Thailand: Photos from my Iphone

I know I have already posted about my time spent volunteering in Thailand, but my mom keeps asking me when I will post about the rest of my trip. So in this post I'll be sharing some photos I took with some notes and commentary about my trip dispersed throughout.


Although it is nearly 10pm in late December, as I step out of the cab at Don Muang station, Thailand greets me with a smothering blanket of humidity. Surely this gesture is intended as a welcoming embrace, but I can't peel my layers off fast enough  (talk about a warm greeting!). According to my ticket my train should arrive at 10:20pm, but in reality I'm sitting at the station over an hour after my supposed departure time before I finally hear the low rumble that announces the trains imminent approach.

After depositing my belongings on my bunk I make my way to the food car and am greeted by Christmas lights and bros. From here the heat of Thailand is no longer overbearing, but I'm still glad I opted for the first class AirCon car. 

The view from the food car in the morning (morning used quite liberally as I slept in until around noontime). Those cars you see ahead are the lowest fare seats as you move back they become nicer and more expensive my first class (caboose)  fare was a staggering  900.00 baht, or just over $30.  But put in perspective, this is more than I spent on feeding myself on an average day.

This being my first overnight/long distance rail trip I'm fairly impressed with the experience. While I ended up stuck on an upper berth which doesn't afford me a window view or much upright seated room, I otherwise can't complain too much, it is certainly much nicer than the other seating options I passed on my way to and from the food car . Upon plucking up the courage to use the toilet (a 13 hour train ride means it can't be avoided) I was surprised to realize not only were the toilets cleaner than expected (of course, not up to Japanese standards) but also that the view my upper bunk lacked was more than made up for by the views from the bathroom. Not only could I observe the passing scenery from a small window, but I also got an excellent view of the tracks whizzing by below me as I whizzed down upon it.. 

I didn't take this photo, but this is an exact image of my train toilet experience.
photo courtesy of: http://gobackpacking.com/woman-guide-using-squat-toilets/ (this is also a very insightful article if you are unfamiliar with using a squat toilet).

Most of my stay while in Thailand, volunteering aside, was spent in Chiang Mai, the largest city in Northern Thailand. Being not particularly partial to very large cities, I greatly preferred Chiang Mai to Bangkok.

Alongside being famous for its temples, nature, and wildlife, Chiang Mai is known to host some of the most exuberant Night Markets in Thailand. There is the nightly Night Bazaar, the daily Food Market, the Night Market on Sundays, Walking Streets dispersed sporadically throughout the week, and of course the New Years Count Down and Night Market. Nearly everyday I was in Chiang Mai there was a night market going on.

I met these school girls about to perform a traditional dance while wandering through and sampling the different food stalls. At this point I hadn't found my favorite mango sticky rice stall.

Here I am snacking on some lemon flavored Ancient Ice cream. I'm not sure what makes it ancient, but it came highly recommended by a group of tourist I met on my train ride to Chiang Mai.  It was tasty, and more importantly it kept me relatively cool in the over 80 degree heat.

Here I am posing in front of Tha Phae Gate. Chiang Mai was originally surrounded by a wall  and moat that fenced in the city with 4 gates located at the cardinal points. The wall has since been torn down, but the foundations are still in place and serve as a visual cue that you are crossing over into the Old city. Tha Phae Gate is the most famous of the gates and is the starting point of the night markets held along the main streets of the old city. In Thailand appropriate attire for females consist of shirts that cover the shoulders and no cleavage(!) and bottoms that go down to your knees (at least. At some temples you must wear pants to enter). This can be challenging when trying to stay cool, this day I sweating it out in 90 degree weather.

In Thailand they celebrate the New Year not once, not twice, but THREE times! The Gregorian New Year, Chinese New Year, and the Thai New Year (Songkran). Here I am putting up a prayer at a Thai temple. These all serve as decorations for the New Year celebration. In preparation for the new year the monks were busy wrapping the temples in a yellowish/golden cloth for goodluck, I think.You write your wish and name on your Zodiac sign. Because I am born in the year of the snake and this is the year of the snake it is supposed to be a very lucky year for me. 

Doi Suthep Temple. The grandest temple in Chiang Mai. Being an idiot, and without time to choose a better day, I went on New Years Eve day, probably the most crowded day to visit this already popular temple. 

Khao Soy, the regional specialty of Chiang Mai and some Iced Tea (Thai style, lots of sugar, that's why the Thai are so sweet!). 

Mango sticky rice I made at Thai cooking class. Delicious. 

After a week of volunteering and a week of sightseeing in Chiang Mai it was off to Bangkok!

                              

                 The view of Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn) on the approach from the  water taxi. The attempt to catch the water taxi was an adventure, because if you wander onto the wrong port it'll cost you 100x's the cost to catch the longboats. They cost about 1300 baht (after haggling) the water taxi, a cool 15 baht. This is the most stunning temple I saw while in Thailand, the details are amazing, the entire temple is covered completely covered in statues and etchings.  It is a bit reminiscent of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, but more colorful and elaborate. I'll add more photos onto my flickr soon and link to it so you can see, but you can click that link for the meantime to get an idea.

                                     

          Alex and I celebrating our one year anniversary sans our wedding rings at the Thai Grand Palace. haha. No, in reality, I met Alex at the hostel I was staying at while I waited to meet up with my friend Ciara. But everyone kept assuming we were a couple so we started going along with it and telling people we were celebrating our one year anniversary, which got us many congratulations (which was the source of my laughter in this photo). 

On our last night in Thailand we decided to wine (more like fresh fruit cocktails, the passion fruit one was to die for!) and dine at the rooftop bar and restaurant Sirocco as made famous by The Hangover II

Roisin, Me, and Ciara with our diligent attendant Noppadol. He was so sweet and chuckled at Ciara because of her fear of heights.

In the evening we got a party tuktuk, met a new Thai friend, and even stopped by the infamous Khao San Road. Although we joked about going to see a ping-pong show, we DID NOT! Family members, don't look this up. I was so confused earlier when people who were volunteering with me made some comments about going/not going to see a ping pong show. I didn't see what the fuss was about  (on the travel sites it was recommended as something popular to do in Bangkok) until they explained it to me. 

I'll slowly starting uploading my 1000+ (mostly of elephants) photos onto my flickr soon.

Journey to Freedom:my week with ellies (lots of words.lots of photos)

Herein lies the tales of my adventure of spending a week in the relative wilds of Northern Thailand.

Me standing reluctantly close to one of the elephants upon our guides insistence to get closer.
 Clearly I am terrified.

A two hour jostling ride cramped into the back of a pick-up truck is not how many people imagine spending their winter holiday, myself included.
Yet there I was stuffed into the bed of a Toyota Hilux with a sore bum alongside twelve other road weary travelers being informed by our guide that we had another 30 minutes of bum bruising back roads to bounce through before arriving at our destination. That very destination that we would later find out consisted of cold showers, modest lodgings, a lack of electricity, one seriously out of service Western toilet, and a handful of muddy squat toilets to compensate.
What could possibly be the allure that would draw thirteen relative strangers away from the comforts of their everyday lives to spend a week experiencing and participating in what can accurately be called the simple life? Well the answer, much like our accommodations, is simple; the thirteen of us traveled to this back hills village along the Thai-Burmese border to volunteer our time working with  the Northern Karen tribe and their elephants through the program Journey to Freedom.

Journey to Freedom is an ongoing project initiated by the Elephant Nature Park in 2010 that allows elephants owned by the Karen in the north of Thailand to retire from trekking camps and return to living in the jungle near their villages. Here, elephants enjoy a more natural existence and the tradition of Karen people living with and caring for their elephants can be restored.
In response to the ban on logging in 1989, many Karen men left their villages and walked with their elephants to work in one of the many trekking camps that were established and still exist in Northern Thailand. The Karen men often missed their families and old way of life and would return to their villages, leaving their elephants at the camps on lease. These elephants, living among strangers, were often mistreated and the traditional bonds between the Karen and their elephants began to erode.
Journey to Freedom provides volunteers with the opportunity to live with the Karen for a week, learn about their culture, volunteer around the village, and be amongst elephants living in the jungle. Funds generated by this project help support Karen families and their elephants, and also benefit the community in the form of maintaining roads, temples, and bridges, which also includes building amenities such as toilets, a small school, and a clinic.


Day One: Arrival
This day, as hinted at above, was mostly spent traveling from Chiang Mai to the Karen village in the northern province of Mae Sariang, which took about 6.5 hours in total-4.5 by van and 2 by truck. We arrived in the village shortly before 6 and after our arduous adventure our only interests were in getting some food and some sleep. After unloading the trucks of all our provisions for the week, our two guides, Jane and Mix (their nicknames) worked on preparing us a delicious yet modest Thai dinner while we went about preparing our lodgings (making up beds, and setting up mosquito nets). After dinner, while sitting by the fire (it gets surprisingly cold in Northern Thailand at night, my guess is high 50's-low 60's.) a few of the local Karen villagers came to welcome us. Although they didn't speak English, and only a few of them could speak Thai (to be translated by our guides) they enjoyed sitting around the campfire and observing the eclectic  assortment of volunteers (from France, US, Malaysia via Singapore, UK, and Germany ;ordered by representation) which included two girls wearing Santa hats and odd renderings of popular Christmas songs being sung all at once in multiple languages (it was Christmas Eve after all).

Some of the Karen amused at our antics

Day Two and Three: First day with Ellies and a Boxing Day Treat
It was a little surreal to be waking up on Christmas Day feeling all of the giddy excitement of a little kid, but instead of the urge to rush to the Christmas tree and tear open presents my emotions were the result of knowing that today was the day I would get to have my very first encounter with elephants.I don't think I have ever been so excited to NOT celebrate the holidays. The only thing that could (and did) bring me down slightly from my euphoric high was the sight of the accursed trucks from the day before. So my (Christmas) day yet again began  with a bumpy ride, thank goodness it was a very short ride where we then hiked through some fields and across a small stream to meet up with the elephants and their caretakers.

Our village cares for 7 elephants, 3 of which had spent time working for the logging industry before it was banned, 1 who had worked for a trekking camp before Journey to Freedom started and she could come home, and 3 youngsters who had been spared from the harsh lifestyle of a working elephant and hopefully will never be subjected to it. For awhile we had to stay a fair distance away from the elephants, because they aren't used to people other than their mahouts. One thing that is unique to the Elephant Nature Park and Journey to Freedom is that the mahouts do not use any hooks to control the elephants nor do they ride upon the elephants backs (although for one of the younger/rambunctious elephants at the village we were told that the Mahouts do sometimes have to gently tap him on the head with a bamboo stalk. At ENP only positive reinforcement is used with the elephants). However, after sometime we were able to get closer to the elephants (following the mahouts instructions translated to us by our guides) and even touch and feed them fruits that we had brought along from the village! After spending time admiring and taking photos of the elephants it was time to walk them deep into the jungle for them to graze, explore, and bathe a bit in the springs along the trek.

As much as I like to refer to these elephants as being "in the wild", this statement is sadly untrue due to the high rate of deforestation in Thailand. Even though logging was banned in the late  80's there are still illegal logging outfits running in the outskirts of Thailand and the addition of population growth does not make the prospects of a solution to deforestation look any brighter. This being said, while the elephants do have the opportunity to roam free during the day (they have these cute little wooden bells on their necks so the mahouts can find them) they are confined to a small section of the jungle during the evening (when the mahouts return to their home) to prevent the elephants from eating the crops that belong to another nearby village. It was a little disheartening to learn of the reality that actual wild elephants in Thailand are dwindling, but it was also nice to know that through Journey to Freedom these elephants can live a life much closer to their natural lifestyle versus working in Elephants shows or at trekking camps. My current hope is that the King of Thailand will continue to create National forests and nature preserves to protect these animals and their habitat.

The following day, we spent at the village helping out in the small ways that we could. In the morning we went to one of the local primary schools in the main village. Initially, the plan had been to visit a primary/secondary school and assist with teaching some English and entertaining the kids (teaching in Japan has taught me that these two go hand in hand). But, that school was on holiday so instead we went to the primary school and played with the young children (about 4/5 years old, some were younger). One of the volunteers had brought small toys along to give to the children and it was really cute to see their faces light up.
After a little over an hour we walked back to the community where we were staying and prepared some lunch (one of the kind French volunteers even gave me a  really nice bum massage).  Once we had finished our lunch it was on to more toilsome work of peeling corn with the villagers. Some of the corn would be used as feed for their livestock and the rest for making flour. While the work felt a little tedious it was really fun to watch as everyone would freak out about some bug or spider that would come crawling out of the corn husk. I'm pretty sure the villagers thought we were crazy.

One of the friendly Karen villagers I met. His wife thought that I was feeling sick and offered me some strange looking medicine. Our guides explained it was because she thought I wasn't eating enough.

Day Four and Five: More Elephants and a Jungle Trip to a Waterfall
After a day of no elephants we were all excited to hear that the next two days we would be able to head back into the jungle to spend time with our favorite pachyderms. On this particular day we would be traveling by trucks (urrrgh) to a separate village to spend time with their elephants. Thankfully, I was able to snag a seat inside the truck to avoid any major bum bruising that would render my massage from the other day completely pointless. On the 30 minute drive we stopped a few times to collect a small banana tree and some bamboo shoots to bring along with us to feed the elephants. The 2 elephants that belonged to this tribe had both spent a lot of time working at trekking camps (the female) and at an elephant show (male). Which meant that they were very accustomed to humans and thus extremely sweet and docile, this also unfortunately meant that they had been subjected to Phajaan (a brutal elephant training technique) at a young age. Almost all working elephants go through Phajaan, which is one major reason why any informed tourist would/should not finance any attractions that involve elephant rides or elephants doing tricks.
After spending time taking photos with the elephants we then walked with them to the top of a mountain, again, to give them a chance to really stretch their legs, explore, and graze.

The male elephant was so comfortable with people that he was more than content
 being handfed and swiping fruits right out of our hands. Tamara (France)

The following day started out with much of the same but with the elephants back near our village, so I won't talk much about it. But one interesting highlight was that the young rambunctious male elephant charged at one of the young Karen boys. Our guide explained to us that it was because the boy looked different to everyone else (he was shirtless because he had been fishing in one of the streams nearby previously).  After spending a good two hours with the elephants we went on an hour and a half long trek with the Karen to a waterfall hidden away in the jungle. It was an interesting hike because along the way when we would pass through the river some of the Karen villagers would start fishing. While most of the older Karen villagers accompanying us would use the familiar tactic of using a net to catch fish, the two young boys would use these interesting homemade contraptions to do something along the lines of spear fishing.

Subrutai (in red) and Midar.
 Mix threatening to throw poor Suprichai into the waterfall.

Usually, on the sixth day, volunteers would visit the third neighboring village and their elephants before heading to the ENP, but because we were visiting so close to the New Year we had to leave early in the morning to avoid heavy traffic on the way back into Chiang Mai. And, again I was thankfully able to secure a seat inside one of the trucks, so I wouldn't have to spend 2 hours sitting in the back again!  After our 6 hour drive we were rewarded at the Elephant Nature Park with warm showers, proper toilets, and a bed with as decent a mattress you'll find in SE Asia. Maybe a later post will talk more about my day at the ENP, for now I think it is time to wrap this one up..

Although the squat toilets and cold showers were less than ideal, I really enjoyed the time I spent volunteering with the Karen and their elephants. In retrospect, I was a bit surprised that we weren't given more tasks to help out in the village. Other than peeling some corn, a missed opportunity of teaching some English, and walking with elephants and collecting some food we had very little responsibilities. Regardless, I was really pleased with the experience and would really love to go back again sometime. So, if you like adventures,  love elephants, and don't mind spending a week living the simple life,  I highly recommend Journey to Freedom.

Keri

In hindsight-afteruploading photos to this post- I've realized I didn't get any photos of the rambunctious boy elephant. Probably because I was too scared to get anywhere near him. All the other elephants at our main village are females.

L-R Jessica (US via Myannmar) and Thibaut and  Alia (France)

enjoying the fire.

Our guide Mix showing us the art of Zen

blurry photo of Momma and baby sniffing for goodies

Me with Buzo (spelled how it sounds) one of the kind Karen women who liked chatting with me-
she would speak to me in Karen and I in English. Probably on completely different topics.

Suprichai on the left chuckling and snacking with his friend.

Midar and I. She could speak some English.
 I usually started the morning by doing dishes with her, subrutai, and their brothers.

Me with the twin ellie girls (2 years old).