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Published: August 11th 2008
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Hey y'all
I'm now on the beautiful island of Phuket after a bit of a shaky start to say the least. From where the last entry was in Southern Bangkok bus terminal I jumped onto my VIP bus at about 6pm. This thing was amazing, for about 15 quid I had this reclining chair that was as comfy as a bed. The trip was 12 hours but I must have slept about half of that, and a quick stop in Chumphon for some food (rice and various spiced beef and pork dishes) made the trip fly by. So I arrived at Phuket bus station at around 6.30am and tried to find a taxi. This was where things got complicated...
The taxi men at the bus station literally grab you as soon as you get off the coach, but I needed to get to the project so I went along with it. He goes 'You okay with bike?'. I thought he meant that he had a tuk-tuk (a motorbike style rickshaw where you can sit in the back), but he meant get on the back of this moped with my huge backpack. I was already deep into the negotiations before
VIP bus
The only place in the world I can afford to be a VIP the fear set in. It was okay until we started hitting these massive hills and I seriously thought we were going to die. More me than him because I didn't have a helmet. Eventually he said 'okay?', I was at Patong beach, in the completely opposite direction that I wanted to be in. Then the knob tried to get more money out of me and I almost swung for him but instead walked further down the road and got a taxi(car) from a friendly man known to his friends as Mr Charlie. The reason for this name was that the man who recruits passengers for him tries to sell cocaine to you. Anyway I politely refused and finally got to Bang Pae waterfall and met up with Ar from the project.
Monday was a fairly sedate day as I wasn't on the schedule to work but helped some of the volunteers dig a drainage hole for the volunteer accomodation. Later on went sea kayaking with a few of the guys and saw a massive group of crab eating macaques.
In terms of the project it was a pretty mixed bunch when I arrived, with nationalities including Spanish, Canadian,
American and Belgian volunteers. However about 4 of them have left with another British girl leaving tomorrow so then there will only be three of us. Everyone is really cool and I'll try to get pictures up sometime in the week. In the work department you work on three different areas in the project :
Quarantine - This is located at the back of the project behind the accomodation and houses 12 gibbons. They will be sent there straight after being rescued and have to stay until they are 3 years or weigh 2kg.Then they have a blood test to see if they have any viruses like Hep A or B, or Herpes simplex. If they come up clean then they can be sent to the rehab site at the waterfall. You usually work this solo and now I'm off the training period will do so.
Rehabilitation. This is at Bang Pae waterfall and houses 32 gibbons, with some not being able to be released due to serious injury, over exposure to humans or mental problems. Those that are candidates progress higher and higher up the rehab levels being given less contact and learning skills to benefit them.
Duties in this job are morning and afternoon feeds, cleaning of enclosures, health checks and enrichment( giving the gibbons stuff to do to keep them occupied and usually food based. 2 people are needed for this because theres a hell of a lot to do!
Education - Work in the information and education department situated near to rehab. Here you give out info and answer any questions of tourists, as well as take donations and sell stuff to raise money for the project like adoptions, t-shirts etc. 2 people are usually involved.
Other notable things happening this week were that we went to the night market saturday in Wat Naka. This place was amazing, you probably buy anything that you could ever think of including the kitchen sink. I'm going there this saturday so I'll get some pics for you.
Right, the next posts for this will be nowhere near as long, at the moment I'm working 6 day weeks so It'll be fairly repeated for the next two weeks. I will get some pics of some of my fave gibbons as well as the night marke
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