Pachyderm Post

Goodness! I have some catching up to do, since there wasn't any way to connect to the internet at the elephant camp. (This is Olivia writing now, since Charlotte's already asleep from a busy day working with the elephants.) Oh, but before I plunge headlong into the descriptions of our elephant camp adventures, I have to describe the Sunday Night Market! We were both so tired when we returned from the market last Sunday night that we didn't have time to do a posting then.
We hopped on motorbikes (thankfully, neither of us were driving, or else I wouldn't be typing this now!), and zipped over to the night market, which is near the Thae Pae Gate. (An interesting side note: Everyone in Thailand zooms around on these motorbikes, including dogs! We even saw this lady driving about with two of her scruffy dogs sitting in the basket at the front of her motorbike, and a third one skillfully balancing on the backseat.) To say that the Sunday Night Market is extensive in its size and selection of goods is a major understatement. You could wander the streets all night long examining the stalls, and still not see everything in the market. There was everything from handmade gyoza and squid omelets to crispy crickets and chocolate waffles (a bit out of place, it seemed, but they smelled tasty!). Although I didn't expect the "crunchy bug cart" to be immensely popular, it had a steady stream of customers lining up for scoopfuls of the little buggers.    

Food aside, there were tons of other items at the market, including super comfy poufy pants, silk elephant-print underwear ("Those are one of my top priorities!" I overhead one shopper say), big bags of fragrant spices (saffron, oh my!), and small soaps carved into flowers. We will certainly have to return so that we can more thoroughly explore all the market has to offer.
As for the elephant camp, we headed out Monday morning and only just returned late this afternoon. I'll try to be as concise as possible in summarizing our past few days there. Here it goes: Elephants are soooo cute! There we go. That pretty much sums it up. No, not quite, but almost! There are 15 elephants total at the camp, but Charlotte and I mainly had the opportunity to work with Tao (the second biggest male) and Bean (a very sweet, but mischievous female), both of whom are in the elephant show at the camp. They're incredibly intelligent and know so many different commands (more than I can remember, that's for sure)! It truly is incredible just how smart they really are. With their trusty mahouts on their backs (and sometimes Charlotte and I, too), they'd bathe in the river, paint with a paintbrush carefully placed in their trunk, and even "play golf!" Charlotte was a natural mahout, and seemed quite at ease atop Tao, even though he tao-wered (haha! towerd!) over the other elephants. I, on the other hand, took some getting used to riding Bean....

Yeehaw!

Woah, girl!

Tao waving hello.

She's the next Picasso.

Kickin' it, elephant style!

Thanks to the mahouts, though, we learned several different commands and hopefully the elephants will remember us in the future, now that they know what we smell like. Since elephants have a very acute sense of smell, we had to wear the same clothes for 3 days so they could properly learn what we smell like. (I guarantee you, if I were Tao or Bean, I wouldn't want to go anywhere near someone or something that smelled like we did!) Occasionally, the elephants would extend their trunk to us and sniff us all over, as if they were carefully examining us, but with their long, hairy trunks instead of eying us over. Or, if you're a baby elephant like Nung (yes, a BABY elephant), you'd wrap your trunk around just about whatever you can find (feet, hands, anything) and stick it in your mouth, very much like a human baby that has to put whatever it finds in its mouth.

Baby 1.5 year old finty with mama!

Bath time in the river! I had no idea they stick their heads completely underwater! Hence, I ended up in the river.

Another interesting thing I noticed: All of the elephants were significantly more hairy than I'd anticipated. I knew baby elephants were pretty hairy (which of course they baby calves at the camp were pretty hairy), but I didn't think they adults would be so furry. Not so much for Tao, but Bean had these long, bristly hairs that poked me whenever I sat on her. They only just added to her charm, though!
Aside from helping out at the camp, we also started teaching English to grades 4-6 at one of the local elementary schools. I certainly hope we can improve their English skills, particularly since some of the children only get their lessons from a video program as of now, since there's a shortage of teachers at the school. The kids were all really sweet, too, but they're up against some tough competition in the cuteness contest (what with the elephants and all). We both had fun teaching the kids (despite Charlotte's previous plan to "pawn the kids off" on me while she would go play with elephants), although I don't know what we'll do when we no longer have Matthew to translate for us! Charlotte and I had better learn more Thai words than just "delicious" and "very spicy!"

Matthew, an expert Thai-English translator.

Speaking of delicious things, all of the meals we had the past few days were so yummy! Khun Koi, the camp manager, is a most excellent chef, and she made very tasty meals while we were there. Between curries, soups, fried rice, and stir fries, we definitely did not go hungry. Yum! 

A hearty breakfast.

Ooh, and look at this tiny banana! They're much more toothsome than regular bananas, and have a slightly different taste too.
Even though I still have plenty more to share, I'd better get some shut eye. Until next time!

A lazy Sunday consisting mostly of eating...

Gahhhhh!!!! That's so frustrating! I just spent forever writing quite a witty blog post complete with pictures.  Then I accidentally deleted the whole thing because this dumb site is all in Thai! Oh, well.  I'll start over.  Here goes....

 Ahem....I apologize for leaving last night's post only partially complete.  I'm sure that you have all been eagerly awaiting the menu from last night's feast.  Well, wait no longer!  Olivia and I were invited to dinner by Bernice, Danai, and Rachael (the loverly, helpful people from Track of the Tiger).  We could hardly reject such charming company, and so humbly accepted.  Now, I'm sure most of you know that I feel very strongly about food, and thus like to give suggestions at restaurants about the most tasteful appetizer, entree, dessert, etc.  However, in Thailand, where I can not even read the menu, I am completely at the mercy of others.  Thankfully, Danai (he's from here) stepped up to the plate.  And what a wonderful job he did! We had spicy pork salad, spicy soup, spicy papaya salad, fried fish, fried chicken, Eastern sausage (I dunno what that means...) grilled pork and sticky rice.  In Thailand it is customary to eat meals with sticky rice (although some dishes...like curry...require regular steamed rice).  It comes in these cute baskets or bags, and your roll up a lump of rice and dip it into the numerous, SUPER SPICY SAUCES (note the alliteration) that accompany the dishes.  It's used very much like bread is used in Western countries to sop up tasty remnants.  And when I say SUPER SPICY SAUCES in all caps I am not over-exaggerating!  Hahaha! Olivia's face looked very much like that of a fat, middle-aged woman that has been sitting outside tanning on the beaches of the Caribbean for several hours too long.  She was bright red, sweat was not just beading up on her brow, but streaming down her face in rivulets (some of that could be attributed to the Thai heat.  We all know about Olivia's sweat issues. Ha!). And of course, her nose was runny.  The Thai people thought it was all very funny.  Sadly, I didn't chronicle either the food, or Olivia's reaction to it with photographs.  I know.  I apologize! Never fear though! I made up for it with images of today's food! Yippee! So for breakfast we got tasty pastries at a local bakery (I'm pretty sure its a chain....Fai Bakery), and refreshing iced coffee. For lunch Olivia had pad thai, and had quoi tea on moo (spelled phonetically).  At least I think I did.  I tried my hand at ordering in Thai.  The cute lady running the "restaurant" looked at me kinda funny, smiled, and pointed to a table for me to sit down.  She brought me a bowl of something.  I'm still not sure what it was, but it was tasty!  Not to be discouraged by my failed attempt at ordering i tried to tell the friendly lady how delicious her cooking was and how full it made me.  I don't think she understood.  Actually, I'm certain she didnt....but she appreciated the effort.  That's for sure.  Oh.  Okay, so I'm not sure if Olivia mentioned in her previous posts the fact that we don't have a flushable toilet here (as a matter of fact I haven't been able to find one anywhere).  But even if she did mention it, I bet she didn't provide a picture! So I will. On this post.  Actually, I'm sure you've already seen it since the pictures come up first.  But now let me explain.  The small hose directly above the toilet is used to squirt down...umm...I'm sure you get the idea.  The larger one on the wall serves as our shower.  Oh! HAHAHAHA! Funny story.  So here in Chiang Mai you can not drink tap water.  So there are all of these water stations on the side of the road.  People put in a few baht into the machine, and in exchange, their jugs are filled with drinkable water. I told Olivia to just put a few baht in.  What does she do, she puts in 10 baht (the equivalent of 0.32 USD).  Our water jug was full in a matter of seconds, but water just kept gushing out! It was overflowing out into the street! We were both very embarrassed...but I blame Olivia.    

Wat's That?! A Day Exploring Old City

Catch Up...so Olivia still won't let me order the mystery meat on a stick at the street vendors.   It all worked out in the end though, because for Friday night's dinner we got these very tasty Rotis!  It's kinda like a Thai-style crêpe.  The cute lady making them takes these balls of dough, and flings 'em around super fast, and phwaps 'em on the top of her cart.  She then plops the now thinly-stretched dough onto a hot pan (very much like a crêpe pan), and globs a bit of oil and a pad of butter for good measure.  While the dough is sizzling away, the speedy roti cooker chops a banana with an expertise that I would not be able to manage with a lifetime of practice.  Anyway, the roti was taken off of the pan, chopped into lumpy bits and pieces (I don't think the street vendors are concerned with presentation) plopped into a styrofoam dish, and topped with condensed milk.  Mmmm....c'est delicious!

 But enough reminiscing!  Let's move on to the adventures of yesterday! Olivia and I did quite a bit.  We woke up at the usual crack-of-dawn thanks to the mysteriously semi-naked roosters across the street.  My theory is they are occasionally plucked for some reason I have yet to deduce.  Olivia, as usual, spent an hour and a half looking at maps and trying to figure out the best course of action.  In the end, we did exactly as I suggested in the beginning....just start walking! Which is exactly what we did. We walked. And walked. And walked, and walked, and walked, and walked.  I bet we covered 10 miles! Which is no small feat in the Thai heat, let me tell you!  That's the funny thing about Thai people.  They don't walk anywhere! They think that 5 blocks is "a very long way".  As a consequence, people would stop us every few minutes asking if we needed a ride anywhere.  They always seemed perplexed when we told them that we liked walking.  Well the first place of note was the Warorot Market.  It's located near the Mae Ping River.  The flowers were beautiful! No ordinary carnations for the Thais! There were bouquets of orchids in almost every color imaginable! And cool spiky pods, and folded flowers and leaves that floated atop buckets of water.  Another personal favorite were the buckets of eels.  They wiggled around a lot, and often escaped onto the street (much to the dismay of a rather large American woman passing by).  Olivia and I then tried to find this restaurant mentioned in our Lonely Planet travel book.  So we walked and walked and walked some more.  Only to find that the place had closed.  We ended up going to a very tasty place called Ratana's Kitchen.  I had a Northern-style pork curry with ginger. Very tasty.  My lame twin had Thai fried rice.  But I have to admit...it was very good. And for dessert we had a heaping plate of mangoes with sticky rice! The mangoes were so sweet and juicy and were the perfect compliment to the coconutty, creamy rice. Yum! Then we walked into the Old Town of Chiang Mai through the Thapae Gate, which is one of the original gates to the city. The Old Town is the original part of Chiang Mai (over 700 years old!), and it is still surrounded by a brick wall.  We saw a buncha wats, or temples.  There are so many (over 300 throughout the city)! Olivia came up with a good theory as to why there are so many:  Since every male in Thailand is expected to be a monk at least for a short time in his life, there must be plenty of wats to accomodate all of them. That, and religion is just a central part of Thai culture as well.  Hmmm...I'm getting very tired, so I'll save the dinner description for tomorrow.  But, in case you were wondering, Olivia and I didn't walk back.  We caught a sang tiao (which are the little bus-like things that drive people around) back to the apartment.  Phew. What a day! Oh, also, I apologize for the awful formatting, but everything on the computer in written in Thai, so I'm just getting by by clicking random buttons....           

Day 1 in Chiang Mai

Charlotte and I  finally made it to Chiang Mai after several very long flights and having spent the night in Bangkok. I was pleasantly surprised that our in-flight meal from Seattle to Seoul consisted of bibimbap (Korean-style veggies with rice) with kimchi and green onion pancakes. It was actually quite tasty! (Charlotte and I joked before our flight that it'd probably be smelly from all of the kimchi, but we didn't really expect to have any on the flight. Such a nice surprise, particularly since this was a special "non-stinky" type of kimchi.)
When we landed in Bangkok around 1 AM, I was shocked to find that it was around 86 F and more humid than a sauna! I'd thought that the temperature would surely drop a bit at night, but clearly this is not the case in Bangkok. This heat will certainly take a bit of getting used to. 
After a few hours of shut eye, we flew out to Chiang Mai with a Thai Fanta in hand. At the airport, we were greeted by Bernice and Khun ("mister") Tom, both of whom work at Track of the Tiger, the ecotourist company we'll be working with. Both of them were very welcoming, and promptly whisked us off to the Track of the Tiger office to meet the rest of the crew and for a spot of lunch. Oh, and what a perfect meal for two weary travelers! We quickly slurped up bowls of Thai noodle soup that had bean sprouts and other tasty items simmering about in it. I'll try to get the name of it....

Here's our apartment!

Translation?

How did they know to give us the room with the same number as Seattle's area          code?

Later, we checked into our apartment and did a bit of exploring. Although many Thais speak English (like at the airport), it still would be helpful to learn a bit more Thai than simply cement ("poon") and cloud ("mek")! (My free Thai iPhone app only provides one random Thai word each day, hence my random Thai vocabulary.) We bought these Thai donuts and this drink (sweetened soy bean something?) from a nice man and his daughter at a street cart. They made for a nice evening snack!

Watch out, Thailand! Here I come!

Well, I left this a bit to the last minute, as I'm throwing together this blog 10 minutes before boarding my flight. Oops! Hopefully, I'll have more interesting news, updates, etc. in the very near future. In the meantime, I have a plane to catch!