Day 4

We all woke up around seven o’clock. The dogs were up too and helped the sleepy ones get out of bed by trying to lick them through the net.

Out of habit, the first thing I did when I woke up was fold up all the blankets and roll up my sleeping bag. I put everything away. Then, I used some bottled water to brush my teeth. I spit the water out onto the forest floor. That brought back memories. I felt like I was camping with my family again.

We all gathered around the fire pit. The air was chilly and the fire felt nice even though it was just starting.

A kettle of water was already boiled, so we could make hot drinks. I made hot chocolate and sipped on that while breakfast was being prepared.

Here are the chaos of shoes that was so confusing last night. Tara’s show was still under the planks somewhere.

Breakfast was amazing. We had pineapples served in their own skin.

Real toast.

and hard boiled eggs.

We were given scarves already blessed by monks. We watched a documentary where volunteers got to save trees by tying on blessed scarves but I didn’t know we would get a chance to do that too. I thought it was so cool!

One of the main reasons for such a low population of wild elephants in Thailand (and the world) is because they do not have much of their natural habitat left. Logging and urbanization have been shrinking the forests they live in. Thai people will not cut down a tree with a blessed scarf on it. They believe it will bring bad things.

Bye Bye Elephant Haven!

You can’t really tell, but this is the two room washroom. It’s basically a shack falling apart around two holes in the ground. You can’t even close the door properly! haha

Off we go to save trees!

Even though so many are already saved. We had to look really hard to find a tree with no scarf on it. Many times, we got excited, and then realized that vines had grown over the scarf. It was okay to “re”save a tree. We just really wanted to find one that wasn’t saved yet.

Found one!
I found a massive one and my scarf ended up being too short.

Chris also had a short scarf, so we joined forces and saved a tree together.

If you look carefully. You’ll see that our tree was already saved at least once. We didn’t realize until after!

Jess climbed up high to try to save this one. It was sort of dangerous. She ended up falling, but it was just a slip down the tree and she wasn’t hurt.

We waited around until the elephants were found and round up by the mahouts. Good morning ellie!The walk down the mountain turned out to be a long one.

It was easy to go downhill, but we were stuck behind the elephants. They often stopped to snack.

I stayed at the back because the elephants would often spray dirt on their backs.

It looks like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff, but the path actually drops down really steep.

The mahout hopped on the elephant’s back but he didn’t go any faster. He still got distracted with all the forest food around him.

Jungle Boy was waiting for us at the river.
Back on the raft! No one fell this time. Bye Bye Elephants! Thanks for letting us go up to Elephant Haven with you =)

We all jumped onto the truck for a ride home.

I wouldn’t have minded walking back but everyone else was beat. It’d also give us time to take a shower before lunch and I was all for that.I took a shower right away. There was still time before feeding time, so I took some pictures from my room. One window faces the shared washrooms.

The other window faces the field. We’re right across from Michelle’s house and some elephant shelters.After lunch, Brad took us to a part of the property I hadn’t been yet. Some people were already working there. We joined the staff to take the bark off of some logs. Brad had to sharpen some machetes for us. Most of us got small hand sized tools. The locals and Chris got to use a big one.I was sleepy after the afternoon project. I laid in bed but I actually didn’t sleep because I spent the whole time talking to Melita. She told me a LOT of funny stories about Malaysia and Australia. She is Chinese Malaysian, but studied in Australia for a couple of years. Her sister lives there now and she’s thinking of going back for a job.

After dinner, I got a massage. Eric, one of the tour guides, was getting a massage beside me. He’s a fluent English speaker because an American couple adopted him when he was a child and brought him to America to study. It was nice to be able to communicate fully with a local Thai person.

Lisa took us to a little store with benches out front. Some locals were already celebrating at the tables, so we sat down by the side of the store. It was very nice. We chatted and had drinks (beer and spy).

See how Brad’s not smiling in the picture? He had a really bad canker sore and he was quiet all night.

Many of the dogs followed us out of the park. Some of them disappeared halfway. Number One and Paed sat by our feet the whole time, like they were guarding us. It was very cute.

All of a sudden, a big bang scared all of us, including the dogs. Fireworks were being lit close by. We tried to comfort the dogs but they were shaking from the loud noise. Number One hid under the table. After a couple more bangs, Paed couldn’t take it anymore and he ran off. Chris tried to find him, but he disappeared behind a house. We decided to take the rest of the dogs back to the park.

When we got back to the park, Paed was no where to be found. Melita, Chris and Lisa went back to the village to see if he was hiding somewhere. Fortunately, Emma and I bumped into Brad. Paed was with Erin. Brad ran (he was SO fast, he just disappeared into the night) to call the rescue group off.

Soon, it was midnight. We counted down three separate times because everyone’s watch said it was midnight at a different time. Melita and I went home after that. Since we stayed up so late, the dogs weren’t in their usual places. We had to go out and find them. In the end, four slept in our room.

Duke slept on my bed.

Baumi.

Tin Tin.

Random. (Maybe it was Ninja? but it doesn’t look like him in this photo..)

Here’s the night time view out of my window.

Day 3

I woke up at seven so I could get breakfast earlier today. I was disappointed that I missed out on waffles yesterday! I went to brush my teeth, but there was no electricity. This also meant there was no running water because the water is brought in with an electric pump.

There was nothing at breakfast except for toast. I was so bummed out. Then, the food came! There were scrambled eggs, fried rice and soup. I loved the fried rice. It was really good. I don’t mind eating rice for breakfast.

The morning chore for my group was at the Elephant Kitchen. We loaded up the wash basin with pumpkins and waited for the water to fill up so the pumpkins could soak. Some of the elephants are allergic to pesticide. We don’t know which farmers use pesticide so we wash them all.

I took pictures of the Kitchen doggies while we waited.
It’s actually pretty tough on your back to wash pumpkins. They’re too heavy to hold in your hand, so you have to rest it on the side of the tub.
Look at the picture above. do you see the man wearing a white shirt and black pants on the top left hand corner? That’s Eric. He’s in charge of some day visitors today. He’s wearing neon green arm warmers with a teddy bear on each wrist. This is really common with the locals. Dark skin is associated with the tribes living in Thailand. It’s hard to find work if you’re a tribe person. Everyone wants to be lighter skinned. So, I think that the arm warmer also acts as sun protection.
They’re chopping pumpkins with a machete. You should see Michelle do this. She is in charge of the Elephant Kitchen and WOW is she crazy good at this. She goes so fast that I couldn’t take a photo. I should take a video next time.
Pumpkins and bananas for morning feeding time.
We visited the school for our morning project. We had to cross a bridge to get to the village.
The children were so happy to see us. The little ones were running. One didn’t even have his shoe on yet.
Volunteers normally go to the village school to teach English once a week. Today, classes were cancelled to celebrate New Years. All the students were gathered outside in front of a huge table full of presents. They asked if we wanted to join in the present giving. We each paid 30 baht and a lady helped us pick up some presents.
As the children were waiting for everything to be organized, they were given crackers from a HUGE tin can.
Some of the dogs followed us to the school. The children shared some crackers with them.
Then, they were given milk. The milk came in little pouches! I’ve never seen something like that before.
Here’s a messy milk drinker.
I would have liked to have more interaction with the kids but it was really fun to watch how excited the kids were. We stood by the side, waiting for our names to be called.
The system works like this. Somebody draws your name out of the cup. A present is assigned to you. The person that drew your name also presents you with the gift. Then, you get to draw a name out of the cup and so on and so forth.
Happy New Year Dog!
Boys are naughty.

When the gift exchange was over, we went back to feed the elephants. Here’s a group picture of us while we waited for feeding time: Me, Rita, Melita, Emma and Janet on the bottom.
After lunch, I charged my camera for a little bit. The meter is still at full but the batteries have lasted for so long.. it seems too good to be true! I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

We’re going to Elephant Haven today! We met at the volunteer area and dropped out bags off into a pick up truck. It would bring our stuff halfway for us so we didn’t have to carry it the whole time. I tried a taro popsicle from the ice cream man while we waited for the stragglers. It was good. I want to try all the different types of ice cream he has.

Usually the volunteers walk with the elephants on the main road but we were late and they had already left. We cut through the field to catch up with them. I’m glad we did this instead of the main road. I haven’t been through the field yet so it was fun to go beyond what I could see from the observation deck.
We had to cross a river. Usually, there is a little raft but it was no where to be seen today. We had to hike up our pants and wade across the river. The water level wasn’t too high but some of the crossing was very slippery. It was easy to slide into deeper water even if you didn’t fall. I was worried about slipping because I had my camera on me.
We crossed more of the field. You can see that some people got pretty wet from crossing the river.
Soon, we hit the road. We saw two of our elephants. They were the slow ones, so we kept walking. The ice cream man honked his horn as he passed us. Since there were so many of us, we all walked at different paces.
Look what we saw on the way there. A real ox and cart!
We also passed by a bunch of cows and chicken.
Then, we finally got to the halfway point. The truck soon came and dropped off our bags, food supplies and Pom too. The elephants helped carry our water and food to the haven.

This is the halfway point because the truck cannot go any further with our bags. We needed to use a raft to cross the river.
We had a bunch of dogs follow us. Some took the raft.
Some swam across.
Burm scared the poor doggy!
Only her bum got wet. This one followed us all the way to Elephant Haven. She’s very old. Pom thought she might be sick because she was so slow.
The one in the orange shirt is Pom. She has been with Lek since the beginning of the park. She really is that small!
The raft could only hold three to four people at a time.
That’s me on the very end!
The mahouts got to ride their elephants across the river.
It took us a while to get up the mountain. Elephants have long legs, but they don’t go very fast. We followed the dogs (one of them was old and she had to stop a lot, I was worried about her. Pom said she might be sick because her belly felt hard), assuming they knew the way but they actually took us up the wrong path one time. Good thing we stopped to take a break. Pom yelled at us from a far to come back down and take another trail. Then we got stuck behind the elephants. They constantly stopped for food off the trail and threw dirt onto their backs.
This one needed some scratching.
We finally got to Elephant Haven! I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was very surprised. We were on a mountain, so everything had to be built with a slant in mind. The first thing we did was make hot drinks. A fire was already built for us and the water in the kettle soon boiled. I had a cup of hot chocolate.

The mahouts set up our sleeping area. I offered help but I had to be shown what to do because I didn't know how to tie up the nets.
We sat around and talked while the mahouts set up our beds and made dinner. Bert shared some sweets from Holland with us. The dogs sat around us and tried to steal our snacks.
Pom told us we would have KFC for dinner. We were all surprised to see chicken wings among the dinner dishes. We each got a plate of white rice and the other dishes were buffet style.
Someone brought out the cards and we played a big game of cheat while the mahouts cleaned up dinner. There was a funny moment when Tara’s foot went through the planks when she was trying to put on her shoe to go to the washroom. When Pom set out her bedroll by the fire, some of us retired from cards and sat by the fire with her. She told us elephant stories. I sat on the side and combed the old doggie’s fur. In between, she got interrupted by a phone call and we started chatting about other things.
The fire was nice and warm. Bert shared some chocolate form Holland. We sipped hot drinks. It was nice to just sit and stare into the flames.
The smoke from the fire helped me capture the moonlight that was pouring in through the trees. The sky was our roof tonight.
I shared the same mosquito netting with Jess. As I snuggled into my sleeping bag, I could feel a dog curl himself by my feet. I didn’t know which one it was because it was gone when I woke up in the morning. There was no snoring but I woke up at little cold around 5 in the morning.