***ing difficult, and it's hard to motivate yourself to keep going after bruising your knees and cutting your hands to shreds on limestone.  Limestone is this lovely textured rock that provides excellent hand and foot holds.  Textured is a euphemism for jagged and sharp.  My poor little paws are still recovering, and I can't stop calling them paws in their pathetic, curled up, cut up, sore state. But I did make it up all 6 climbs...which brings me back to wishing I had a friend to rejoice with.  I know I sound like I am complaining, but I'm not.  I am well aware of how incredible it is that I had the chance to go rock climbing in Thailand!!

The food is still really cheap and delicious.  I am going to come home chubby.

Elefante

After my first 24 hours in Thailand I was ready to write it off as overrated...not nearly as wonderful as everyone kept saying it would be.  But after my first week I have forgotten all of the frustration and anxiety my first day brought, and am completely in love with the Elephant Nature Park.  It has been everything for me that Bali wasn't (and Bali wasn't even bad for me). It was interacting with pele on a more personal level (rather than being served by the tourism industry), it was having something to do each day, it's playing with animals, it's vegetarian food, and so many other things...

The Elephant Nature Park is a refuge for elephants rescued from their working lives.  Lek, the woman who started it has such a huge passion for her elephants and all living things.  She started the park 15(ish?) years ago with 5 elephants.  Through donations, activism, and volunteers, she has grown the park into a sanctuary for 34 elephants, a herd of water buffalo, 280 dogs, a handful of cats, chickens, a pig, and probably many more animals I'm not even aware of.  It also benefits the local community as it provides a number of jobs for people that live there, as well as refugees that have come from Burma. I know this is going to be too cheesy to even read, but it is a place built of love and compassion.

First of all there are the elephants that have been rescued.  Any working elephant--circus performing ele's, street begging ele's, ele's that paint, ele's you ride, any elephant--has been through a horrific breaking period where they are beaten into submission until they listen to (fear) their mahout (trainer). (So please, please, please do not support the elephant tourism industry even if they seem well looked after now).  Lek has rescued over 30 elephants that were still being abused or had been injured and brought them to her park to heal and live as normal a life as possible.  I could go on and on with heartbreaking stories about their broken hips/backs/feet and other abuses they've faced (such as becoming addicted to amphetamines they were forced to take to continue working instead of resting), but I know it's not the most uplifting thing to read.  So now they roam around all day and get fed an bathed by volunteers.  As a volunteer I can tell you it never got old feeding an elephant, or even jest seeing them walk past.  Sure there were some less than pleasant tasks they asked of us, but even shit shoveling wasn't that bad.  In fact I preferred it to working in the kitchen where you washed and chopped tons of pumpkins and melons for the elephants.  They eat about 10% of their body weight each day, and there are 33 elephants weighing in at about 10,000 pounds each...that is a lot of food to prepare.  They also eat a lot of sweet corn, so another task was to drive to the corn field and chop down stalks with machetes, bundle them up and carry them back to the truck.  Mind you the weather in Thailand is hot, humid, and rainy right now, so the conditions could be cause for complaint, but I still had a lot of fun.  In the afternoon there was an occasional job like cutting more corn, but they also prepared a lot of activities for us, such as a park tour where we met all 33 elephants and a number of heartbreaking documentaries to watch. One afternoon brought a Thai lesson.  I found the culture fascinating but I failed miserably at the language.  Their alphabet is made up of 44 characters, 30 some are vowel sounds, and there are five different tones. So one combination of letters could be five different words even though my silly American ear only hears one thing.

In addition to rescuing elephants, Lek has rescued about 300 dogs--most from the flood in Bangkok a couple years ago--that now live at the park.  Most of them are across the street in a dog shelter, but about 50 lucky ones get to run around this side and do whatever they want.  They are literally on the tables and some wait at your bedroom on case you are enough of a sucker to let them in at night.  Despite the high likelihood that they have fleas, I fell prey to one sweet little dog that hopped onto my bed before I had the chance to kick her out.

The animals are great, but it's also the people I've spent this week with that have been wonderful!  The staff are so warm and welcoming.  They joke around with you like you are old friends.  And it has been great getting to know all of the other volunteers, many of whom are also traveling for a long time and have made an important pit stop out of the elephant nature park.

So all of this (and the amazing food--it's like eating at Thai Basil every night!) has won me over and I hope to be able to spend a second week here before I head south to work on a farm. Let's just hope this trip to the Indian Embassy is quick and painless.