Tuesday 2/18/2014

Today we left the hotel at 7am and arrived at the elephant camp at 8am. This elephant camp is like a zoo just for elephants. Originally the elephants came from the jungle - now they are all born in the camp; elephants are protected in the wild now.

We rode an elephant around the park for about 45 minutes. They are trained and ridden by a mahout.  The elephant & mahout have a relationship and stay together for life (until one of them dies).  Along the path, we bought bundles of sugar cane & bunches of bananas for the mahout to feed to the elephant.

I was bothered by the show that we watched after the ride. They have trained the elephants to dance, play the harmonica (place it on the end of their trunk & the elephant breathes in & out), bow, paint with their trunks, kick a soccer ball, and dunk a basketball.  While some people enjoyed the show, I am bothered by the desire to have animals do unnatural behaviors. I would rather pay to see animals in their natural environment. This elephant camp is on a lot of land (forest/jungle) so it is possible.

We took a slow, relaxing raft ride along the small river.  So far we have traveled by plane, bus, train, tuk tuk, long tail boat, elephant, raft....

After lunch at an orchid farm, we visited a few tribal villages. They are close together on one piece of land. They are villages for refugees from Burma/Myanmar.  They live off the land and money from tourist visits & purchases. They are not allowed to leave the property.

One tribe called the Palong are known for their long necks. The women place heavy metal coils around their neck as a small girl and increase the rings as they age. The weight of the metal pushes on their shoulders and eventually pushes the shoulders down so it looks like the neck has been elongated. The reasons they wear the metal coils are

     1. To prevent animals (in the jungle) from biting their necks & killing them (the original reason)

     2. Their culture believes they look beautiful

    3. To identify them as members of their tribe so the women don't marry someone outside of the tribe

Monday 2/17/2014

Well, I can say that I've slept overnight on a train! Thankfully I'm a good sleeper because I managed to sleep for several hours in my upper bed.  The challenges were:  they don't turn off the lights, the train is rocking a lot, my bed was near the door so the noise & exhaust fumes were not pleasant, and I was very cold during the night (air conditioned train car). They made the beds for us at 10pm and we had to wake up at 4:30.  I woke up frequently thinking that I was going to miss our stop.

 

After we all got off the trip at our stop, we took our bus and arrived at the hotel at 8am. The hotel is really nice- unfortunately we mostly just have time to sleep (about 5 or 6 hours per night) at the hotels but it is definitely nicer that sleeping on a train.  

*my observation of our sleeping locations each night so far: 1. On a plane/airport lounge 2. Nice hotel 3. Train 4. Nice hotel.  These nice hotels are a short nice alternative to the clean but less desirable places. Lets see what the rest of the nights are like.  It is hard to get settled because we cant unpack since we go to a new place each day.

Today we went to a school for migrant children.  There are more than 30,000 immigrant children (who are not Thai citizens) and, as I stated in an earlier post, Thailand grants free education and health care to all children no matter where they are from. This school is called Ban buakkrogno community school; it is funded by UNICEF.   In addition to teaching the children the Thai language (so they can interact in this country) the school also strives to have the students maintain their roots and the culture of their home community.   

  * the school began in 2008

  * grades: kindergarten through sixth grade

  * 16 to 38 kids per grade; 271 total students (119 girls, 152 boys)

   * school day: 8am - 3:30 pm with 1 hour break

  * problems: not enough teachers - many are volunteers; 1 teacher per 40 students; maintaining the building - it is on the grounds of a temple, the monks live there; distance for students - it is hard for the students to get to the school, most live about an hour form the school

After lunch we were taken to stores where they showed us 3 local crafts: gems (worlds largest jewelry store), lacquer ware (7 layers of black glossy paint then painted) and silk fabric production (silkworms are farmed for cocoons then silk is woven into fabric).

Tonight after dinner we went to a night market (like a busy flea market at night)- a lot of people are active at night- and took a  tuktuk (motorcycle with covered seats in back) back to the hotel.  

Sunday 2/16/2014

I'm well rested after 6 hours of sleep in the first bed I've encountered in 3days! We stayed in a very nice hotel (although we didn't have time to enjoy it, just slept & ate breakfast then packed & left early in the morning for next place).

During the hour bus rides today, we saw several crops and learned about exporting from Thailand.  20% of Thai exports are sent to the US, that is the greatest amount. 15% of Thai exports go to Europe. Some items that are exported are prawn (like shrimp) and rice.  

Rice fields:

One interesting natural product that we saw today was sea salt. We stopped along the side of a major road/highway to watch workers harvest the salt. The workers pack down the ground (in divided "fields") so it is hard & won't make the incoming ocean water muddy.  The fields are located fairly close to the ocean bit I couldn't see the ocean so it isn't especially close. Twice a year, during summer, they open a dam which allows the salty ocean water to flow into the fields. Fifteen days layer the water has evaporated & the salt is left behind. The workers use a special technique to rake the salt into piles without picking up dirt with the salt. It is a very inexpensive process that produces a lot of product.  (The pictures that I took of the process are on my camera so I will include them after I have returned to the US.)

We took another long-tailed boat to get to the floating market. This time we went through a series of narrow mad-made canals. This was my favorite part of the trip so far. In the floating market people sell goods and food from boats to customers who are also in boats. This is the way local people get all of the meat, fish, vegetables & fruit that they need. It is like going to the farmers market in the US. I bought coconut ice cream in a coconut shell for 30baht (90 cents US) and ate delicious fried banana pieces.  Yum!

Later in the day we went back to Bangkok & visited the Temple of the First Pagoda, 

the royal palace, 

were taken on a boat taxi to feed fish bread (make a donation to animals for good karma), and went to the Temple of Dawn

.  As soon as we got off the boat taxi we had to race to get to the train on time.  We are taking the overnight train to Chiang Mai. 

Saturday 2/15/2014

This morning we flew from Singapore to Bangkok.  I didn't end up sleeping in the airport lounge so I'm going to be out of sorts today.

We stopped by our hotel to drop off our stuff around 11am and took an hour bus ride to Ayutthaya. I wanted to stay awake to hear all of the information the guide was telling us but I was so exhausted that I kept drifting off to sleep. I was so tired at lunch that I couldn't think clearly. I would start to have a conversation with someone in my group and forget what I was saying.  Arghh!

We took a boat ride to the royal summer palace. The boat is called a long tailed boat (because of the long rudder off the back). 

The royal sumner palace had a building with 5 eaves and 5 claws which indicates it is for royalty.

After a bus ride back to the hotel, we had dinner with 2 guest speakers - Dr. Rangsun: works for United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Ernie: works for an organization that tries to get schools to teach students through sports and play.  Some main ideas from their presentations are: 

    1. There are 43,000 schools in Thailand

   2. education is free to all Thai citizens, including uniforms, textbooks and sports activities

  3. Refugee children (mostly from Myanmar) can go to to elementary school  - the philosophy is that no child should be denied an education, even if they aren't a citizen of the country

Been out of touch

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to post before now. We only have Internet access in hotels (which has only been a few nights) and the access has been poor in most of them.

Ill post the older ones today & tonight ( we will be at a hotel with Internet access).

So close yet so far.....

It is 1pm on Friday (happy Valentines Day!) and we aren't in Thailand yet. There was a change in flight which is making us arrive in Bangkok later.

The day(s) so far:  Thurs-  wake up at 5am, ride picked me up at 5:40am, flight left on time at 8:50am (the snow wasn't an issue - they de-iced the plane). The flight to Chicago was about 3 hours long. We had about an hour wait - just enough time to pick up lunch/brunch. It was snowing in Chicago too so they had to de-ice that plane too.

The flight to Japan was shorter than I had calculated- it was 12 1/2 hours. It was a long but uneventful flight. When we arrived in Japan, an airline employee told us that the plane that was supposed to take us to Bangkok didn't get to Japan so our flight was canceled & we were rushed onto a plane to Singapore & then fly to Bangkok from there, they were expecting snow in Japan & didn't want to risk us getting stuck in Japan waiting for a direct flight to Bangkok.  (Snow everywhere so far!)

So we took a 7 hour flight to Singapore & are now waiting in the Singapore airport for 7 hours. We will take our last flight to Bangkok while should take about 3 hours. In the end we will arrive in Thailand about 12 hours later than expected. The whole travel experience from leaving my house to arriving at the hotel will have been about 40 hours. I'm having trouble figuring out all of the time zones- plus I'm a bit sleep deprived :)

Thank you Phil for the battleship game! It is helping to pass the time. Yes, I won. :)

One week away.....

As I sit here on a snow day with 10 inches of snow outside, I'm trying to decide what clothes to bring to a country where the temperatures will be in the 90s.  In the Thai culture it is not acceptable to show skin, so that rules out shorts, tank tops and flip flops.  I have to decide what pants, shirts and shoes will be as cool as possible.

I am also considering all of the methods of transportation that we will be taking.  We will be on planes for about 24 hours to get to Bangkok, on boats within the country, and on trains between locations in the country (including a night train where we will have to sleep on it & arrive in our location in the morning - I can sleep on planes fine but I've never had to sleep on a train...).

I walked to CVS today to buy earplugs (to block out noise while sleeping on planes, in hotels, & on the train), motion sickness medicine (I don't think I get motion sick but I'm taking it just in case), Purell, travel rolls of toilet paper (very small), insect repellent, and bandaids.

Politically, the elections were this past Sunday so I am checking the news daily on the internet to hear about the status of protests and any violence associated with them.  The US government's latest warning from about a week ago expires on the day that we land in Bangkok, indicating that it thought the threat of violence during protests should be done by then. We'll see....