Employment, Elephants, and Erawan

       My dear friends and anonymous stalkers, it has been a while. That is because since my last post, I made the decision to refrain from posting until I had a job. This is for your sake as I wanted to give you something more entertaining to read than..."today I woke up at 3pm again and went on Facebook, then I ate Cup of Noodles, then I watched Nat Geo Wild and went to bed." See I have spared you. Good news is I am officially a teacher as of October 31st, 2012. Being unemployed really is not that cool or fun. It involves way too many empty calories. Therefore, I am quite excited to start training as of this upcoming Friday the 9th. However, this next week will consist of me pulling money out of my ass in order to pay for new passport pages, however much it costs for a medical exam, passport photos, to get a letter saying the name on my diploma is actually me since the name does not match my passport, plus my visa one month extension and whatever else they can come up with. Anyways, I promised I had held out on you because now I finally have interesting things to tell you about, so I'm going to start telling you them rather than giving you my upcoming invoice and begging for donations.
         Ok so after I got the call about the job offer, its time to celebrate regardless but it's also Halloween. Two friends from my training program and a new found friend of a friend who is traveling through Southeast Asia all decide to go to this club in Sukhumvit for this performance by DJ Gareth Emery. We had a lot of fun and met some new people, that I definitely plan to force into being my new friends. One was a Swedish girl going to Fashion school in Bangkok and there was a boy and a girl who both grew up and went to high school in Bangkok, but had British or American parents. The girl was doing an internship after graduating college and I can't remember what the guy was doing, but I assume working. Anyways we had a very nice time and the next day I was invited by this friend of a friend (my new found friend Greg) to accompany him to his next location, Kanchanaburi. The place itself is beautiful. Set right on the river with the backdrop of whatever mountains ( I should Google it) cover the horizon.

 I really appreciated the opportunity to get out of Bangkok and I will definitely need to make a habit out of it because after a while I start craving something beautiful. The place we stayed at is called a 'Pae' which is what they call guesthouses that float on the water. My former student informed me of this and told me the feeling of being on it is called 'Sabai' which means "Easy life but be happy." I think that describes my little mini vacation very accurately. When I interviewed last week one of the managers told be there is a common Thai phrase, "Sabai, Sabai,...,..." I forget the end of it, but she translated it as something along the lines of be happy, be happy, have fun, have fun. Honest words to live by I'd say. We arrived there in the evening, had dinner, and then ventured around the local night market...where they also sell puppies, along with DVDs, clothes, make-up, and a large variety of food, including anything from pig blood soup to cake pops. To each their own.
        The next day we went to Elephant World (if you're interested...Here's there website). Here they take in older, sick, or abused elephants that have been pushed out of their herd (Hester Prynne status... smile if you got the reference). They feed the elephants and people go there and volunteer to take care of the elephants for months at a time. Volunteers can also come for the day, like we did, stay overnight, or stay a few days. So first we fed the elephants what I think were pumpkins or gourds or squash. They would wrap their trunks around it and then put it into their mouths. I can't describe how many of these we fed them, but I'm sure you can imagine because they are elephants and their stomach can hold 15 liters at a time which is as fascinating as it is disgusting. I would love to dissect an elephant and get a glimpse of all that. You could probably fit a small child in it's stomach...yeah, I'm going to look that up later. Okay anyways after that we went with the elephants down by the river where they drank part of their 150 liters of water a day requirement.

View of the River from the Top Camp

Then we went off to cut up vegetables for sticky rice to feed the elephants that have lost their last set of teeth. Elephants get six sets of teeth throughout their lives. In the wild when this happens they usually can't eat anymore and they are removed from the herd by the other elephants and left to die alone. Nature is a cruel thing folks. So we made some sticky rice then some riceballs and fed them to the elephants. I was actually scared shitless of the bull elephant we were supposed to be feeding these to and just stayed back and watched. These balls were not placed in their trunks but plopped directly into their mouths. I realize they didn't have any teeth, but they are still massive wild animals. After this we broke for lunch and then set out into the forest, jungle, random location with trees and the slew of Burmese guys who took care of the elephants started chopping down bananas trees and loading them into the trucks for the elephants lunch. After loading up one truck, we realized the one intended to take the people back was out of gas. The other truck with the trees drove back to go some. While we waited in the scorching heat one of the guys started foraging for edible plants. I'm not exactly sure why since we weren't exactly on the verge of death out there, but he brought back some peas and some sugar cane that when you gnaw on a sweet juice comes out of. It was actually pretty good. The second truck returned with a large Coke bottle half way filled with gasoline. It seems to be enough and we drove back to the camp on a baht bus that was seconds away from the benches becoming unhinged. It was a little nerve wracking, but what is adventure if not a close friend of death itself? When we got back, we went to the river to swim and bathe the elephants. It was awesome, but really overwhelming at the same time because you'd be standing in the water next to one elephant and another would come up on your other side and you'd have to stop and wonder whether you were about to die being smooshed to death by elephants. We went back to feed the elephants another fifteen pound snack of corn, which they can surprisingly peel using their trunks alone.

After spending the entire day there we were exhausted and planned an early following day to go trek the waterfalls of Erawan. There are seven waterfalls along the hike and they were each gorgeous and you could swim in I think all of them. The water was so clear and gorgeous and we stopped to swim in a few of them. The rest of the day after the decent down was spent in transit, buses to bus stations, buses back to Bangkok and then finally a cab back to my apartment. Greg left to continue his journey to the old capital, Auttaya.

      I slept for most of it, but when the 2 hour bus to Bangkok took 3 1/2 I started to get a bit nervous that I had taken the wrong bus. Thanks to my 'mai dee' Thai skills, I was able to talk to another passenger and make sure we were going to the right place. He then helped me at our stop and was very nice as was my taxi driver who was fooled by my initial Thai then probably as stressed as I was when he couldn't find my apartment and I was out of all the Thai I know. That said, my Thai is getting much better and I am getting much more confident. That concludes my fabulous eventful weekend, but I did come back to some saddening news that one of my close friends here will be departing to find work in Ho Chi Minh. On a more positive note, I finally met one of my neighbors who is a Thai math teacher at an English school. He said to call him Bad as in "Bad boy" and I assume that's his Thai nickname and telling foreigners that is the only way he can get them to say it right. He seems super friendly, offered to show us all around the neighborhood, and said anytime we are ever in trouble and need someone to speak Thai we can call him and he'd help us, which is a huge extremely nice offer, but that's how Thai people are. Like I said before Thai people will just take care of you, no questions asked. Okay there are a few other tid bits I wanted to bring up before I wrap this up...

       Okay, last week after leaving a club at 6am a prostitute sat down with me and Russell and we started chatting. She insisted on buying us dinner because she wanted us to eat Thai food. She ordered us this really good, but very spicy chicken vegetables and rice. She said she was half-Thai, half Laos but reiterated multiple times that even though she was half Laos that she loves the King. Then she went on to explain to us that she doesn't want us to judge her and she knows that all foreigners think of Thai girls as prostitutes and we just don't understand how rich our countries are and how poor Thailand is...think about it.

       Second, abortion is illegal in Thailand and although the abortion pill is registered it is very difficult to get a hold of. Women on Waves is an organization that provides assistance to women seeking abortions in places where they are illegal. Running the organization from a base in the Netherlands and a boat that sails from place to place to give women help that they need. This organization is amazing and you should be aware of it, possibly donate to it, and definitely tell your friends about it's http://www.womenonwaves.org/