Elephants, ruins, and a u-turn onto the 'spiritual path'

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Hello again! Hope everyone back home is ok ......... All I hear in the news is doom n gloom and have to say, I'm pretty glad I'm out of it right now. Having said that, the bank I invested some of my equity in has gone under, but from what I hear, the FSA has guaranteed people's savings, so hopefully all will be ok. Anyhow, hope you guys are all doing ok.
So where did i get to? ......... oh ok, back to Pai. Having found a nice place to stay again, I got into those 'good Pai days' once more. It's very easy to do very little in Pai. I found a place which had movie rooms and nachos, so you could go choose a dvd to watch and munch out for an afternoon / evening, which was cool. I also rented a motorbike so I could explore the area. I say motorbike. It wasn't really. Not compared to Bob. To be fair, it was a scooter, or a bicycle with an engine :O) Not that there's a huge amount to see around Pai, but the countryside is beautiful. It's well worth hiring a bike to see. I had a fab day exploring and checked out a waterfall, a couple of Wats (monastaries), some hot springs.....which were so flippin hot, you could barely get in them! oh, and an elephant place!

I have to say, I'm not a fan of elephant places. I don't like seeing them on chains, keeping the public happy so to speak, but as I drove down the road, I spotted a place I'd heard a few people say good things about. I wasn't going to stop, but something made me turn round and go back. When I got to Thailand, one of the things I wanted to do was mahout training, in an elephant sanctuary. It was expensive, but I love elephants, so it would have been worth it for me. I'd contacted them by email, but not heard anything back. As far as I knew, this place in Pai only did day trips where you could ride the elephants and play with them in the river. When I stopped that day though, I found out you could stay there and do some mahout training as well, for less than half the price of the place I'd previously found out about. Sounded too good to be true, and once I'd seen the bungalows you got to stay in, I was pretty much sold and said I'd stay for a couple of weeks, starting in a couple of days time. (the bungalows were lovely and you got a big bath tub in the bathroom too!)

That gave me one more day to sort some stuff out. I wanted to go to Chang Mai, because for some reason, my new Ipod wouldn't charge with the lead from my old Ipod. I'm still not too sure why, but whatever, I needed to sort it out or my new tunes would be all tuned out pretty soon. Pai had nowhere which sold Ipod gear, so it meant a trip to Chang Mai.

Chang Mai is only 136kms away. Not far, but there's 762 curves along the way. It's not a road for people suffering from car sickness, put it that way! As it turned out, it wasn't a fantastic road for a little bike with skinny bicycle tyres either! About an hour and a half after I set off, I had a moment of panic when the petrol guage was hitting empty and I hadn't seen any sign of a petrol station since I left Pai. It had all been uphill so far and for a 125, the bike had used an awful lot of fuel. Turns out there's these little huts in a couple of the villages with glass hand operated pumps, so you can see the fuel you're buying.......never knew petrol was red!.......Pretty groovy. Especially when you're about to run out. Anyhow, panic over, I was back on the road. 3 hours after I left Pai, I was in Chang Mai. One of the first places I saw was an electrical superstore...fab...hopefully they'll sell ipod stuff. they didn't but they pointed me in the direction of a place that did.

I wondered what traffic would be like in Chang Mai, being a big city. It was fine though. I think after India, anything seems reasonably tame. Chang Mai was also much quieter than Bangkok and it wasn't rush hour which I think helped.

I managed to find the place they'd shown me on the map and the sales guy even spoke a bit of english so I could explain the problem. I was pretty relieved to find the new chargers worked with my ipod......I was starting to wonder if my ipod was faulty, which would have been a real bugger, having got it loaded with lots of new tunes. I ended up buying a charger which also had a connector to plug the pod through a tv so when I stayed places with a tv, I could watch the programmes I had on the tv rather than a tiny ipod screen. I was a very happy bunny, n hopped back on the bike to head to the shopping mall. I know......I'd not long been shopping in Bangkok, but the novelty of it hadn't really worn off yet! I didn't buy an awful lot....just a couple of cheap pairs of shorts for the elephant camp, and an electric toothbrush to keep my pegs nice n white. (Can't remember if I'd already mentioned, but splashed out on a whitening treatment in Bangkok to celebrate the new attempt at giving up smoking!) Oh yeah, and a humungus icecream sundae to set me up for the journey home!

You know, I don't like Thailand as much as India, but as someone pointed out to me today, it does make things really easy for travellers. There's 7-11s all over the place, which are the equivalent of spar shops in the UK, and western stuff all over the place.....like icecream sundaes for example! At a price mind you. I'm stunned how expensive it is over here. Maybe 3 or 4 times the price of stuff in India. Some places worse than others. The icecream was expensive .....maybe a pound 50 or thereabouts, but some things are worth it! :O) On the way out of Chang Mai, I was desperately looking out for the burger king that I'd seen signs for all round the city. It remained elusive though and as I headed back to Pai, I had a huge hankering for a burger.

By the time I reached Pai, I'd been dreaming of a burger from 'The Burger House' (a burger restaurant in Pai) for 3 hours. I didn't even go back home first, just headed straight there. Bacon and cheeseburger and chips....about 3 pounds something. Again.....right then, it was worth every penny! :O)

The next morning, I got up, checked out and headed for the elephant place's office in town where they were picking me up from. When I got there, they insisted I pay up front, which I wasn't overly impressed with.....I'd rather have paid for one wk and if it was good, paid for another wk, but I didn't want to rock the boat right at the beginning, so I bit the bullet and paid.

On the first day, I was going to join the guys who'd booked in to do the half day elephant jungle walk and the trip to the river to play with them in the water. Having dumped my bag in my lovely bungalow I headed down to meet the elephants. They were lovely! There's 4 elephants there, Ot, Pom Pen, Panom and Tadou. That first day, I was riding Ot, who soon became one of my favourites......She's a real cheeky monkey, who'll do anything for a banana. She does say thank you when you give her one though.......impecable manners :O)

Elephants aren't the most comfortable of animals to ride. In fact, that's probably one of the biggest understatement I've made! They have a big spine, which protudes quite a lot and makes sitting on them feel like you're sitting on a very thin pole, which after an hour and a half walk through the jungle is not great for your child bearing capabilities :O/ The best spot to be is at the front on the back of the neck (I know that sounds awful, but it doesn't hurt them....honest!) but even there you get the toilet brush effect from their hair!

When we got closer to the river, you could feel them get a spurt on. Suddenly they weren't so interested in the juicy bamboo shoots anymore and it was full pelt down to the water. I think they really enjoyed playing in the water. They seemed to anyhow. It starts off quite tame, but once the mahouts see you're up for it, it turns into a 'bucking bronko' with them giving the elephants commands to try and shake you off. The more you hang on, the harder they shake til eventually you're going to end up in the river! It was pretty cool.

After the river, it was back to the camp and a nice hot tub before lunch. The hot tubs were more like big baths that are filled each day from the spring water, as opposed to big pools at the other place I'd been to. The weren't really that hot either, like the other ones. They're ok for a hot day though, and the water is refilled in each day so at least you know it's clean. Lunch was ok, but I was going to need to work on the 'Phed Phed' bit (very spicy!) if I was staying here for a couple of weeks. After lunch I was given some elephant commands to learn...nothing too complicated, just right, left, quickly, slowly, stuff like that. Seemed easy enough. Easy to learn that is....not so easy to be understood. Talking to elephants is a bit like speaking thai to thai people. You know what you're saying, but they don't seem to have a flipping clue. Especially when there's a big juicy patch of bamboo just over there in trunk's reach!

Life at the elephant camp was fantastic for the first week or so. I have to say, I pretty quickly went off riding the elephants though. Not only is it uncomfortable for us, but I'm not so sure it's that comfortable for them either. The first time you go out on them, they seem perfectly happy and ok with it, but when you see them going out again and again, day after day, you kind of question whether that's what elephants should be doing. Unfortunately, I think this is what elephants in Thailand do. There's not that many in the wild and even places I've seen since which advertise as sanctuaries still have the elephant rides and painting classes and allsorts. Compared to some places though, at least they were looked after well here and the owner seemed to love them, as well as make money out of them. I have to say though, I'd much rather see them in the wild. On top of that, I got a lovely rash down the inside of my legs from riding in shorts......mmmm guess that's my karma for riding them.

I did get a huge amount out of just spending time with them though. Feeding them bananas and playing with them. They'd do anything for a banana. Especially Ot. Her and Pom Pen were my favourites. Pom Pen was much smaller than the others, but she was so cute. She liked her tongue being patted! Every time I went over to her she'd stick it out until I patted it. Amazing things elephant tongues!! Ot was just cheeky.....anything for a banana. She'd say thank you though.....in ellie language anyhow!

The guys working at the camp were fantastic too. They even helped me try to learn Thai, which has helped a lot at times, and at others has got me nowhere at all! It's a tonal language, so depending on the tone of your voice a word can have different meanings. Sometimes people seem to know what I'm saying (or maybe they're just being polite!) and other times you can say something a dozen times and then a thai person will help and tell them what you want, sound exactly the same as what you've just been saying, and the guy's like 'aaaaaaahhhhhhh' and you're like, that's exactly what I've just been saying for the last couple of minutes! Very frustrating :O) At least I'm trying though!

The second week on the camp wasn't so good. It was almost like I'd paid them all the money at the beginning of the second week, because things changed so much. The first wk, they couldn't do enough for us, the second week, it was almost like we were being paid to be there rather than the other way round. The second you turned up at the place, the owner would say ' can you go and do such n such' and evening times, in return for dinner, we'd be running round like looneys all night, including being left to do the washing up when the owner went to bed. Not that I mind helping, but it wasn't helping, it was doing. If she was washing up with me, I'd have no problem with it, but it wasn't really like that. When we went to the market with her, we'd be her personal carriers.......loaded down with stuff while she sauntered on empty handed :O) On the third night of being left to do the washing up after she'd 'retired' for the night, I decided enough was enough and said, 'Sorry but I'm not washing up again tonight', and she replied 'that's ok, tomorrow will be fine'!! he he! can you believe that........I couldn't! On top of that, she batted for the other side, if you get my meaning, and there were one or two comments passed to me and Laila (the other girl staying there) that made us feel a tad .....mmmmmm how can I put this.......sick! Also they'd been an 'incident' where one of the mahouts had hit the elephant with the stick they use (a kind of metal claw type thing, which I'd been told didn't hurt them) and managed to draw blood. It was horrible. We then found out that the guy had only been there about 8 months and hadn't' had any training as such. I couldn't believe it. No wonder he used the training stick so much. He'd left in charge of this enourmous animal with people's lives in his responsibility and he's had no training. It was funny because I'd noticed that two of the mahouts were really really good with the animals and hardly ever used this stick thing, as they controlled them completely just with commands. It was only if the ellie was being particularly 'naughty' and playing the 'I can't hear you' game, 'oooohhhhh look at that juicy bunch of bamboo over there'! that they would give them a tap. The other two seemed to be a bit 'stick happy' in comparison. I'd commented on it and was told, 'it doesn't hurt them', which I believed because their skin is really thick, I would think it'd take a lot to hurt them, but still I didn't like it. When this happened it kind of confirmed what I'd thought originally. In the guy's defence though, if I'd not been trained and hence didn't have proper control over the animal and had peoples safety to think about, I'd probably have used the stick a lot too. Who knows. Anyhow, it all left a bit of an unpleasant feeling in my stomach.

Hence I decided to leave a couple of days early. I wanted to leave on a good note, because the first week had been great. Additionally, my visa was due to run out the day I left there, which meant I had to do a run to the border for a new one. It was my first visa run. I'd heard if you got there one day late, it was ok and they didn't charge you, but having not done it before, I felt more comfortable not turning up late. Also, it meant I could go to the border at Mae Sot which was a bit harder to get to but I'd been told was a nicer place than Mae Sai, which was where I was going to go originally.

My last night at the elephant camp, another girl came to stay. Bev from America. She was a lovely girl and we got on really well. She too was pretty unimpressed with the mahout training. She'd only paid for two days and admittedly, after the first day, she didn't want to go riding them again the following morning (for similar reasons to me) but she came in at lunchtime on the second day to learn a bit more about them. She didn't get any training at all! The owner apparently had sat and read a book all afternoon while Bev sat waiting for her training. The next morning I said I'd show Bev what I knew before we both left. When I told the owner this she basically made out it was my fault Bev hadn't had any training the day before because I was in town. Not sure how me being there or not being there impacts on another customer's training, but heh, it made Bev and I laugh. I suggested that maybe the owner could show Bev a few things before she left, but she was too busy picking up some photographers who were coming to take some shots for a magazine. Funnily enough when these guys were here she suddenly decided the time was right to 'show Bev a few things'. Unfortunately, Bev's bus was leaving in half hour and she still hadn't finished packing. It was funny to watch, poor old Bev was desperate to get off the elephant so she wouldn't miss her bus and the owner was desperate to keep her on there for the sake of the pictures.....guess the photos look better with some tourists in them for the mag. Oh, how we laughed. I wish I'd had a video rolling right then.

Anyhow, having left the ellie place I headed to Chang Mai. I stayed there one night and then caught a bus down to Mae Sot. There wasn't a lot at Mae Sot other than the border and lots of volunteers. Many burmese refugees live in camps at the border, so there are many opportunities for volunteers there. The visa run was as straightforward as I'd heard. I hired a bike to get to the border which was a few kilometres out of town. The thai immigration weren't particularly friendly. I'd gone up to the window full of 'Sa wa di kah' s (that's hello!) and this hand had emerged from the window, grabbed my passport and shut the window very firmly! mmmmm guess they're not into the niceties then! The burmese side were much more friendly......even got offered some lunch there! Basically, you get stamped out of Thailand, walk over the bridge to the Burma border, get stamped into Burma for the day, spend an hour or two, or how ever many you want as long as you're back at the border by 4pm, and then you head back over the bridge and get a new 30 day visa for Thailand. Pretty painless really, just a hassle to think about having to get to the border each month. Burma was very different to Thailand, funny to think it was only a bridge away! All of a sudden you're back in a clearly developing country with everyone staring at you......bit like being back in India! Only with India, I knew how to play the game as it were, whereas I didn't have a clue what was what in Burma and hence felt pretty similar to how I did when I first arrived in India! Hence, I didn't stay that long. A quick look round the market and a visit to an amazing buddhist temple and I was out of there.

Having got the new visa, I headed to Sukothai which has lots of ancient ruins of buddhist temples. They were amazing to see. Mostly really well preserved as well, so you could get a feel as what it would've been like a thousand years ago. I spend a couple of days in Sukothai..... one day riding round the sukothai ruins on my bicycle and one up in Sri Satchanali, just north, where there are more ruins. The Sri Satchanali ones are much more rustic and there aren't so many of them, but it was well worth a day trip from Sukothai to see them. Again I hired a bicylce to get round them......only here there were a couple of hills and it nearly killed me! Good job I've given up smoking that's all I can say!

After Sukothai, I carried on the ancient ruins theme at Ayuthaya. Ayuthaya is the ex capital of Thailand, or Siam as it was then. It's about an hour's drive north of Bangkok. The ruins here aren't just temples, there are some palaces here too. Again they're amazing though. All in all, I really enjoyed Ayuthaya. Definitely a nice quieter alternative to staying in Bangkok being so close as well. While I was there I went to see another elephant place. It was part of a 'night time tour' which I'd gone on to see the ruins lit up at night, as I'd been told they were really different at night time. Part of the tour was a twently minute stop at this elephant place. Wow......they had baby elephants!!!!! I was in my element. There were no babies at the place I'd been staying at and babies are SOOO CUTE! I loved them so much, I hired a bicycle the next day and having seen all the ruins I wanted too, I headed back out to find the elephant place. It was much further on a bike than it was in the tuk tuk the night before! This time I got to spend a bit more time watching the elephants. Watching the babies was fantastic. None of them were chained. Unfortunately the adult ones were and they looked kind of bored. There were loads of them here..... a good 100 elephants I'd guess at. Luckily a big tractor full of bamboo pulled up right by where some of the ellies were chained. Well, I'm guessing they thought they were lucky! The trunks suddenly leapt into action as the opportunity for food was right in front of them! Unfortunately it didn't stay there too long, so they had to be quick. Once it had moved on, the babies could still get to it as they weren't chained to anything. I felt sorry for the adults though....they could only gaze on longingly!

There were some volunteers working at this place too. It seemed like they were really getting stuck in as well, bathing and brushing the elephants they were looking after. I got chatting to some of them and it sounded like a really good programme, but was really expensive. I was tempted though.....just to spend a few days with the babies would've been fab.

While I was there, the mahouts had some of the elephants working really hard shifting big piles of bamboo off the back of the tractor and then around the site to the different groups of elephants. I guess these elephants have to earn their living! I wasn't overly impressed when I saw a mahout hit an elephant over the head, I guess to make it go, but when it was already going full pelt. Maybe I'm just too much of a softy for these places. I'd love to go to a place where the elephants are in really wild surroundings. no chains, no work, just being elephants. I think places like that are rare or extinct in Thailand, but I'm going to keep looking. Maybe Thailand just isn't the place though, who knows. I have been told of a National Park here where the elephants are wild. Maybe I'll get a chance to check that out. The only thing there is it's pot luck if you see them or not. It would be amazing to see truly wild elephants though......that's one of the things still on my list.

After Ayuthaya, I headed to Bangkok to get a bus down South to Surat Thani. I'd been interested in doing a meditation retreat since India, but each time I found one, I couldn't go for one reason or another. Or maybe subconciously I was putting it off :O) who knows. Anyhow, there are many vipassana retreats in Thailand, some very strict and some not so strict. I wasn't really up for something that was going to put me off meditation for life. I'd spoken to a few people who'd done the Goenka vipassana retreats in India and they seemed more pleased with the fact that they'd made the full ten days than with what they'd actually got out of it to help them in everyday life. I really wanted to feel like I'd got something out of it at the end of the 10 days, not just elation that 'I'd made it'! Anyhow, in Mae Sot I'd got chatting to a guy who'd done a Goenka retreat in Burma and also a Vipassana retreat in Suan Mokkh monastary, near Surat Thani, which he'd described as 'a nice one to start with'. It'd sounded great, and started on 1st of the month, with registration on the last day of the previous month. It fitted in with my visa and I had no real excuses this time, so that was where I was headed. I wasn't too sure what I was letting myself in for. I'd had a look on the website and it seemed the day was broken up quite well with talks, 'chores' and meditation, not just solid hours and hours of meditation, which looked better than some I'd heard about, so that was encouraging anyhow. I figured it was probably better to go with no real expectations or assumptions and that way It'd be a nice suprise!! Nothing like positive thinking eh! In reality, it was with trepidation that I boarded the bus in Bangkok that night. I couldn't sleep at all.....spent the whole night watching the '24' series on my ipod. At 4am the bus dropped me on the side of the highway as promised. The driver smiled and pointed the way to the monastary wishing me 'good luck'. Why did I need 'good luck'? I wondered. As the door to the bus closed and it disappeared into the night I suddenly had an overwhelming instinct to run after it. Too late now I guess. It was still pitch black and I didn't want to stick around on the edge of the highway too long, so I picked up my stuff and headed across the road in the direction the guy had pointed.

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