The blog in which I completely change my mind about being homesick...

Now, with the end in close sight, I am no longer homesick or ready to go home! What is wrong with me? I mean, I am completely ready to see Jeremy and sleep in my own bed and eat tacos... but suddenly the sky seems bluer here, the mountains more...rolling, the beach more tempting, and my $250/month house rent so so appealing to my budget needs.

It is strange really, this turnaround. Sure, I am still lonely. Still often frustrated with my staff and the so slow you are practically moving backward in time way of getting things done here, but then a weekend afternoon comes where my only responsibility in life is getting myself and one small dog to the beach located 6 minutes away and possibly, if I feel like it, taking the half hour that is needed to clean my little house. I suppose you could also count returning emails, watching tv, and going to the local market responsibilities so I'll add those in. Sure, my daily job is work but it ends around 4:30 and then life is my own. Even without a job my daily responsibilities are about ten thousand times more in Washington, DC. And access to the outdoors and beach are pretty limited. I will miss that.

They posted a For Rent sign on my gate this week! Felt like a huge insult! I may want to leave but I certainly don't want someone else living in my house!

I am coming to the realization that I may not ever be back. And while it has not always been an easy place to live it is my place now and this chapter is almost closed. Every shell and sunset and rainstorm suddenly something to be valued and appreciated.

Last weekend I drove to Phuket and took my friend to the hospital where she was diagnosed with "mild hepatitis" although they could not tell her which variety. It was all very comical. I visited the eye clinic of the hospital where they showed me disgusting photos of the insides of my eyelids and told me I could no longer wear contacts and need lasik. Great. The upside was that we went to the VIP cinema at the mall. The Thai VIP cinema has not yet arrived in the US but it should! For the equivalent of $15 we were ushered into a special entrance with a lounge and buffet snacks and drinks. Then entered a theater with only 24 huge reclining plush seats. We reclined. We were given blankets. We were given big ceramic bowls of popcorn and huge glasses (not cardboard cups) of coke with crushed ice. I think we saw Ocean's 13. Didn't really care what movie it was as long as I could recline 180 degrees! Heaven.

This week I have realized that maybe my calling is both children AND animals. I've started bringing Talay with me to visit some of the children we are working with. Now that the project is almost finished we are mostly still working with the kids living at a local institution so we've gotten to know them well. Talay, who I thought might be scared of all the kids, handles it wonderfully. They pull her, squeeze her, fight over her, and generally squish and over handle her but they love it and I think she gives them the affection they really crave. So it is a match made in heaven. And somehow it is so much easier to cross that language barrier with the dog as part of the meeting. The kids are much less suspicious of what my team wants when we come and hand them a puppy. :) Maybe a future career of kids + animals? Well , we'll see.

Night from suddenly fantastic, ha ha ha, Bang Niang.

Take me home, country road, to the place, where I belong…west Virginia, mountain mama, take me home…

This was the song playing in the taxi on the way to Bangkok airport on Saturday morning. Actually there was a whole country meddly of songs. I think my taxi driver was quite proud that he could accommodate my American-ness that way. Normally not a fan of country music. But I was loving this song! It made me feel so teary and nostalgic for good old USA. I almost made him play it again.

My home, my family, my friends. Ugh. I am homesick. And it is just so funny to read all of your emails saying how much all of you wish you were in the "field" doing good work. Yes, it is rewarding to some extent. But I really have realized that without people to talk to about the work it is just lonely. If a woman does good work for kids in Thailand but nobody knows does she really make a sound? Or something like that. Shooting for that tree falling the forest metaphor folks.

Laura left me on Saturday and I flew back down south. Another sad goodbye after just an amazing few weeks with someone I love.

You know, I don’t think I have ever had such highs and lows in life. It is just perfect here when I have someone with me. I loved every minute of the 6 weeks with Jeremy. And the two weeks with Laura flew by in a haze of sunshine (yes, not one day of rain while she was here-it was a miracle!), laughter, talking talking and more talking, and happiness. I keep telling myself that if I weren’t living here I wouldn’t get to have those great weeks with Jeremy and Laura and I would just be living normal life at home. So I guess the price I pay for those amazing highs is the daily slog of Bang Niang. Nothing to do, restaurants almost all closed down now, not a bit of food stocked at the store, no theaters, no shopping, no activities, not many friends. I am pathetic. At least I have Talay who entertains me with her puppy antics.

So Laura spent her first week in Bang Niang where the sun shone hot and shimmery every minute! It was like a different world here. We rented a motorbike for her and on my day off I zipped around to show her all of the beaches. We snuck into Le Meridian for an afternoon of pampering, we spent every evening watching the sunset over the beach, we shell hunted, ate a lot, and the week went so fast! I was so proud of my location for being nice and cooperating with sun. I was also really impressed by Laura’s willingness to just hop on a motorbike and get herself around with not a word of Thai.

We left on Friday the 25th for our week of travel and all I can say is that I have never had a week of international vacation go so smoothly. Every connection made, every hotel we wanted was available and readily gave a discount, every restaurant gave low-season discounts, tours were available last minute, bus tickets and train tickets all worked out. We couldn’t stop laughing at every amazing piece of good luck! In fact, we were just about in hysterical giddiness mode the entire week.

We flew to Chiang Mai which is a very pretty city in the north. I was surprised. It was full of flowers and waterways and mountain views. Big and busy but very pretty. We stayed in this bizarre kitsch guesthouse called Suan Doi House on the outskirts. It was full of gardens, talking birds, kittens, flowers and vines and our room had two little canopy beds. In Chiang Mai we hit the big Sunday night market until it closed! We rode around in tuk tuks and songtheaws and visted temples. We also went to the Elephant Nature Park for a day (see the previous blog.)

Then we went to Chiang Rai. Dum dum dum…
Despite the fact that this was the one glitch in the perfection of our vacation I now can look back and just laugh.

At a friend's advice we reserved a night at Akha Hill house. And please do not take this as a plug for the place. We were picked up at the bus station by three men on cell phones and driven to their other guesthouse (which I HIGHLY GUARD AGAINST) in the city. There they proceeded to get high and possibly do a line of coke (Laura is convinced she saw this happening) while we waited for them to tire of the football match on tv and actually take us up the mountain. We were a little concerned but actually still giddy from the rest of the week so not exactly making good choices. The cloud of smoke around us may not have helped sharpen the senses either.

Then they loaded us into a car and drove all around Chiang Rai picking up snacks for themselves. Offered us NONE! Almost lost my baggage by the side of the road while they were "rearranging" things in the trunk-read this as possibly stashing drugs in our bags for the trip up the hill. By the time we wound up the mountain and actually PASSED the sign for Akha Hillhouse Laura and I were pretty much convinced we were either being trafficed to Burma or would be thrown over the mountainside when the drugs safely arrived at their destination. They kept stopping and looking over the edges-which threw us into a fit of whispering and hopeless attempts to locate landmarks in case they threw us out. This was accompanied by irrational giggling only made worse by crazy Akha man 3 rubbing his thigh against mine in the backseat.

Ok, how much worse can it get you wonder? Well... we arrive at the place.

A village in the mountains where Akha people live and gave us weird stares. No other tourists arrived until that evening. No activities offered, no greeting, no tours. All of this lovingly offered on the website. DO NOT BE FOOLED. Once the village chief won his ecotourism award or whatever it was several years ago he definitely quit trying.

To skip ahead to the horrific part we went to bed at 10:30pm. Pitch black outside. Freaked out from seeing hand sized spiders in the open eating deck and hearing horror stories from a lovely little Swiss girl who had been stranded there for 24 hours. We entered our "VIP" room and spent much time assessing the corners with my booklight to check for hand sized spiders. Only one was located and died a very undignified death accompanied with our screams and my Tevas being launched and missing it several times. Then we pulled back the sheets-at my suggestion-just to check for bugs. But the gift we found was much much much worse. In Laura's bed-dirt dirt and more dirt. Then in my bed...crusty orange, green and yellow body fluid stains. Not the kind that have been washed either. The kind that oozed everywhere from some horrible disease I imagine and then sat for weeks while some evil villager laughed and just pulled the blankets up to hide them. We screamed a lot. We ended up sleeping on the blankets with clothing covering all body parts and sleeping with a light on. Laura still managed to get flea bites from her mattress all over her legs. We caught the first ride out the next morning and checked ourselves into the best resort in town. The Chiang Rai Legend. Complete with fluffy

white beds, 2 decks, a shower room with a fountain and a sparkly

infinity pool.

Ok, you say, I work "in the field" I should be able to handle a little hardship. But poverty is one thing and absolute filth - really malicious filth - is an entirely different matter. I am sure I could have slept cleaner and safer in any village hut other than my own VIP hut. I will include photos, although they do not do the situation justice.

From there things only got better. The Legend was amazing and within 24 hours we had forgotten all about the Akha as well as learned that the "long-necked tribe" that can be visited by trek in that area are actually trafficked women from Burma set up in fake villages and forced to stay while tourists hike there to take photos. We learned this at the hilltribe museum so thank God we did not take one of these treks and please don't if you ever visit Thailand!

Skipping ahead we night trained it to Bangkok which was a new experience for Laura. So much fun really to be rocked to sleep in little bunks and wake up looking out at the scenery passing. Bangkok was fun with Laura - all the usual sights plus some very late nights at the night market and a half day at the spa.

Now I have sort of lost my train of thought on this blog since I am trying to hurry and get it posted from the office. It is the weekend here again and I will go spend the day in Phuket for fun tomorrow.

Night from Bang Niang.

Elephants, elephants, elephants...

Elephants. I just can’t get enough of them!

Last week Laura and I traveled up to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. On the top of our list of things we wanted to do was spending time with elephants. We went to the tourism ministry and asked about what we could do with elephants. They described to us many one day treks into the mountains that involved a one hour elephant ride as well as visits to “elephant camps” where tourists can both ride them and watch them perform in shows. We also heard about a conservation center listed in the Lonely Planet guide that offered mahout courses and shows.

But we didn’t book anything. We just had a gut feeling that nothing sounded quite right. Then we found out about the Elephant Nature Park. The park is a sanctuary for 32 elephants and allows them to just be animals. No shows. No rides. But the day at the park includes feeding and bathing the elephants. We signed up for it even though the cost was a lot more than the other options because it just felt right.

It was one of the best days of my life.

We rode to the market in a little van with only 6 other people and helped load what seemed like several tons of bananas, watermelons, cucumbers and sugar cane into trucks. Then we drove about an hour into the mountains and entered…well, Amanda heaven.
Elephant Nature Park is located in this lush green valley surrounded by mountains and tropical fruit trees with a sparking river running through it. There are several tree house type huts located in the park for the mahouts and volunteers to stay in and a main building with showers, an eating deck and porches running around it from which the elephants are fed breakfast.

We spent the entire day with elephants. Watching them roam through the valley, snacking on grasses, playing with their babies, spraying themselves with dirt. We were lead all day by a woman who leads the tourists and who herself came as a volunteer 4 years ago and stayed. Her husband is now a mahout (an elephant caretaker/trainer.) She explained to us about how many tourists take elephant rides and go to elephant shows but don’t know the pain inflicted on the elephants. The elephants have 5 different shapes of spines but the platform that holds the tourists for rides is only one shape and can damage the back of an elephant. To get the elephants to follow directions the mahouts are trained to use this sharp metal spike that they stab into the elephant’s forehead. We saw the marks and scars on the elephants at the park… They claim it doesn’t hurt them but anything that can get a several ton elephant to obey a human must hurt to some extent. The worst part was learning about the way that elephants have their spirits broken in a centuries old tradition/ceremony which begins their training. We watched a video of this that was made public, I think by Nat’l Geographic, in 2002. It shows the trainers stabbing the elephant’s eardrums, burning her, tying her into a cage and depriving her of sleep, food and water, etc. They do this for days until she is so upset and scared she will either go crazy or

become more docile. Many elephants die during this ceremony. The crazy ones have to be put down. The rest become the frightened docile creatures that roll logs

and paint pictures for tourists. It was horrifying. Elephants are not only wild animals that deserve to be treated with respect they are also these amazing social and emotional creatures who will remember someone for their whole lives. They are capable of remembering the hunter who killed their mother as a baby and taking revenge on that person 25 years later. They are capable of burying (!) their dead. There are stories of elephants saving the lives of other species for purely altruistic reasons. They cry real tears. They celebrate birth with wild abandon and the elephant version of a party. They create life bonds with others and live in close family groups. They are intelligent and awe inspiring. In America we would condemn the treatment of such intelligent life if this were happening close to home. And yet we freely travel to Thailand and jump to take these ridiculous and boring one hour rides without a second thought to how in the world these beautiful creatures have been trained into such submission.

The Elephant Nature Park is amazing. It provides a refuge for elephants who have been beaten, blinded, backs broken. The elephants are cared for and allowed to roam free except when they are chained in family groups at night so they won’t cross the river into other people’s lands. They bond together and create new families of moms, aunties and babies. The males are more independent. They are huge and fascinating and wild. Even though we got to feed them breakfast from the deck of the main building and bathe with some of them in the river, we still had to be careful to avoid swiping trunks and reckless babies and adolescents. At no time were we encouraged to pet them and treat them like big pets. The guide walked us around the park and explained a lot of the cases and personalities. Also on the land are 36 dogs, 20 cats, some cattle and a veterinarian! It really felt like heaven. I hope my photos reflect that!

If any of you have a chance to do an elephant activity in Asia please consider rejecting the commercialized rides and shows. We don’t accept that kind of treatment of the African elephant-we accept that it is a wild animal to be observed and cherished from afar. So why do so many well meaning people willingly hop onto Asian elephants without asking any questions?