Before leaving Chiang Mai, we took a “Jungle Trek,” which included a visit to an orchid farm and a “Karen long neck village,” where most of the women wear rings around their necks, to slowly stretch them. The guide said that they consider themselves descendants of fairies. Yes, I think he really meant little flying sprites, although sometimes things get lost in translation for us here. It was set up like a village gift shop for the tourists, with rows of little huts where women with long necks displayed their wares. Some were actually weaving with an interesting loom thing, which Jayden and I watched for a while. One young girl played a game, something like jacks. She tossed a rock up, picked one up, then caught the first one before it landed. She was quick, and could pick up four or five rocks or put them down before catching the first. Unfortunately, it felt a bit like the zoo, where you can go to watch interesting creatures in their “natural” habitat. There wasn’t much interaction with the villagers beyond a silent sales pitch for woven scarves. We did a little river rafting after that, which was the best part of the day, first in regular old rubber rafts, then on bamboo rafts for the more serene stretch. We resolved to take advantage of the amazing Rogue River, which we live around the corner from, when we return to Oregon. The next leg of our trek was a short stroll on the backs of elephants, but after all we learned at the Elephant Nature Park, we couldn’t help but notice the obvious mistreatment of the animals. The elephant Ani and I were on the back of didn’t really want to follow along on the path. She wanted to graze along the way, and wander a bit. The Mahout disciplined her with a metal hook behind her right ear, and we could see by the spots of blood there that this was not an uncommon event. Ben made a point to talk with the owner of the tour company about how this made us feel a bit sick, that we wish they would treat the elephants with more kindness. Our day ended after a pleasant hike through forest to a waterfall. By the time we got back to Chiang Mai, Jayden was feeling pretty ill, and he woke up the next morning with a fever, exhausted as we packed up our bags and headed to the airport to catch our flight to Phuket (pronounced Poo-ket.)

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12-24-11

Elephant Nature Park, Thailand

I knew that an elephant’s skin would feel rough to the touch, but never expected that it would have course hair of varying lengths, thick and almost spiky. We caressed the elephants today at Lek Chailert’s Elephant Nature Park. We spent the whole day with them, feeding them bananas, pumpkins and watermelon. We went down to the river with them and threw buckets full of water all over them, bathing them, as some leaned in and rolled around in the cool wetness. We watched baby elephants playing, mud wrestling, smearing the mud all over themselves and each other. We learned a lot about Thai elephants, of which there are only about 5,000 left.

Not so long ago, there were 100,000 elephants, living in the jungle forests, and people began putting them to work. They worked to clear the trees, to haul them, to build, and to destroy their own natural habitat. They worked because mahouts, or elephant trainers, broke them in and forced them to be submissive. Elephants are incredibly strong, and were worked to death dragging huge teak trees up hills. Then logging was outlawed, and the elephants were out of work, but couldn’t survive on their own back in the wild. Especially since much of their habitat had been destroyed. They live as long as we do, so elephants in their seventies and eighties need a place to retire.

Lek has rescued thirty six elephants that have been mistreated, injured, or abandoned. She has a large piece of land outside Chiang Mai, and tourists visit with the elephants daily, which pays to keep them fed and happy. Its pretty incredible the way she is working to change the tribal long standing tradition of torturing a little elephant on its first day away from its mother until it does what its told. Lek gives these animals so much love, and creates an environment where they are looking out for each other and behaving as a herd would, living together in the wild. But, they are so gentle that my children were putting food right into their mouths all day long.

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12-21-11 Snacking on a freshly sliced, dripping with sweet nectar pineapple, straight from Lampang, I am tucking my kiddos in for the night. They had an exciting day riding all over the outskirts of Chiang Mai in a tuk tuk, visiting monkey, snake, and crocodile shows. with Ben.  They were very impressed by the monkey’s hilarious card tricks and the amazing guy who put his head in a crocodile’s mouth.

     Yesterday, when I got home from my class at Sunshine Massage School, they had spent the afternoon learning to cook, and brought me spring rolls, panang curry and green curry which they had prepared from scratch. Ben is planning another cooking class for them tomorrow, out on a nearby farm, where many of the ingredients grow. I am a bit sorry to miss all of this fabulous cultural experience, (not too sad about missing out on the Thai Boxing match Ben went to the other night,) but my days have been full and satisfying too.

     I am taking a course specific to lower back pain and side lying techniques in thai massage. Trayl, the South African teacher, works similarly to me, has an excellent grasp of posture and body mechanics and has a truly humble way of embracing the ideas and new discoveries his students have in class. I am learning a lot which I am sure will inspire new creativity to my massage practice. I feel as though the class is helping me to venture out from my boundaries of what can be done, and become more explorative. The class is quite an international mix, with students from Russia, Germany, Slovenia, Belgium, America, Italy, France. All of us have different levels of experience, some just beginning, some professional bodyworkers with more experience. The class is good, but I am also anticipating receiving some thai massage from the local therapists that come highly recommended.

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Chiang Mai 12-19-11

 Shopping’s not usually my favorite activity, but I could spend weeks haggling at the Sunday Market in Chiang Mai. The streets are packed with vendors selling colorful flowing pants and swanky decorative lights, handmade leather bags, and artistic jewelry, everything I would ever want to wear or eat or give to a friend at a fraction of what I would pay at home. There are bands of blind musicians and a temple courtyard crowded with numerous stalls of spicy noodles, deep fried crispy chicken, spring rolls, coconuts, waffles.... It’s a little hard to hold myself back, but I only want to carry around so much... I might end up mailing a large box home.

We spent most of the day at the zoo yesterday, the highlights being Ling Ling the panda bear, the floating hamster wheel like thing the kids ran around in, and the moment when our zoo bus died, and the whole load of us pushed the bus uphill, trying to get it going, yet unsuccessful. We are staying at Awanahouse, in a fourth floor room with bunkbeds for the wee ones. Our room opens onto a roof top lounge that is mostly vacant, an excellent dawntime yoga location.

 Chiang Mai is a relief, after the crazy big city adventure of Bangkok. I am starting to get a sense of where things are and how to get around using the excellent public transportation. The song taeuws are basically red pick up trucks with a canopy over the back and two benches for seats. Its like a shared taxi, with people hopping in and out all day long.

 We worked on feet this morning in my massage class at the Sunshine school, and I dropped right into dreamland while my new friend from Colorado kneaded and twisted and stretched my adventurous little tootsies. Definitely heaven.

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Bangkok 12/16/11

I am still trying to figure out what day it is.  I awoke in the dark with fluorescent light gleaming in through the window, thinking it must be close to sunrise, and turned on my ipod to look at the time.  10:30am?  Obviously it hasn’t acclimated to local time, but what time is it, really?  I felt pretty awake, so rolled out my mat quietly so as not to disturb my sleeping children and husband, and I put on some music to inspire my morning yoga practice. I worked my way up to some satisfying shoulder opening, as I’m a bit sore from the journey here.

We arrived Wednesday night at 11pm, local time after a three leg journey from Medford to San Fran to Tokyo to Bangkok, the last 7 hours of which my 9 year old son was throwing up in the handy little barf bags.  He was exhausted and must have eaten something that did not agree with him, but I am amazed at his calm acceptance of the situation.   If it had been Anjali, who was sleeping peacefully in the seat behind us with her daddy, there could have been a whole lot more noise and agony.    

After a couple of little hitches and a short night’s sleep, we zoomed off on a tuk tuk for a thrilling no seat belt motorcycle sort of ride, and headed to Chinatown for the best pad thai of the day (We had three, at three different places.) The kids and I practiced saying “Ar  harn ah rohy mark,”  (That was delicious!) and the lovely cook giggled and grinned when we tried out our new phrase on her.

A long walk brought us to the royal garden and Wat Pho.  At this incredible temple, 7 year old Anjali turned into a camera wielding artist, and tried to capture golden buddhas, ornately painted ceilings and fabulously fancy architecture in just the perfect light.  I chased her around, as she aimed for shots of glittering roofs  from the perfect vantage, passionately declaring, “This is the most beautiful place in the whole world!”

We made our way to Chao Praya river and took the boat taxi to Tha Cha for my favorite dish of the day.  It wasn’t the pad thai, but wide flat noodles, spicy chile, chantrelle mushroom, shrimp, what I would call “drunken noodles.”  Oh, yes, this is heaven.

A swim in the pool set the kids up for the easiest bedtime in history, and they’re still sleeping now.  I only just figured out that when I woke up to stretch and write, it was only 1:30 am.  Good thing I didn’t wake everyone up for the day! Still a few hours until dawn…..  

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