hello from korea, eerr....america

I started this in Korea, but then they called me and told me that I had to leave (early) so...

I've been sitting in this hotel, Hotel June, almost all day. The airline gave it to me for free. I was going to take a city tour but I missed the bus. The room has heated floors, a jacuzzi tub and a computer in the room. It was nice to get a little rest before the final leg of my trip home.

I've been traveling for almost 20 hours and have about 16 hours left. My flight out of Chiang Mai was kind of interesting because they put me and another guy in the international terminal, even though we were traveling domestic, because we were continuing onto other countries. When it came time to board I think we both thought we were either in the wrong place or that our flight was going to be empty. Neither of those things were true.

I flew Bangkok Airways and they weren't so bad. I made sure to get aisle seats the whole way back so I can get out when I need to. I was alone in my row so I sat by the window, though.

We were on a big plane but still got to walk down stairs onto the tarmac and wait for the rest of the, very slow, passengers. It was probably about ten degrees hotter in Bangkok than Chiang Mai and way more humid. I did not regret my decision to stay in Chiang Mai the whole time.

The Bangkok airport is not set up for proper waiting, at least not the international terminal. The initial waiting area is set up in a long, narrow chair lined hallway. The chairs are uncomfortable, there are no bathrooms as it's also elevated above the actual waiting area that they let you in a half hour before boarding. Gee, thanks. I did meet a couple of ministers who were traveling around southeast asia who were quite nice. They were a married couple and the woman and I watched the saddest nature show while waiting where a baby monkey died and it's mom refused to let it. She held her dead baby and sat vigil with it for days and then finally left it and another monkey found it and tried to wake it up. Oh, nature, you're so sad sometimes.

The flight itself from Bangkok to Seoul wasn't too bad, but I also fell asleep before we even took off. I was awoken by some of the worst turbulence I've ever experienced and then some woman in the row in front of me vomiting repeatedly into her barf bag in the loudest manner possible. I usually do very well with turbulence but the sound of this woman puking made me want to puke. Barf-o-rama came to mind.

I couldn't find the Asiana desk in the arrivals hall at Incheon and missed my city tour bus. That's how I ended up in the heated floor, jacuzzi floor, buttons in Korean that controlled everything hotel room. I walked around a little but I ate at the hotel and took a nap and a bath. Paul told me that I should have called, but he had said he was working and my phone battery was dead anyway.

I'm back in the states now and have to start working. I almost completely avoided jet lag. Tuesday night I couldn't sleep until 4am and got up at 7am. Last night I took a sleeping pill and was asleep by midnight and up at 8. it's all good.

ok. alright. sheesh

Yesterday Melissa, Warner, Sven and I did a cooking class at Thai Kitchen Cookery Centre, which was pretty stinkin' awesome. Everyone else was worn down and hung over from the previous night's karaoke/dancing at Reggae Bar, but since I skipped out on the late night portion I was doing alright. We got to go to a market located near Tha Pae gate that I didn't know existed to look for ingredients for the day's dishes.

We got to cook in a covered patio area with woks lining the walls. We each had a choice of five sets of three dishes, we we all made five things. I chose pad Thai, panang curry paste and the actual dish itself, coconut soup with chicken (basically tom ka), cashews and chicken, papaya salad and mango sticky rice. All of the dishes were pretty easy to make and we each got a cookbook containing all the receipes from the day, including the ones we didn't make. I'm pretty stoked about trying them at home.

A bunch of us went to dinner last night at this india restaurant near the night bazaar called Le Spice. It was pretty delicious and reasonably priced so that was good.

I was on a hunt for prayer beads for Michael. It's all he asked for, but didn't ask until yesterday morning, and I couldn't find any for the life of me. We went to three night markets and found nothing. We found a ton of pants, shirts with weird sayings, overpriced bracelets, weird nicknacks, etc, but no beads. Of course the one person who it's absolutely required for me to get something good for, I can't find what he asked for. He's doing me this giant favor and I'm super grateful, the least I can do is get him some stinkin' beads.

Melissa and I left Warner and Sven to go to rooftop bar and we went to Zoe. They have super cheap mojitos, which would have been nice to realize a little earlier. I might have drank one too many. There was a dj and balloons everywhere and little village kids trying to sell us flower lays when they should have been sleeping. We watched fire throwers outside of Reggea bar and sat on couches at some tucked away bar nook.

On our walk home we passed a Wat that had some sort of disco ball near one of the temple buildings because there was light being refracted all around it. That wasn't the important part of this Wat, though, I had a display case and what looked like a little store in it. Being 2am it was obviously closed, but I saw prayer beads in there. We were asked to leave by some dogs and walked the rest of the way home.

While on the couches last night I noticed that my right shoulder was starting to hurt a little bit. It's not that out of the ordinary for me to get weird little pains so I thought nothing of it. Well, this morning I got up for my massage at school as was unable to lift my arm at all. I can maybe get 10 degrees should flexion and maybe 20 degrees abduction. Duan couldn't even help me as every time she tried to move my arm I wanted to scream. My hand is occasionally getting numb and the whole arm feels heavy. This is exactly how I want to feel during my 30+ hour trip home that starts tonight. Weee...

It's so hot outside and I can't put my hair up. I have to sit in a chair and lean all the way forward so I can use my right arm. Good thing I'm left handed.

I went back to disco Wat this afternoon and had to wake a monk up so I could buy the beads, but mission accomplished.

I should probably pack.

and...done

I am officially done with my three week course at TMC. Today was a very light day, we learned how to make and massage with an herbal ball. This is not a technique I will probably ever use, I found it incredibly boring the rub Melissa with the ball, but what it did was prove that I probably can do this Thai massage thing. The treatment involves using the ball from 5-10 minutes and then doing massage on the area that you just warmed with it. In that time you sorta improvise using the techniques we learned in the previous levels. I think I did a pretty good job which boosts my confidence just a little that I'll be able to put together a 50 minute massage using what I know. Yay!

I had to call Thai Kitchen Cookery Centre today to confirm my reservation for tomorrow because they never wrote back answering any of my questions and I wasn't even sure if they had received my request. It's a good thing I did because she seemed to have no idea what I was talking about and it took about ten minutes to try to explain to her what I wanted, where everyone needed to be picked up from and how many of us there are.

I also had to put more minutes on my phone, which involved me getting a receipt from 7-11 with a bunch of Thai writing and a numbers. I didn't know what it meant or how to put the minutes on my phone and it took two employees to get it done. Pain in the ass.

Tonight is dinner with Georgianna, Warner and Melissa at Salsa Kitchen and then karaoke.

It's getting so hot here that I'm really looking forward to spring weather. It's the best time for bike riding, as less people are out and you don't sweat as much.

massage and things

Today was my second to last day of class and I think that Melissa and I kinda have senioritis. I don't think it helps that this week we've been learning specific complaint treatments and that very little has been new...sure there has been a new position here and there and there are a couple of things that we learned that I'm planning on throwing into my routine but overall I won't be using a lot of it. The sprained ankle treatment almost made me yell at the teacher, it's just not right. Our information said that we are to ice the ankle for the first 24-48 hours, fair, but then use a warm compress after that.  And the treatment itself is to be done in the subacute stage and involves all this ankle movement and compression and stretching. I know that if I had a sprained ankle I wouldn't want any of those things done to me.

It also doesn't help that we've lost Duan to the teacher training program and are now learning from Ratree. She is, like Dao, very very nice, but doesn't pay attention. Her English is pretty good but sometimes isn't in the right order or we lose her point somewhere. Yesterday when Melissa was working on me she missed a whole part of the knee treatment but Ratree wasn't paying any attention and didn't call her on it. I, as the receiver, wouldn't have noticed because the rest of the treatment felt great, but as a person trying to learn as I'm getting massaged I noticed that something was missing. It just would have been nice if she had caught it. Duan would have. Ratree was a little more attentive today, but we were also doing pretty simple treatment, like a treatment for old/sick people which is a lot of really light work with a lot of wiggle room as far as the treatment itself goes.

When I got home from school I sat in a deep, low chair in the common area of my guest house and when I got up my leg/hip got tweaked again and so I decided to go to the blind massage place that's located just down the road from me. Daniela had went and said it was amazing and inexpensive so I decided to check it out.

It was definitely inexpensive, with tip it cost me about $4 US. The girl who worked on me was a tiny thing who liked to give a lot of pressure, which I very much enjoyed. There was absolutely no speaking between us and had I not been getting several massage per day for the past three weeks in class I probably wouldn't have know what to do. I couldn't tell her that it was my right hip and low back that were bothering me and I wish they would have gotten a little more love.

The room had about five other people getting massaged by blind people. I was watching the guy to my left give his massage and was pretty glad I wasn't over there. He was using a lot of knee and elbows in ways that I don't think I could have taken. One thing that this massage was missing, as all the other massages that I snuck peeks at, was the stretching. She did a body twist, which was nice but a little too gentle for me, and a leg stretch but that was it.

One of my favorite parts of the curriculum at TMC is the stretching. The compressions and fine and all, but the stretches are what really makes the whole massage. This massage was a lot closer to what we learn that the massage I got at the place last week, but at least she did a lot of stretches. Sure some of them were not what I wanted and felt a little unsafe, but it was in there.

I'm going to limp the market now. Fisherman pants here I come.

So close...

To the end of my time here. I'm currently in my guest house's lobby because my power adapter is completely done. There will be no more pictures on here until my return next week.

I can't believe that my time here is almost done. I feel like I haven't even begun to learn what I want to learn and that I would need to stay here for months more to do so. I ran into one of the Pauls last night and we talked about studying with Pichette some more and his school. I want to do both and am going to check out the weekends at the school in Chicago and hopefully come back to study with Pichette. I'm just really hungry to learn this right now.

When I first started doing massage I never did continuing education and was just ok getting by with what I had learned in school.  Now I feel like I need to get better, to expand my knowledge and become more than a therapist who gets by on deep tissue and Swedish alone. I really love Thai massage and want to learn as much about it as I possibly can.

This new drive is really going to get expensive.

It's getting pretty hot here. It was a little above 100 the other day and the rest of them while I'm here are supposed to be right around 100. I want to go to the zoo on Sunday before I leave but it might be too hot unless I go really early. They have pandas, though.

I'm taking a cooking class on Saturday and still need to go to the Saturday night market and the market in front of the mall tonight. This weekend is going to be busy until I get to the airport.

Last night a few of us had girls night. We ate dinner at the Blue Diamond, which is this super delicious vegetarian friends restaurant, located on Soi 9 off of the main road around the old city. It doubles as a restaurant and bakery and specializes in vegetarian Thai food, although everyone recommended the salads. Most of us got sandwiches because they had avacado, which is hard to come by, and they bake their own bread. I also ordered a papaya salad, which I've grown to really love while here. I was never a fan of papaya but these salads...they're spicy and sweet and just so delicious.

We had a lovely dinner and then walked to the bowling ally. Bowling. In Thailand. It's definitely something I never thought I would do. But we had such a great time. I bowled a 158, 145 and 135. I get tired by the third game. I also did something funny to my leg on my very first turn. The power of sleep and stretching seems to have fixed it.

My taxi to school will be here in a second. I hate not having my computer.

monday not so fun day

I had another frustrated that I can't speak Thai day that turned into the taxi drivers are a bunch of a-holes day. The power adapter on my ibook is pretty jacked up and stopped working this morning so I went to three "authorized mac" stores today looking for a new one, but none of them had it. It was about 105 degrees today and walking all over the place for no reason at all after a long day at school was not my idea of a perfect afternoon.

I did, however, finally go to the Night Bazaar, which was overpriced and crowed but I did get my elephant ring and a super cute shirt. I looked for gifts for everyone who helped me out with Lola, but didn't find anything. I came up with some ideas, though.

At dinner our waiter messed up almost everything and Melissa had to have a stern talking to the bartender, who was the only person who spoke enough English to explain the food situation to. Then, we were completely unable to get a taxi, well we could but  they were all treating us like a bunch who tourists who didn't know any better.

There are these red taxis, which I may or may not have mentioned before. They sorta look like trucks that would take you to your day labor job and they're supposed to cost a 20 baht flat rate.  We much have spoken to at least six different taxis who asked us how much we wanted to pay and when we said 'you're a red taxi. you cost 20 baht' they all tried to get more, so we just kept walking. Thankfully we eventually found one who would accept his proper fare.

We did get to see two baby street elephants. It took a lot of will power for me not to touch them or give their owners money to feed them. These guys walk the babies around the old city with bags of sugar cane and you can give them money to feed the elephant. The only problem is that elephants need more than sugar cane to live, and that when they get older these guys don't want them anymore and then they need to be rescued. They're not treated very well and are probably pretty unhappy. But man, did I want to touch them.

I missed Nui today, which is so silly because I was only with her for about 8 hours and she did lead a stampede while I was on her back. But I still miss her. Man. I'm turning into a crazy elephant lady.

I never wrote about Friday, when a couple of notable things happened.

It was Gina and Tom's last night in town (frown) and I met them for dinner. Gina had spent the previous day with Pichette the previous day and I was interested in hearing what she learned. Pichette is a man who lives outside of Chiang Mai who is kind of a Thai massage guru. He's almost legend here with the massage students and they go to great lengths to see him. He teaches his students to be more intuitive and to use their bodies properly. I'm really interested in coming back and studying with him, as it will be completely different from TMC's incredibly structured program.

Gina introduced me to some people whom she met there, including Paul Fowler and Paul Weitz, who own Chicago School of Thai Massage. The Pauls and I talked a little bit about their school and studying with Pichette and it definitely gave me ideas about what I want to do in the future. Their program is 162 hours, but I'm not sure how much would overlap with what I've learned so I'll probably take a weekend course and then do further study with Pichette.

Gina, Tom and I went to Zoe in Yellow, which I had read about in Bess' blog. It was actually a really nice place, very chill. We talked with the owner for a bit. I feel like you never do that in the states, just hang out with the owners (unless it's Gold Star)

 

The owner of Zoe in Yellow, Gina, Me

This was not the main event for the evening. That would come at Lavender Hotel where me, Bindya, Alfredo and Georianna saw the dirtiest ladyboy show...

There was no cover, just a one drink minimum. The drinks cost 200-250 baht, which is pretty pricey for here but getting into a show would normally be double that.

We were seated near the back, probably because we were not looking to purchase any of the merchandise. There were eight shirtless boys swaying on stage when we got there. Most of them looked incredibly bored, they all looked young. Each of them had a number hanging from their belt buckle so that if someone wanted to take them home, it would be easier to place their order. 

The lady boys themselves were pretty impressive. One of them was so pretty that we actually asked out waiter if everyone performing was a ladyboy, that they didn't sneak a girl in there. He insisted that they were all boys. Amazing!

The performances were mostly pretty great. There were a couple where the ladyboy wore huge gowns and sang a slow song that were really just boring. 

That is not the interesting part. There were about three "acts" in there that had nothing to do with lady boys. It was a basically a live, gay sex show. The first one was relatively tame. There was some touching but not actual sex acts were performed. The next, I think there was some oral in there. But the last one...man....really anything you could think of was happening up there. We were all pretty shocked and wished it would end sooner. I mean, we sorta expected it. We had heard that this one was pretty raunchy but I don't think any of us were prepared.

 

our intro

 

impressive dancer

  

she was the prettiest

  

all of our ladyboys

 

our ladyboy show group after the show

deep breath in...

I'm a little annoyed with Thailand today. None of it is even Thailand's fault, really.  I know that I posted the elephant post, but I started that yesterday and wanted to talk about the rest of the weekend, specifically Friday night's dirty ladyboy show. But first, I'm annoyed.

I got a lot of sleep last night after my long day of elephant fun, which was nice. I woke up, wanted to finished the elephant blog but the internet here is spotty at best. It kept quitting, not saving stuff, and then my computer did something weird and I lost most of the post because the stupid internet hadn't been working and the post hadn't auto-saved. I took a break and tried to get lunch, but everything is closed on Sundays here. I ended up eating at the guest house, which was fine. I tried to go to a pharmacy near here, but it was closed, so I ended up at a different one next to Tesco, one of the grocery stores. Apparently there's a Tesco Express not too far from here. I looked for something to put on my arm wounds, which they didn't have, but I did walk out with chocolate and batteries for my little speakers for my ipod.

I found another pharmacy and had to try to explain to the man who speaks very little English that I fell off of an elephant and got scraped by some sort of plant and now have these marks that are all puffy and burny and itchy. He gave me some sort of salve. Who knows what it is or if it will work. So far it looks the same but isn't itchy/burny anymore so that's good.

I had to do laundry, and needed change and detergent. The people at the laundromat laughed at me. 

I didn't feel like doing anything so I tried to watch tv on the internet but the connection is so slow that it took me almost three hours to watch a 42 minute program.

I went to the grocery store to buy wine and cheese for Melissa's birthday tonight, but they won't sell alcohol between the hours of 2 and 5. I found some goat cheese with no price and it ended up costing almost $16 usd. When I tried to return it I had to pantomime my request to the ladies at the customer service. My fruit lady wasn't out yet because shit is impossible on Sundays... Arg. I'm just annoyed.

I'm going to hold off on the ladyboy post.

ELEPHANTS!!!

When I first booked this trip to Thailand, I decided that I wasn't going to plan much of anything other than getting there and back and school, with one exception...an elephant trip. I found this one elephant farm in Lonley Planet that looked really interesting, kind of expensive but something I was very interested in.

The name of the farm is Patara Elephant Farm and it's located south of Chiang Mai. I booked my trip while I was still in Chicago, picking the second Saturday I was in town so I would have an open weekend when I first got here.

They picked me up this morning at 7:45am in the most comfortable vehicle I've been in since arriving in Thailand. The minivan with padded seats picked me up second, first was a man named Dave who's from Washington D.C. and is here traveling before starting law school. Next we picked up two other Americans, one studying at ITM, and a woman from Canada and then made the 40 minute trip to the camp located at the base of the mountains.

 

Pat, the owner, and the shirts we all had to wear

The man who owns the farm with his family is named Pat. He greeted our group, which in total was about 14 people,  mostly Americans with two girls from Belgium in our group, a couple from Australia and England in the other. We got a short lesson on the goals of the farm, which is to breed elephants to increase the population. Pat told us that he does some elephant rescue but usually only with domestic elephants who are in relatively healthy condition.

Patara hopes to have ten new baby elephants in the next three years. They currently they have twin year old boys and at least two elephants who are pregnant. We got to see the babies from afar, they're shorter than the men who were walking with them, which is pretty short since Thai men aren't known for their height.

 

Overlooking the camp

We were told that we all had to wear these shirts made by local villagers that they make everyone who interacts with the elephants wear. They also made us wear fisherman pants while we rode the elephants, apparently to reduce leg slippage and, in my opinion, elephant hair pricks.  The seven people in my group put on our shirts and hiked down to where our elephants were being kept.

 

The path that leads to elephants

When we arrived we were assigned our elephants for the day. Two of our elephants were pregnant, one 16 months an the other, mine, something like 5 months. Elephants carry their young almost two years. Can you imagine being pregnant for that long? And carrying a baby that weights about 260 pounds? It's totally insane.

 

Our elephants

We were taught how to tell if an elephant is in a good mood by watching their ears and tails. If they're moving around and their ears are back, they're in a good mood. If they're ears are out, stay away. They are also supposed to speak when you call their name, but mine would never do that.

Ben, who was our group leader, told us the story of an elephant farm in southern Thailand where the elephants were all upset, ears out, at the same time and kept trying to lead the people who ran the farm out and away from the farm. The people decided to follow the elephants to see where they thought they needed to go. The elephants led the people to high ground and started to calm down. Shortly after,the big sunami hit southern Thailand, wiping out the elephant farm. Those elephants...so smart.

Once it was decided that our elephants were in a good mood we were each assigned one and then given a basket full of treats, bananas and bamboo, to give to them.  I guess we were bribing them to like us. I was assigned a sassy 20 year old named Nui. The first thing she did when I walked up to her was spit on me. I'm not quite sure if that's a good sign or not, but it seemed to work out.

 

My girl taking a break from holding her head up

In order to get them to open their mouths to let us put food in we had to say "bon" (although if we didn't say bon, they would have taken the food out of our hands with their trunks). Once they opened their mouths we were to put the food in there. It's so weird sticking your hang in an elephant's mouth. First of all, they're huge, I mean an animal that size would need a big mouth. Secondly, it's the inside of a giant mouth. They don't have visible teeth just a huge tongue and lips that create a suction when you stick something in there. Their teeth are horizontal and not visible so I wasn't afraid about getting bit, but my hand did get stuck in the suction once or twice.  The basket didn't last long so I stood with Nui and pet her trunk, telling her "dee dee" which means good girl. I think we bonded pretty well, although that didn't make her a good listener.

Bon

Next, we were taught how to tell if our elephants were healthy. First sign is if they are moving their tails and ears, healthy means happy after all. Next sign was to look for sleep marks on their bodies. Third thing to look for was sweat,  elephants sweat near their toenails. If they aren't sweating then they aren't regulating their body temperature properly and are most likely ill. Lastly we were to check the dung to make sure it was moist, it didn't smell badly, that there was enough of it (at least six piles. Nui had 10) and that it was fiberous. This was the part that I knew was coming and wasn't looking forward to but it wasn't that bad. Elephant poop smells like hay, and sort of feels like it too so it wasn't like sticking your hand in dog feces. It was more like sorting through small pieces of wet hay or damp dried grass.

 

Smelling the poop

After we all made sure our elephants were in tip top shape, we tugged on their ear and told them to "ma" or come. We were trying to get them separated so we could, basically, beat them with brushes made of leaves. Some of the elephants ate their brushes when they were done. In retrospect, I'm pretty surprised Nui didn't.

Elephants throw dirt onto their backs in order to keep away bugs and stay a little cooler. The whole time we were checking to make sure they were healthy, they were getting themselves nice and dirty for us to clean off.  Elephants, obviously, are much taller than we are so in order to get their backs free of loose dirt we had to tell them to "nan long" or lay down. 

This was my introduction to Noi's defiant side. She did not want to lay down. She wouldn't listen to me when I said it (which isn't surprising), she wouldn't listen to my trainer when he said it. She just wouldn't lay down. We eventually got her down and I got to try to beat off most of her dirty before we went into the river for a bath.

 

Brushing my girl with leaves

Next my trainer led me and Nui to the river. I wasn't really sure what was going on because my trainer had us go but none of the other elephants went in the same direction. It ended up being just the three of us in this one part of the river, which was pretty nice.  We used buckets covered in bamboo to get her wet and made her lay in the river we so could wash her and brush her with a proper brush. 

 

Bath time

Apparently Nui is known for her water antics. She has no problem getting into the water and is the elephant they call upon to spray unsuspecting "owners for the day" while they're trying to get their pictures taken. She did it to me and the Belgian girls while we sat getting out picture takes (on my trainer's command of course) and then when it was time for the other section of the group to get their pictures they brought her over there to do it to them too. Little devil.

 

Post cleaning we got to learn how to get on our elephants. There were three ways that Ben showed us. The first way, or the hard way as he puts it, is to ask the elephant to bend her front leg but patting it and saying dee dee. Once she lifts her leg you hold onto her ear and step up her leg using her ankle and thigh and then swing your leg over her. It isn't easy, but it gets you up there. The second method is to have the elephant put her head down and then jump up onto the top of the head/neck. Ben seemed to think this way was easy, but I don't think anyone even tried. The third way, or the easy way, was to have the elephant lay down and then just get onto it while it's down there. The lazy man's version. 

I chose the leg method. There's a video at the end of this post if you'd like to watch. I think I did an ok job, although as the day went on it got harder to do.

  

No hands!

The actual riding of the elephant is easy enough. You have to sit close to the head with your knees bent and just over the ears so you can give the elephant commands with your legs. This works in theory, but Nui wasn't having it. The command for go is "bi" and stop is "how." She did how just fine but bi, not so much. She stopped to eat constantly, which is good because they're supposed to eat a lot and she's pregnant so needs to more, but she was holding everyone up and would stop all the time to rip trees out of the ground and get all ear flappy when we made her go. No matter how many times I said bi and deedee she just didn't care. My trainer had to tap her with a bamboo stick and pull on the rope that was around her body to get her to go. She was hungry. She was bigger than me and my trainer. She was stopping.

This caused some hold up as we rode our elephants through the camp and then down the road to the small trail that led to the waterfall where we would be having lunch. The only place she didn't walk slowly and try to eat everything was when we were approaching the other half of camp where the rest of the day's guests were. My guess is she knew that she got fed there and was in a hurry to get some bananas.  

My knee, Nui's ear. The view from an elephant

The first elephant in line was afraid of water and would stop before each stream or puddle, but not Noi. She was fearless when it came to water and obstacles, they were just something between her and the next branch she was going to eat.

Anyway, we rode our elephants in a big, slow line to a waterfall that wasn't far from the camp for swimming and lunch. The waterfall itself was quit small, as it's dry season, but there was enough of a pool of water for the elephants to play. Play they did.  Most of our elephants absolutely loved the water. When we first got there about half stayed on the rocks and just rested. The very pregnant girl never got in, but, you know, she's about to give birth. The ones who did get in dunked themselves, twirled around, sprayed water. They were just loving it.

 loving the water

I know someone who went last week and she said that no one from her group got in. Not ours, we all got in, even if we didn't all try to get on the elephants in the water. I actually slid into the water. The rock surrounding the water was pretty slipper when it got wet, especially the rocks under the small stream of water that led into the pool. Well, I totally slipped on it as I was trying to get to the dryer rock and ended up sliding all the way down the rock and into Cat, a woman from our group, and the water. She was fine and I was fine, but everyone thought it was pretty funny.

The elephants were already laying down in the water so you'd think it would be pretty easy to get on them, but it wasn't. They were moving so much that it was like riding a bull. The trainers wanted us to stay on top of the elephant no matter what direction they went, which involved trying to slide you body over them as they turned. Elephants aren't slippery though. Their hair is like little quills and the water doesn't change that. When I got off of the first elephant my thighs were quite red from the rough skin and hair. We each got on at least once, but I did it twice. One of the Belgian girls got to stand on the elephant, which made me really jealous.

It was sort of chaotic while we were in the water if more than one of us were trying to ride the elephants at the same time. One time I was getting on mine and someone was on the elephant next to me. His elephant was trying to stand up while mine was still laying down and my leg got caught between them. Luckily, though, elephants are squishy and nothing was hurt. 

 

Trying to stay on

The water was pretty dirty, and probably full of elephant poop, so Ben suggested we go to the waterfall to rinse off in clean water. It was quite refreshing but was so small that it was tough to actually get clean. Me and Cat tried to change out of our suits behind the towel I brought, which was pretty interesting while surrounded by all of our trainers. We did it though and then went up to this little tree house-like structure for lunch.

Lunch looked beautiful. It was fried chicken legs and many different varieties of sticky rice. There was plain to eat with the chicken, there was sticky rice with custard, sticky rice with coconut, sticky rice with banana, with potato, with beans. A lot of sticky rice. There was so much food that we couldn't eat most of it and got to give the leftovers to the elephants (but not the chicken or oranges). 

  

lunch for us and our elephants

While we were eating the other half of the original group showed up and almost all of our elephants got into the water with their elephants. As far as I could tell, none of the humans got in the water though. They were missing out.

 

Elephant party. 

After lunch we got to ride back up the hill and across the street, over the guard rail (which you can do when you're on a giant elephant) and into the foothills that were covered in trees. We were to follow a narrow, somewhat treacherous trail that seemed to be carved out be elephants. Nui didn't hesitate going over the rail, but did at times when we were going down hill. She did a little better going forward on my command this half and only seemed to balk at going when the trail got more difficult. She still stopped to eat, but I learned that if we were close to a tree I could push against it and make her go.

When going up hill you're supposed to lean forward and lean backward while going down. There was a lot of both on this section of the ride. 

 

 Over the rail and onto the trail

Going up hill, leaning forward

Everything was going pretty well on the trail and we had been riding for a while when we heard, what sounded like, steel drums being played. We didn't know where it was coming from, our elephants didn't know where it was coming from, and the first elephant, who was already a little jumpy, bellowed and lifted her head and started to turn, which caused my elephant to turn and the elephant in front of mine to turn and the next thing I knew I was being taken off the trail at running speeds going who knows where.

Nui was the first elephant to run. She knocked past the elephant that was behind us and into the trees. I held onto the rope as tightly as I could, figuring it was better to stay on her than to come off and possibly be trampled. She couldn't have been running that long before my trainer caught up to us and put his arms out and told me to fall backwards. It took me a second to register what he was saying because I was still holding on for my life and had no idea where we were going or what you're supposed to do when you're the leader of an elephant stampede. I did let go and fell back onto him and we layed on the ground watching as two or three other elephants ran past our heads.

It was kind of surreal to watch from that angle as giant legs passed at a distance of about a foot.  Movies get the sound of running by large beasts pretty spot on. I'm pretty lucky we fell off to the side, or I probably wouldn't be writing this entry.

After it was quite we both got up, he handed me my shoes (you ride barefoot, which I forgot to mention) and I looked around. There were maybe three elephants on higher ground who didn't run. Down the hill closer to the trail were people who had come off their elephants. Closest to me was one of the Belgian girls and her trainer. Down by the path was another trainer and another woman. We all started yelling, asking if everyone was ok. The woman on the path said she had been cut and it was pretty bad. Her husband was on one of the elephants that hadn't ran and he was franticly trying to get off his elephant and to his wife.

My trainer left me once he knew I was ok to try to find Nui. The other elephants involved in the incident had stopped but she had kept going. Someone on a higher ground elephant said she saw her down in a ravine but I couldn't see her.

I walked back to the path to see what was going on. The woman (I wish I was better with names) was laying on the ground with some sort of gauze on her foot. There was a lot of blood and someone said later that her cut started from the inside of her big toe and went to the middle of her foot. One of the trainers called Ben and arranged for the vans to come get us and bring her to the hospital. She wasn't freaking out, she just said she thought she needed stitches and that maybe her foot had gotten stepped on by an elephant during the chaos.

She was pretty tough, though, and walked herself down the rest of the hill. She has lost her camera during the incident and her husband looked for it upon her request. One of the trainers found it.

We all just stood there for a while, pretty stunned. The trainers made everyone except for Cat get off of the elephants, although there were only two people left on elephants. I guess Cat's elephant wasn't even phased during the whole thing. Other people said that their elephants just moved up hill a little to get out of the way.

They decided that we had to walk back down, that our elephants were too spooked to get back on. I was totally bummed, although at that point Nui was still missing so I couldn't have gotten back on her anyway. I'm glad my trainer made me fall, otherwise who knows where I would have ended up or if I could have kept holding on.

Ben met us when we were close to the road and was freaking out. I don't think this happens very often. What I understood from his distraught broken English, the people in the village know when the elephants are out and keep quiet because if the elephants can't see where the sound is coming from they get scared and, well, do what ours did. They run. He thinks it was a car with a loud stereo going by and not the villagers.

 

Arm wound from fall off the elephant

He asked if we were alright and apologized at least five times. We insisted we were fine and that they are animals and get scared and it was ok. I asked if we could get back on but he ignored me.

Nui was found and the trainers rode the elephants back.

 

Cat, our lone post-mini stampede elephant rider

We got back to the camp and fed our elephants some more bananas to thank them for the day, but we were all pretty ready to get back on. We asked Ben if it would be alright if we rode some more. He seemed pretty surprised but said yes.  So we all got back on and rode our elephants through the creek and to the village, where I'm guessing we were supposed to see some sort of small performance but because of the agitated state our elephants had been in, we had to cut our ride just a little bit short.

 

End of day ride through the creek

We got to give our elephants one last basket of treats and say goodbye to them and our trainers.

 

  

my hero

 

me and Nui

 

Nui

 

Cat and her calm old lady

Overall it was one of the best day's I've ever had and would recommend it to anyone coming to Chiang Mai. 

I was thinking about the elephants on my way to dinner last night. They're just so amazing. They're beautiful creatures that are so wise and caring. They're enormous and yet delicate. I thought about the sounds they make, and how they sound like dinosaurs out of Jurassic Park. If I come back, I'll do it again. Even with the stampede, it only made my love of them grow.

This is me getting on Nui.

ANTS! ANTS! ANTS!

Stuff happened today but all I can really think about is the fact that I got home from Chaba House tonight and found a bunch of tiny ants in my bed. Now, despite shaking out the sheets and comforter, I keep feeling ants on me. There aren't any, mind you, but I know they were here. Problem is, they could still be here, I don't know. They're tricky littler fuckers. It's my own fault. I ate crackers in the bed.

I also put the crackers in the fridge for this very reason. Damnit. I hate you ants!

I did my first 90 minute Thai massage today. I think it went very well. I just found a fucking ant on my computer. sorry. Anyway, I got a little frustrated in school today. They tried to "teach us" the sen sib lines, but then sorta seemed like they expected us to know them in 15 minutes. There are 62,000 of them, and they only want us to know 10, but that still seemed impossible.

I walked to the grocery store today and bought fruit and crackers and cheese. I will no longer be eating any of these things in my bed.

There was a going away dance party at Chaba House today for Talal and Jose. They are leaving for Krabi tomorrow and then off to Brazil. It sounds lovely. I wish I could get in a little beach time. I think I'll be taking a cooking class, so that should be awesome.

I also think I'll be taking a sleeping pill this evening b ecause this ant thing is not going to work for me.

busy

It seems as though the same thing that happens at home is happening here. I get busy, it gets tough for me to actually log on to this thing and write about my day. When I'm at home I have to plan my life around getting home for my sweet sweet dog. But here...I never need to come back here. All that's at my guest house is a bunch of junk and a bed. Warner is definitely giving me the hard sell on moving the Chaba still, but it's silly to leave here now. I can go there whenever I want and hang out. In fact, I'll be going over there to play cards after school tomorrow.

Yesterday after school Melissa and I got massages at this place near Tha Pae gate. It was kind of nice because I woke up in a totally crappy mood. I had broken a glass in my room the night before (which was an amazing explosion of glass everywhere. In fact, I found a piece in my bed just a few minutes ago) and got a shard in my foot, which I didn't realize until I got to school and spent ten minutes in the office trying to dig it out with a safety pin. I had also slept like crap, woke up in the middle of the night absolutely drenched in sweat. I just couldn't shake the mood. Maybe I was missing my friends, but I've stayed pretty well connected.

Anyway, when she suggested massages after school I was all about it. It was nice to get a massage to kind of try to figure out what other people do. The woman who massaged me did a lot of the same stuff we're learning but faster and both sides at the same time, instead of one at a time. Today in class we learned some of the modified/more advanced stretches, some of which she did to me and I was mentally trying to figure them out.  It kind of made me decide that I'm going to stay in Chiang Mai until the 14th and fly to Bangkok as late as possible and just hang out at the airport so I can take a table class somewhere other than my school. I also want to start getting more massages so I can compare and steal techniques.

Post massages we met up with Gina and Tom at the bar they call Jim Beam, but I think it's actually called Kafe. They had a little mistake on their menu that I thought was funny.

 

But now I see that they sell shrim in addition to frence fried

We didn't eat there, instead we walked to a very delicious vegetarian restaurant called Taste From Heaven. The owner was a very lovely man from Australia who owns a black lab mix whom he saved from the streets.

We found an shop across the street that makes organic lotions and such for so cheap. I should have bought this honey body lotion but didn't feel like carrying it because I knew we were going to North Gate Jazz club (finally).

On Tuesday nights they have an open mic jam session that I guess is really popular. There were a ton of people there and they close off some of the main road around the old city to accommodate them.I didn't like all the music but that's ok. Everyone Sounded pretty good.

 

 Gina and Tom

 

yummy pineapple drinks

 

Jazz

When I met two girls from ITM here they were talking about their classmate named "Cello Joe." They were going to see him play that night and invited me to come. They said that he rides his bike all around Chiang Mai with his cello on his back and does some sort of cello/beat box thing. It sounded pretty strange. Well, he played at North Gate and it actually sounded really awesome.

 

Cello Joe

I left the club slightly early to try to get home to phone into google for the meeting about benefits, only to realize that it was at 12pm cst and not 11 and there was no way I was staying up until 2am for it.

This morning I woke up far less crabby. I ate a left over sub for breakfast, which made me feel like barfing for the first half of class. I felt better by afternoon and then Melissa felt like crap. We were learning those new things I told you about and it was a little frustrating because Dao may be the sweetest lady but her English is practically impossible to understand and she falls asleep in class, which is weird. She was a little better about paying attention to us today, so that was nice. 

Tonight a big group of us went to the cultural center for some very touristy show. We had a super great time, though. It's really nice to connect with my classmates. I was just so worried.

 

 

 There was a little boy during the second half of the show, who's parents were probably in the show, who kept dancing with the dancers and running across the performance area. He was pretty much the cutest thing ever. Trying to take his picture was like trying to get a puppy to look directly into the camera, or even like trying to get a 2 year old who doesn't speak you language to look at you. 

 

 

Tomorrow night we go dancing to celebrate Samantha, Talal, Jose and Singrid's last days at school. 

toilets, teachers and double dog dares

Ketchup fried rice sounds pretty disgusting. it's on the menu at the place across the street that I get mango and sticky rice from and I just can't imagine what that would be like other than completely gross. Speaking of mango and sticky rice, it might be the sole reason why I won't be losing any weight while here in Thailand. Oh well.

On a completely unrelated topic, but on point with the title of this entry, I've gotten pretty accustomed to the Asian way of not putting toilet paper in the toilet. I occasionally slip up and put it in the toilet instead of the basket but I'm a Westerner, what can you expect? On the train here there were two bathrooms, a regular toilet and a squatter. I'm pretty glad that there aren't a lot of squatters here. In India, they were everywhere. They take a little getting used to and on the train it was pretty tough because that fucker wasn't very stable.  Both the toilet and the squatter had no tank/flushing, there were just holes that went out the bottom of the train. At the houseboat this weekend they had the same system, only into the lake. You had to fill a pot of water that sat in a large barrel in the bathroom to "flush" it. I didn't really think about it until a little later, but that went right into our swimming lake. I mean, I guess there was a slight distance between the bathrooms of the houses/rooms and where we were swimming but not really. There was a lot of shower scrubbing when I got home.

I started level two today. So far we've just reviewed what we learned last week. We have a new teacher named Dao. She's very nice, and giggles a lot, but I don't think she understands everything we're saying and we definitely don't understand everything she says. Melissa asked her what she did this weekend and she said 'I don't know' which I is doubt is possible. She just doesn't know much English. She seems to be a good teacher and has been doing massage for a while, from all we've been able to gather. She did, however, fall asleep today while I was working on Melissa. It's totally fine since we're just reviewing last week's stuff but we'll probably need her help when learning new things.  There are only two level 1 students this week and neither plan on continuing. There are four people left taking level three and then the teacher training program students. It's going to be pretty quiet at school next week.

On our ride home from the lake Warner dared me to eat the flower that was behind my ear, so I did. I told him that generally I will do anything if dared. I very rarely refuse a challenge. Last year Christina and Erin Armstong told me that they didn't think I would go up to the dude we call Ryan Gosling and ask him to make out with me, so I did. I'm just too competitive to lose and not going through with a dare is kind of losing. We can also refer to the bug, as I really didn't think I could do, but I said I would so... Melissa and Warner "triple dog dared" me to show them my boobs, so I did. I don't think I've done that since New Orleans with Sharon all those years ago. I'm sorta worried what this will lead to. Hopefully they forget all about this dare thing.

I've stopped taking so many pictures. I mean, who really wants to see a photograph of me waiting for the taxi to school or writing post cards and doing laundry and going to the grocery store. It becomes less of an exciting vacation and more regular life and regular life isn't really as interesting.  I don't want to go back to real regular life just yet. Good thing I have two more weeks here.