Surin Day 2

Last night, I listened to music to help me fall asleep. When I was half groggy with sleep, I noticed how itchy my legs were. I had the mosquito net up, but I still got bites! I had four bites all clumped together just on my left knee. I shined my flashlight all over, but I didn't see any mosquitoes. I put tiger balm on all my bites so they wouldn't swell and a good spray on layer of mosquito repellent. It was too hot to put on a blanket before, that's why I got stung all over my legs. I turned on the fan so I could use the blanket. It was too noisy at first, but I was tired from dealing with the bugs. I soon fell asleep.

I woke up a bit before breakfast time at 7:00am. I had a sunny side up egg, pineapple and a toasted peanut butter and jam sandwich. It was weird that there were no dogs to eat my crust and kham pan didn't walk by the platform. Dino came by to tell us we wouldn't be leaving until 8:30 when the museum opens. I went up to my room to have a lie down and read some.

We left a little bit earlier to walk around the camp. Chet pointed out a big bull with huge tusks by the entrance. He's the first elephant that people see when they come into the centre. He's an aggressive bull so people cannot go near him. His owner leaves him in that spot all the time. Dino and Chet have never seen him off his chain.


We went into the office for a bit. You can use the Internet there when it's open. They have a big framed photograph of an elephant dressed in gold and armoury. Every November, they dress the elephants like that in remembrance of when they used elephants for war. They have another photograph of a child, not older than four, dressed in traditional clothing and standing with a hook beside an elephant. We must start change by teaching the children of Thailand.

The museum is right next to the circus ring. We had to step over a trail of big red ants to get in. They looked dangerous. They have big display boards with Thai on one side and English on the other. The focus was on the history of elephants in Thailand: how they caught them and their importance in the royal community.


We walked back to basecamp. Chet got the truck and drove us to see the baby twins down the road. They are the only set of twins in Thailand. The older one is called "gold" and the younger one is called "gold bar". They had a lot of fleas on them. It was interesting because one of them had a longer trunk  than the other.


We hopped back onto the truck and Chet drove us to the elephant dung paper factory. It was just a small area where they treat elephant waste so it becomes clean fibres that can be used to make paper.

Can’t imagine this was ever elephant poop!


Uniform sized balls are made out of the bleached fibres. They’re weighed to make sure every ball is the same size!


The frames were already all drying out in the sun so there was no need for our help. Chet said maybe we'll find time to come again to help out if they need it.



Next, Chet drove us to the elephant graveyard. I really didn't know what to expect. I thought it might be something like the elephant graveyard in the Lion King.

It turned out to be a cemetery of big urns.

The elephants are buried for 3-5 years. Their bones are dug up and some of them are put into the giant urn.


This is the graveyard information chart. It has the location of the grave, the age of the elephant when it died, its name, date of death, cause of death, owner and owner's address.

In this area, a certain family has had elephants for many generations. Almost all the owners at the project carry this last name. On the graveyard table, more than twenty elephants were owned by this family. Dino reckons they have had more than 100 elephants.


On many of the grave markers, the elephants were only three years old when they died. Chet only knew the story of one of the elephants. She was ten years old. The owner wanted to put her in a breeding program. She was traveling in a truck to her new placement when they got into an accident on the road. She was in a lot of pain. They brought her to the hospital, but she died there.

It was just before 10:00am when we got back to the platform. Chet said if we were interested in watching the elephant circus, this morning would be the best time all week. Meg and I were the only ones that went to see it. Everybody else cleaned up the poop and old food of the elephants in the area. They also went to pick up 100 bamboo plants for us to plant in the afternoon. 

The circus.. I took photos and videos but I will not post them. An elephant trained to stand with two hind legs on a tiny stool makes a pretty cool photo and a video of elephants playing soccer is an interesting video .. but in real life, when you actually sit down and watch the circus shows, it’s not cool or interesting. When you know the signs that elephants use to exhibit anger and stress, then the show becomes horrible to watch.

The elephants swung hula hoops around their trunks, played basketball and walked over audience volunteers lying on the ground. In between sets, people waved money for the elephants to get with their long trunks in payment for a picture. The finale was an elephant painting on two easels. That was hard to watch because she clearly didn’t want to do it. The mahout had to hold her trunk up to the right place.

The elephants often made noises of protest and hit their trunks on the floor. They were not happy doing this. The mahouts often had to use physical force to discipline them. Even if the audience did not understand the elephants’ signals, I think they can still understand the cruelty in which they are treated.

Of course, the circus is not only hard for the elephants, it is hard for the mahouts too. There were times when I was scared for them because elephants are so much bigger and stronger than us. It is easy to lose your life. And it wouldn’t be an accident.

The worst part is, the circus was actually really boring. The stands were filled, but many people were talking amongst themselves and not paying much attention to the show after the first few minutes of every new presentation.

Why were the elephants trained so hard and made to go through such tedious work when the paying audience didn’t even enjoy it? This really shows that there must a better way for sustainable tourism with elephants.

Some random guy with a snake at the circus.

It was time to take the elephants for a walk when the circus ended. We went back to the same watering hole as yesterday but we took a different path there and back. On the way there, we went through a really narrow path with bush on either side. My long skirt got caught on branches and burrs stuck on to scratch my legs. I didn't know the problem was my skirt and not the underbush until we got back for lunch. haha I also stepped on a thorn and it went through my 100 yen crocs.


The elephants loved the water so much, they went back in for a second round. Maybe they saw Chet still in the water and they didn't think it was fair if they had to leave. The mahouts let them play until noon. Then, it was time for us to have lunch. It was cool to see the mahouts just start walking and calling to their elephants. It was like both parties knew it was for serious this time so there was no need to call them again. Pon and Kham Pan are like that sometimes. I always thought that Pon can just start walking and she'll follow but I realized that sometimes they both just know what's next. Sometimes I know the drill and it'll look like she's following me too :)


There were fries for lunch! I had a lot of that haha. I usually lose my appetite at the park after the first day (and by dinner, I'll just have a bottle of soy milk) but I've been eating very well here. We also had fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, curry chicken, flat rice noodles and green choi, some kind of melon with egg, pineapples, watermelon and white rice. Chris shared some Mister Donuts that she bought at Big C yesterday. We had an hour after lunch for free time. I took a nap and woke up so groggy and hot. I felt so unmotivated to work and so gross (and then.. You'll see!).

We climbed onto the pick up truck filled with bamboo. Eleni sat in the front with Chet. Adam, Meg and I road on the top. Dino and Kenji road in the back. About 300 metres into our trip, I felt drizzle on my arm. Another 300 metres and all of a sudden, it as pouring rain. It felt so nice. It really woke me up. The truck went slow on the deteriorating road. Sometimes there was miniature landslides on both sides and the only way to navigate was go slow and hope we don't slide down into a ditch! Two motorbikes, one in the front and one in the back, waited for us to clear the bad spots so they could pass. I felt so bad that we made them stay in the rain for longer. Once we got past the bad parts, we could drive faster. As the truck picked up speed, it started to get cold with the rain, but it was bearable.

We were sitting on the top of the truck, getting pretty drenched. All of a sudden, the bucket of ice on the top of the truck (with us) fell over and scattered all over the roof of the driver's seat. Chet and Eleni thought it was hard hail and there was panic between the two of them because we couldn't fit all of us in the driver's compartment. He opened the door in surprise and concern. Dino kept yelling at him that it was okay. We all laughed at his relief.

The rain didn't let up even when we got to the field. We waited for Chet to reposition the truck so it didn't sink in the mud. I wrung out my skirt and was surpised by how much water came out! We started working even though it was raining. Within minutes, the sky cleared and it wasn't raining at all. My skirt was heavy with the rain. I tied it up higher so I could move my legs.

The truck was right next to a ditch. We had to cross it to get to the field. It was taking a lot of time just to get to and from the truck, so we decided to unload all the bamboo first. We made a chain starting from the back of the truck, over the ditch and into the field. After all the plants were unloaded, some people made holes with hoes, some people transported the bamboos to these holes and some planted. The work was very quickly done. 100 plants don't seem that many when you've got enough people working. We have 400 more to do by the end of this week.

Back at the site, we had 20 minutes to rest and then we were scheduled to go for a walk with the elephants. We went through forest for a long time. We were stuck behind the elephants while they were grazing for their dinner. It made US dinner for the mosquitoes! There were so many. Dino waved a branch around us to keep them away. I had picked up some garbage so I couldn't swing my arms around to keep the mosquitoes from landing. Once I picked up the garbage, I couldn't put it back down. It'd be littering! I had to sacrifice whichever arm was holding the trash at the moment to the feeding bugs.

We were walking along when all of a sudden, there was panic. The elephants were trumpeting and everyone was pushing and running.. A dog that followed us had spooked the baby elephant. All the elephants made noise and gathered around her. I saw one of the elephants kick behind her and hit a mahout's bum. He fell over, but he wasn't hurt. Dino herded us all into a clearing away from the elephants. However, it was blocked with thorny bushes. We weren't so terrified that we ran through and realized after. All of us saw the thorns and felt it tug at our skin and clothes, but we had no choice but to go through. Haha it was miserable. Elephants behind and thorns in front.

Finally, we got to the main road again. We left the elephant scare and mosquitoes behind us but the dog had to stay in case it scared the baby again. Dino found us a trash can so I could get rid of the garbage I collected. We got back with perfect timing. It was getting dark with rain clouds.

It didn't stop thundering. The rain really picked up and the lightning lit up my whole room. I hung up my clothes on a nail to dry and rested in my room. The rain didn't slow down for dinner. I think it rained harder. No one came out for dinner. I waited on my steps for it to get better. Dino came by. I asked him for the spelling of all the elephants' and mahouts' names on the project.

We watched poor Nong Ning in the rain. She's not in the forest with the other elephants at night because there are many big elephants with 30 metre chains. It's too dangerous for a small elephant like her. She's just out in the field with no shelter. She seems to be a really anxious elephant when she's chained up. She also loves her mahout and it must stress her out when he's away. I hope she's not scared of lightning and thunder.

After a while, Kenji came out from his hut in a raincoat. I guess he got too hungry. I grabbed my umbrella and went down too. Chris and Eleni saw us and joined us on the platform. It was perfect timing because Adam was walking down the road too (and there was no way he saw us leave our rooms)!

We had sweet and sour pineapples with cucumbers (the sauce was so good, I got a second helping of rice!), fresh cucumbers, tomatoes and onions, baby corn vegetable medley, octopus sausages (tako-wiina!) and half boiled eggs with a crunchy exterior.

After dinner, we fed leftovers to a beautiful black dog with a brown belly. He had such sad eyes. I think he was really scared. He was hesitant to eat the food even though he was clearly hungry and he didn't hang around to be pet. Maybe the rain was making him jumpy.

Dino joined us after he had his dinner. We played two games of scrabble again. This time, Eleni stayed for the second one too. I lost both games haha We ended just before 10pm. I called Theb to tell him there was a sort of funky white mold in the drawers of room D back in the park. I forgot to tell the gift shop when I checked out. I hope they clean it before anyone else stays there.