Providing the comedy moments.....

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Ok. So today was a pretty regular day apart from having our Prakam ceremony for us leaving. I'm not actually leaving until Tuesday, or Wednesday, not entirely sure!!! The Prakam ceremony is to end your time at the camp and offer thanks for the protection from the Gods, so what life has in store for me over the next few days..... The ceremony involved a pigs head, a cooked chicken, some whisky, orange juice, rice and chillies and some flowers. At the end of the ceremony Bua, the head mahout, reads your future from a part of the chicken. He said ours was lucky, but he's said that in each of the ceremonies I've been to. I'm going to believe him though. Then watched the mahouts gambling, did some sweeping..... and then......
Firstly I had a very humiliating experience in front of 2 of the mahouts....and tourists!!!! I was climbing onto Surichok and was 1/2 way up when I couldn't grip with my foot to push anymore. So I ended up hanging with one arm from her ear and one arm from her basket that I had managed to grab hold of. Pinoi and Num were just riding past. So they stopped. Laughed (loudly) and pointed. Just to make sure the tourists on their elephants had seen me. Then when I rode past the tourist platform two little boys that were sat on the steps pointed at me and started laughing, so they obviously had the story told on the way round.
Then I ripped my trousers. Mr Tong had built a new platform between 2 trees and he's been sleeping on there. When I got back from lunch I saw that he'd left a pillow and it was just too tempting, so I had a little snooze. But when I went to get up I couldn't move. my trousers were caught on a nail that he hadn't hammered in too well..... Later he was hammering all the nails in securely... a bit too late fo me!
The worst was still to come though...........
We finished at 3pm today and I was sat over with Tessa as Num had told her to get me. What I didn't know at the time was that the reason he wanted to see me was to give me the hottest, spiciest papaya salad and watch me burn. First my lips, then tongue, then throat. Oh how he laughed at my discomfort. There were 20 birdseye chillies in it! Then when I went to collect my things from my area Mr Tong called me over to eat with them. It was chicken and pork!!!!! I was so pleased to hear them called for a tourist ride after I'd only had a few bites of chicken. I wasn't looking forward to the pigs head, not after seeing its tongue lolling out.... Then my deay got even worse. Today was a day to go back at 6pm to take the elephants to the forest. So I trundled over just before 6...and saw that Mr Tong wasn't there. Hor started waving at me and told me that he'd already gone. So I set off running through the camp with lots of random people shouting and pointing me in the direction he went. As I passed each mahout (still getting their elephants ready) they all yelled "quick, quick, run, run" (I think anyway, it was in Thai). I had to slow down as I ran past Liam as he's very good looking - not sure if it was so I didn't look stupid or just so I had time to get a better look! Then I got to the end of the park and Whicha was shouting after Mr Tong. I couldn't even see him he was so far away. I started running but wasn't going very fast due to flip flops.... So took my flip flops off and ran down the road in my bare feet - getting lots of strange looks from people passing on motorbikes. Not really surprising as I'm sure it's not every day they see a white woman running down the road in bare feet shouting "Mr Tooooooonnnnnggggg"
I finally caught up with him and it actually got worse. Oh yes. He decided to help me out (?) by getting Surichok to sit down for me to get on her. Did it help? No. 1) because as I climbed on her she started to stand up & 2) because Mr Tong was also sat on her at the time so I couldn't swing my leg over to sit on her neck. So I did a superman impression on the top of an elephant, then almost went straight over the other side. This was all much to the amusement of everyione sat outside the bar on the other side of the road.... When I did finally manage to swing my leg over and pull myself upright from being face down on an elephants head I got a round of applause! I'm sure some of them decided to follow us too as lots of people that rode past on motorbikes pointed and laughed...
So we rode down to the forest and Surichok was being extremely naughty. She wouldn't obey any of Mr Tongs commands (usually she listens and does everything he says) so he had to get off. We ended up wandering around a field in the dark looking for somewhere that her chain could be attached to. Up and down narrow paths between bogs and streams. When we did find somewhere I went to get down and had balanced myself one way, but Mr Tong had other ideas and pulled me the other way. We ended up doing a backwards stagger and then each went in a different direction landing on our backsides. Then Mr Tong held my hand all the way back......... All the way back included having to roll my tousers up and wade through a bog too. Happy days!
On Friday evening we took the presents over to the mahouts, but due to my extended forest trip/performance we were about an hour late. So there was no-one there. We ended up sitting with Num (who had been Tessas mahout) as she had bought him presents. She had actually bought more for his little girl, including a Harley Davision trike that we had great fun with. We eventually managed to round a few up (including Liam with his shirt off!!!!) and Mon tried to get the machine working. In the end we left them to it (I think they had had enough as well), but I have an awful feeling that I might get to find out tonight if they got it working!
Today I was up at 5.15 to go and collect Surichok. Mr Tong held my hand again.....and chattered away to me in Thai. I think he just expects me to be here forever now. I did lots of sweeping, got serenaded (badly) by Mon (it was probably a very rude and insulting Thai song) and hit with a stick by Liam as I stood and watched them go by resting on my rake...
Then at 10am Hor and I started playing minature table football.....and he gave me a beer. It was a little bit like the whisky drinking of the other night, one glass gets topped up and passed around, but this time there were just the two of us. We ended up breaking the table football game because instead of just twiddling the ends so the "players" kicked we fought over who could tip it the highest to get the ball to drop in the goal. He started it!! So we moved on to cards. But they all blew away. So the morning ended with a competetive round of connect 4.
After lunch I sat with Tessa waiting for her taxi to arrive. It turned out that they hadn't actually ordered it and Ao seemed to be riding to all the taxi offices on his motorbike to get one organised. We whiled away the time annoying the pregnant cat, trying to have her kittens now, and playing cards. Eventually Tessa left and I spent an age on the computer trying to catch up. I'd asked Ao to copy me some DVD's of the elephant project and whilst he was doing this Noy mentioned a Thai song that I recognised, so I said that yes I liked it. She beamed with pleasure, and then reminded me that it was a political song about the ousted prime minister. So then I had to watch the video....again. And she's copied it for me to show everyone in England!
Now that Tessa has gone I'm the only volunteer here, but there is supposed to be another one arriving tomorrow. Saturday night turned out to be a quiet one - no karaoke! I wandered over about 8pm and there seemed to be no-one around. Had a quick drink with Hor, played around with my pictures and had a much needed early night.

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Photos

Surichok takes a bath
and has a poo in the river - which apparently floats!

stick insect
one of the many strange creatures here that I try to ignore

Dogs
When we take Surichok to the forest we're always surrounded by this pack of dogs growling , barking and occasionally trying to have a bite. We carry big sticks, or as in this picture, Whichas dog comes with us to see them off

traditional Thai house
one of the views from the walk back from the forest

On the way back from the forest
Surichok takes advantage of the free availibility of grass

Hor and Saancome
playing football. Saancome is 80 years old, hence the hollow cheeks where she's lost her teeth

Saancome decides she
I don't blame her, I know from experience that Hor is a cheat when it come s to football!

Chuk dee chuk nee
or lucky lizard. We found this immensely funny to keep saying. The mahouts, however, were not impressed and couldn't understand why we found this funny. Asimilar thing haoppened at the boxing when I found one of the fighters names "Ramboo" very amusing. Blank satres all round.

The new elephant project site
They are hopefully going to have this as a 2nd camp. We were shown around and asked for our opinions. It's further out of the city and in the hills, so the walks would be much nicer

Saancome and Surichok take a shower together
When I try to throw one bucket of water I get a small square of Surichoks back. When Hor throws one bucket of water he manages to shower two elephants at the same time???

the Harley now updated Thai style
i.e. with 4 additional passangers and plenty of luggage

Prakam ceremony
Mr Tong conducts part of the ceremony

prakam
Ao with the contents of Prakam