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Published: February 5th 2007
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Liam the mahout
striking a pose Two new volunteers arrived last night. I only met one last night, Joanne a journalist writing about the camp who wants to interview me! We sat chatting last night and had a few beers, after Ao had collapsed somewhere I think. Liam came over and we had our usual swap of English/Thai words and I took some pictures for future reference. Joanne has lived in Bangkok for 4 years (she's Irish) and speaks excellent Thai. At breakfast a dog came out of the trees with an obvious broken leg. They put him in the back of a truck to take him to a vets, but when they came back they said that nothing could be done the leg would have to be amoputated. Until that can be done the poor thing has to run around with it's leg dangling uselessly by it's side. Thankfully though it doesn't seem to be in much pain. This morning did the usual sweeping and ride around on Surichok, got hit on the head by Doclac carrying a branch (much to the tourists amusement). And I took some tourists on a one hour ride!!! I was so pleased as Mr Tong had said that I couldn't
Liam the mahout
and doing his day job do it. i must have sulked so much that he had a change of heart. i didn't know it was an hour until I got over there either. The ride didn't start off well though, there's obviously a bit of a naughty vibe running through the camp at the moment. I ended up in a tree which Surichok decided to pull up, roots and all, as a snack for the journey, and almosrt decapitated the tourists in another tree. I think they deserved it though. Stingy tourists didn't give me a tip, and they ate sweets all the time and didn't offer me one. After an hour riding/driving an elephant properly (as opposed to just letting her follow Mr Tong - I was trying to be professional!) I could hardly straighten my legs and I didn't even get 20baht!! After lunch I was given an unidentified but delicious fruit by Mr Tong, gavre him my present of a Man U shirt to replace the liverpool one he wears, but he seems to be refusing to wear it! Then sat around chatting. Or more accurately I sat there whilst Mr Tong, Whicha and Nippon talked about me to Joanne, you can
Mon the mahout
He made me laugh with his singing and dancing. Not sure why but I was a little bit scared of him! I'm sure he's a very nice chap tell they're talking about you by the pointing. I also had an interesting conversation with Liam. Not really we just spoke to each other, couldn't understand what each other meant, pulled faces and went our opposite ways.
Ok to the interesting part.....after a shower I came doenstairs to see Lam tearing out of the door. Kammoon had escaped. Scarpered!!!! She ran down teh path which we use to get to the camp and was rampaging around the waste ground at the back of the apartments. Poor Serweng her mahout was runnng around for hours, trying to calm her. He didn't want to get too close and frighten her, so was trying to stay near her and talk to her to calm her down. She kept heading off in different directions and we stood and watched as she went from one end of the field to the other, down the road....and then she decided to head back towards the camp, but instead of going into it she stayed in the trees. By 6.30pm all the mahouts were involved, keeping her surrounded to stop her heading towards the busy road and giving her time to calm down. It was a very surreal
evening standing at the edges of the trees, hearing her moving around and eating. At one point Ao and I started to head back down the path to the apartments and saw a not too happy Kammoon heading straight for us! A collective 'aaarrrrggghhhh' accompanied our retreat! Our path to the the camp is about twice as wide now from her bashing her way through. It took until 10pm for her to be finally calm enough to be put back in the camp and on her chain.They think that something spooked her at around 4pm. It certainly wasn't the night I'd planned as having for my last. Mr Tong was going to take me to the beach and was apologising for not being able to take me, bless him. I think they all had more important things to think about. It was nice to see the way all the mahouts helped Serweng out, but I'm sure he got a fair amount of flak too. I ended the night sat around a campfire with a few of the mahouts drinking a beer. A few of them had injuries from tonight, but I'm sure they were just scratches from the trees, not elephant kicks and stamps as they will probably try to make out!
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