A few members of the Freedom Family had the energy after dinner to for a drink, a Sprite, in my case, since I was still feeling kinda awful.  We went to the aptly named Freedom Bar, but although Dylan’s dancing was amusing, there were a couple of guys who weren’t so we headed on to the next spot.  I walked with them but when the bar was closed, I decided to crash.  I’m kinda devastated I missed the go-go bar but I was exhausted.  The next morning I caught a flight to Bangkok, where I had the day to kill before my overnight bus ride.  I got to the travel agency, and asked if I could leave my bag for the day, they said sure, and told me to put it outside.  I thought maybe I’d misunderstood but she then pointed at three other bags that were sitting outside, against the front window.  I asked if I could leave it inside but she insisted it was the only place for it.  I debated my options: leave my bag sitting on the sidewalk on a busy, touristy street or carry it, in addition to my daypack, for 8 hours, in the 90 degree heat.  To add to it I was wearing long pants and sleeves, and planning on visiting the Vimanek museum.  I left my bag but spent the whole day anxious about whether or not it’d be there when I got back.

Since I was already soaked in sweat, I figured I might as well walk to the museum.  It took me about 40 minutes and when I finally got there, it was closed.  Apparently it’s closed on Mondays.  I’d wanted to visit when I was in town the first time, but it’d been closed for New Years.  Discouraged, I headed towards the water.

I hopped on the water taxi to head south.  At 13 baht, it’s the cheapest way to travel, and with the great views of the city from the river, my favorite.

I went to the Jim Thompson store, if you remember, he’s the man who is credited with revitalizing the silk industry.  Although he’s still missing, his business seems to be booming, and is filled with beautiful silks of all shapes, sizes, patterns, and colors.

I had heard about a pad thai restaurant that was supposedly incredible, so decided to check it out before headed back for my bus.  I followed Google maps, and it said I could take bus 35 to near the restaurant.  I’m still not sure what went wrong, the number was on the sign at the stop, but I waited there for probably 20 minutes, seeing people get on and off buses endlessly, but number 35 never showed.  I ended up having to take a cab, only to find out the restaurant was closed on Mondays too.  Not my day for getting things done.  Luckily there was a shop next door which had “pad thai sen jan man kung kung sod” which for those of you who don’t speak Thai, is basically pad thai with shrimp wrapped in an omelette.  It’s as good as it sounds.

Fortified for the long journey, I headed back to the travel agency.

Miracle of miracles, my bag was still there!  I joined the three hundred other backpackers in line for checking in for the bus, and was moved through, cattle-like, even being “branded” with color coded stickers.  Unfortunately their color coding didn’t work out too well and a couple of us ended up doublebooked for the same seats on the same bus.  They eventually got it worked out and shuffled us onto a less comfortable bus.  To add insult to injury, I was stick in the middle of a group of Brits on a package tour, one of whom was so loud, that even now, when it’s quiet, I can still hear him echoing in my head.  Not only that, but when I did finally manage to fall asleep, the bus stopped for a thirty minute break at a market in the middle of nowhere.  Who needs a midnight snack on an overnight bus?  We finally got to Chumphon, where we were transferring to a ferry at about 5 am.  The ferry didn’t depart until 7, so I passed out on a bench, the best sleep I’d had in days.  Why you’d have a bus depart at 9 pm, only to make two half-hour long stops midway before arriving at 5 am for a 7 am ferry is beyond me.  The one upside though, was that I got to see the sun rise over the Gulf of Thailand.

On Sunday morning we got the full tour of the park.  We started with the “elephant kitchen.”  In it the 150-200 kg (330-440 lbs) of food each elephant needs is prepared for it.  Since all of the elephants who live in the park, live there because they can’t make it in the wild, a lot of them have special diets.  You can see the map for what “enrichments” they need here:

The older elephants’ teeth are ground down, so they can’t chew their food properly.  Often otherwise healthy old elephants end up starving to death because they can’t grind their food to get the nutrients out of it.  There’s no such thing as elephant dentures (yet), so the park cooks rice, mixes it with salt, sugar and other, forms it into balls and wraps it in leaves so they can get everything they need.

As if that wasn’t enough of a job, Lek believes it’s important for both the elephants and the environment that the food be grown organically.  To make sure that this happens, she contracts with local farmers to grow organic produce for the elephants.  There is a ton of it…

Unfortunately, everything she buys can’t be organic, so the things that aren’t, she washes thoroughly.

I may’ve mentioned it earlier, but the Elephant Nature park also takes in other injured animals.  There are something like 250 cats and even more dogs, mostly taken in two years ago during the floods in Bangkok.  There’s even a special area for dogs who have lost or damaged their back legs, where they can use their front legs to pull themselves, so they can still eat and play.  There are a couple of other animals as well.

Besides the animals, Lek has built a village for the mahouts and their families, most of whom are Burmese refugees.  They each have their own huts, just as they would if they lived in a village anywhere else.  She employs the mahouts wives at the park, and has made an arrangement with the local teachers so that all of the children can go to school.  (See what I mean about not sleeping?!  She’s thought of everything!)

Saying goodbye to our incredible leaders was so hard.  By this point, we volunteers had named ourselves the Freedom Family.  Even though we had to say goodbye to Joe and Yo, at the park, the rest of the family decided to meet back up in Chiang Mai that night for dinner, after all of us had time to take much needed showers.

The restaurant was beautiful, the nicest one I’ve been in on my trip.  Unfortunately, I must’ve eaten something for lunch that didn’t agree with me and was feeling too awful that night to eat.  I had a bowl of boiled rice and ginger soup, and stared at everyone else’s dishes enviously.

It was really hard to say goodbye again, at the end of the night, but most people were leaving Chiang Mai the next morning but family is for life.  🙂

So I tried to get the last of my week with the elephants into just one post, but it didn’t fit.  So here’s the second to last of the Journey to Freedom posts.

After working with the kids, we went to the Buddhist temple in the village.  Yo, our leader explained a lot The high monk, who has been a monk for something like 50 years, gave us each a blessing, and tied a bracelet around each of our wrists that had been blessed by nine high monks.  This monk is also responsible for tying blessed orange cloths around trees, making them blessed, so they can’t be cut down.  He has plans to continue to do this so that more of the elephants’ habitat is protected.

The next morning, our last at the camp, the oldest man in the village came to give us a blessing to thank us for our help.  He is 96, and is considered a village elder.  He had us hold a “lucky cookie” which was sticky rice wrapped up in palm leaves, while he chanted a blessing and tied a blessed string around our wrists. He put the ends of the string on our heads, which to Buddhists, is the most sacred part of the body.  Even the “heads” of things are sacred, the bows of boats, etc.

After our heartbreaking goodbye to the elephants and their mahouts, we headed to the Elephant Nature Park itself. We didn’t want to leave so they put us in cages and dragged us out.  🙂

We got to look around a bit before heading to a meeting with Lek herself.  Besides being home to 66 elephants who are too old or ill to injured to live in the wild, she has also taken in water buffalo, cats, dogs, horses and even a pig, who needed sanctuary.  (Maybe she’s a vampire or a robot so doesn’t need to sleep! But she obviously has such a huge heart, it’s a conundrum.)

While we were enjoying the view and meeting a few of the park’s elephants, there was a lot of trumpeting and elephants running.  Yo, our guide, made us head to the sky walk for safety.  What happened was that a baby elephant broke free of the trekking camp across the river, and ran to join one of the herds in the nature park.  He was agitated from his mistreatment and conveyed this to the park elephants. The park elephants shielded him, surrounding him and trumpeting.  Unfortunately, elephant refugees don’t follow the same policy as Cuban refugees.  Even though he made it onto dry land, he still didn’t get to stay.  Lek calmed her elephants down while the runaway’s mahout came to take him back to the trekking camp, and the punishment that awaited him there.  It was really heartbreaking, even for us, just meeting the elephants for the first time.  I can’t imagine how painful it must’ve been for Lek, whose entire life is dedicated to protecting elephants from harm, to have to hand a baby back over to the life, and punishment, she knew awaited him. It was amazing to see her interact with the elephants, they treated her as one of them.  She literally disappeared into their midst, and when the baby started crying on the other side of the river, undoubtedly being punished for his escape, they herded her to the river bank, basically begging her to do something.  The elephants were so worked up that had to be put into their enclosures for the rest of the night.

After all the excitement, we checked into our rooms, which we were ecstatic to see had real beds, and an ensuite bathroom.  With hot water!  That came right of the tap!

As if seeing a runaway baby elephant returned to it’s evil owners wasn’t enough, we learned about the treatment of elephants in trekking and logging camps.  It was horrifying, and it puts me near tears thinking about it now.  The short version is this, please please please don’t ride elephants, and be very conscious about buying teak.  Even if they elephants don’t seem to be mistreated at the trekking camp, the process baby elephants go through in order for them to be trained is completely inhumane.  They’re locked in crates and beaten for up to a week, until they break down, because afterwards, they’re more malleable.  Elephants will put up a huge fight to protect their children, so often their mothers and nannies are killed in order to get the babies in the first place.  And the teak logging camps are even worse.  The conditions are often awful, and the elephants at the park have been taken in with broken backs, dislocated hips, feet blown up stepping on land mines.  The after pictures are incredible, what Lek and the park can do for animals in pain is amazing, but there shouldn’t be so many befores.

Again, if you’d like to do something to help elephants, check out Elephant Nature Park.

On Thursday our job was to help along the coffee project that Lek is also working on.  (I swear, there’s no way she ever sleeps!) Her idea is that if the villagers are able to support themselves with coffee farming, which grows in the forest, under the trees, they won’t need to clear more land for farming other crops.  And if they don’t clear the forests for farming, the elephants won’t lose what’s left of their homes.  (And the cities won’t flood because there’s nothing to absorb the runoff, etc.)  Our role in this much larger plan was to move a bunch of dirt from one place to another, and then to use the dirt to fill plastic bags, which would be used as small pots.  We made a fireman’s relay using buckets and bags to move the dirt.

But not enough, we ended up filling a ton, but running out while we still had more dirt. Yo tried to find more in the village, but they were out, and even called to see if some could be delivered, but there were none in the surrounding areas either.  We didn’t get to finish playing in the dirt, but we did get to watch the elephants bathe in mud!

While I was filming Mae Boi, Mae Yoi started spraying herself and got me pretty good.

Apparently Aesop was right about the mouse, because elephants are afraid of almost anything smaller than them, including cows.  If the cows got close Mae Yoi and Mae Boon Si would link trunks and lift their feet to shield Mae Boi, who hid behind them.  It was pretty funny to watch.

We spent Friday morning at a kindergarten, with kids age 2 1/2 – 5.  There were three classrooms so a couple of each were in each.  The kids in the classroom Dylan, Dan and I were in were pretty young, and didn’t have a super-long attention span.  Their teacher left the room as soon as we got there, probably happy to have a break.  Those things plus the fact that we had no real plan, and no common language, meant we devolved from trying to teach them into just playing with them pretty quickly.  The classroom was pretty similar to what you’d see at home in most ways, but there were no desks or chairs, the kids just sat on the floor, with stickers to mark their spots.

The Elephant Nature Park and Journey to Freedom supply lunch on Fridays for the kids.  It was kind of amazing to watch.  At first, all of the kids line up in rows along the exterior hallway.

They silently go one by one to pick up their giant metal plates of boiled rice and pork, along with a packet of cookies, and piece of watermelon.

Once they all have food, they sit, with their arms crossed, and wait while their teacher says a blessing or thank you for the food.  The kids answer in parts, promising to eat all of their meal, because there are so many people who don’t have any food to eat.

Then it’s time for recess

If you’d like to visit, or donate, or get involved in any way with this incredible organization, this is the link to the Elephant Nature Park

So on Wednesday, the real work was supposed to start.  Yo told us we’d spend the morning cutting grasses that the elephants were particularly fond of, and then that afternoon we’d get to feed them.  We were to wear long pants and long sleeves, because the grasses were sharp.  When we woke up in the morning, a new cat had joined the calico who was already a constant presence.

Prince, as Anna, our writer, named him, was a bit more insistent than the calico.  (Who I referred to as Callie, rather unimaginatively, in my head.)  Rachel, an Aussie, is anaphylactic-ally allergic to cats, so when one of them approached her, we’d have to dive to her rescue.  You know how cats can always sense the non-cat person in the crowd, so they seemed to single her out.  After a delicious pancake breakfast, we all piled into the back of the truck, to get where the grasses grow.  The trips in the bed of the truck had the feel of a joy-ride, exhilarating but nerve-wracking, especially when we’d come upon another vehicle in the narrow, winding, single road, but the views were always incredible.

 

I, and I think most of my group, had been imagining a field, where the grasses were grown for the elephant’s food.  This was definitely not the case.  After a couple of false stops, we were let out on the side of the road and issued machetes.  We were given instructions on how to cut, and warned if we got cut to let Yo or Joe know, so they could clean it with alcohol.  Apparently because of the high protein content in the grass, the cuts are more prone to infection.

There were more people than machetes, so we took turns cutting the grasses, and bringing them back to the trucks.

The goal was 200 kg per elephant, for a total of 800 kg, which is 1,700+ lbs.  We were meant to fill one truck bed entirely, to overflowing, and then put another 200 kg in the bed of the truck we rode in.  I thought it was going to take forever.  Also, the elephants are rather picky, and only like the softer tops, so they will only eat the first five leaves of the grasses.  After cutting there for a while on the side of the road, we piled back in and went to a second site to finish up.

It ended up taking much less time than we were all expecting, many hands making light work and all that, but also I think Yo let us off easy.  When we got back to the camp, we had some lunch, and then time to hang out and relax.

A little while later though, the elephants showed up, hungry for their meal.  I may have mentioned this already but it’s amazing how quiet they are, for such giant animals.  We all jumped up and scrambled to grab our stuff as they came flying into camp.

We spread the grasses out along the ground, and watched as they oh so delicately picked and chose their favorite parts.

Some of the elephants preferred the leaves, while others the flowers at the top.  None of the elephants seemed to like the stems, or the lower leaves.

 

The elephants weren’t just hungry, they were thirsty too, so someone turned on the hose for them to get a drink.

After they’d eaten everything, and I mean everything, the mahouts took them back into the hills (so they could keep eating) and we went back to the village to work with the kids before dinner, and another night’s cold sleep.

If you’d like to visit, or donate, or get involved in any way with this incredible organization, this is the link to the Elephant Nature Park

For our second day with the Elephant Nature Park‘s Journey to Freedom, we got to follow the elephants and their mahouts for the day.  The elephants lead and the mahouts just basically follow them around all day.  A big part of the mahout’s job is making sure they don’t get into farmers’ fields.  When they want to, elephants can move pretty quickly.  Not only that, elephants eat an ungodly amount of food: 150-200 kilos a day.  That’s 330-440 pounds! The mahouts are responsible for the elephants actions.  One time an elephant got away from his mahout for a couple of hours, and by the time they found him, he had done 30,000 baht worth of damage to a field!  That’s a lot of money in Thailand, especially considering a mahout only gets paid 300 baht ($8.25) a day! At night, the mahouts chain them down so they don’t wander while the mahouts get a few hours of sleep.  Elephants only sleep about 4 hours a night, in two hour stretches but they chain them on long enough tethers that they have plenty to eat.  Malnutrition is a big problem among working elephants, even when their owners have the best of intentions.  In the wild, the elephants’ diet is really widely varied, and they’re smart enough to know what they need to eat to get proper nutrition.  In trekking and logging camps, the elephants basically exist on watermelon and bananas because they’re easily purchased and transported.  Plus, they work such long hours that the elephants don’t get enough time to eat.  As we saw that day, elephants eat non-stop.  I couldn’t believe how much went into them.  And came out…  Luckily elephant poop is mostly just fiber and doesn’t really have a smell.

But at the end, there were elephants!

The thing that really struck me, besides how much they ate, was the dexterity of their trunks.  They could take vines and strip pieces off of them, using a combination of their trunks and mouths and feet.  Their trunks move almost like snakes, or like an octopus’s tentacles.  They were really incredible.  I shot a video of it but it doesn’t seem like I can post it here.  Maybe I can post it to YouTube or Facebook and add a link.  They were also so incredibly choosy, eating certain plants but not others, and certain parts of even those particular plants.  Mae Yoi couldn’t bend her ankles after having such a poor diet for so long in the trekking camp, she walked like a zombie elephant.   After being back in the wild and seeking out the nutrition she needed to heal herself, and getting the nutrients she was missing, she has fully regained use of them, and walks naturally again.

After getting to hang out with the elephant children, that afternoon we went to the village to play with the human children.  Farming and deforestation are the largest threats to elephants.  A hundred years ago there were 400,000 elephants in Thailand.  50 years ago Thailand was 70% forest and there were 100,000 elephants.  Between then and today Thailand’s forests have been halved.  In that same time the elephant population has dropped by 95% to approximately 5,000 elephants, including those in captivity.  Lek, the ENP’s founder is advocating for elephants in a number of ways.  I don’t know how or when she sleeps. She believes that if the kids are exposed to more cultures and they become proficient in English that they’ll be able to find careers outside of farming.  She herself was born and raised in a hill tribe.

We practiced colors and letters and numbers and played all sorts of games.  I worked with the younger kids but was amazed at how well the older kids spoke English.  They spoke well enough to tease people in our group.

At night we built a campfire and hung out for a while, sometimes singing, and just getting to know each other.

It was FREEZING in our tents at night.  I think it was about 40* and even though I wore two pairs of pants, a t shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a (thin) hooded sweatshirt I was still a human popsicle.  Plus the pads aren’t actually much padding so every time I tried to lay on my side my hip hurt.  We joked that we were going to have bruises from rolling over but after the first couple of nights it seemed to warm up a bit.

If you’d like to visit, or donate, or get involved in any way with this incredible organization, this is the link to the Elephant Nature Park

So I’d heard about the Elephant Nature Park from a couple of different sources and it seemed to be the best of the many elephant options around Chiang Mai.  When I arrived in the city I went to their office to book, and they had one spot available for an overnight visit, and one spot left for their weeklong Journey to Freedom program.  Only elephants who can’t make it in the wild live at the Elephant Nature Park itself.  The other elephants ENP supports are out in the wild, so with Journey to Freedom you volunteer in the hill tribes near where the elephants live.  So you spend the week in a secluded village, working both with and for the elephants, and with the kids of the village.  I was torn.

On one hand, the idea of spending a whole week helping elephants sounded awesome.  On the other hand, the work itself, cutting grasses, building fences, etc. looked hard.  Aren’t I on vacation? Plus, it was longer than I’d planned on spending in the North, and the idea of being so cut off from everything and everyone was daunting.  My trip so far hadn’t been especially social, I hadn’t really clicked with anyone in the hostels I’d stayed at or with roommates I’d had.  Not being able at least to have email and contact with home was a little scary.  Plus I chickened out and signed up for the overnight trip but still had second thoughts. To add to it, it was about 2 am at home, but thankfully, my cousin Cathy doesn’t sleep, so I called her for advice.  She talked me into doing the weeklong trip and I am so thankful she did.  She pointed out, rightly, that I would probably never have another opportunity to do something like this again.  So I went back and switched from the overnight program to the week-long, and thought, “here goes nothing.”

Monday morning we stopped by the office before piling into minivans.  We watched a cute cartoon about how to behave around the elephants, and some disturbing videos about elephant training, and their treatment in trekking and logging camps.  There were 13 of us: 2 Australians, 3 British, 5 Canadian, 1 Dutch, 1 Italian, and me.  Before we’d even left the office we were really hitting it off, and chatted the whole way on the three hour drive to the village.  We stopped a few times on the way: at a market where a few of us bought sweatshirts, briefly for me to throw up into a field, and then for lunch.  Apparently those winding mountain roads don’t agree with me. I’d rallied by lunchtime though.

Our housing was really basic, just mats on the floor of a bamboo hut, with some limited electricity.

 

After we got settled, Yo, our leader explained about the herd of elephants and told us a bit about their pasts.  Mae Yoi (“you-E”) is 30 years old and the mother of Mae Boi (“boy”) age 5.  When Mae Boi was 1 1/2 she was stolen from her mother, and spent the next three plus years working at a traveling circus.  It was only 5 months ago that Lek and ENP reunited them.  Mae Yoi has been really anxious about letting her daughter out of her sight since.  Plus, Yo warned us that since Mae Boi’s mahout (trainer/caretaker) at the circus had been an alcoholic, she wouldn’t go anywhere near anyone who smelled like alcohol.  Mae Boon Si is 32, and got a bad back infection while working carrying tourists at a trekking camp, which prevented her from being able to continue to work.  She’s also about 7 months pregnant.  Erawan is a 7 year old male. They live with their new mahouts in the woods outside the village where we were staying.  After the explanation, we got to meet them!  They came tromping down a hill from the woods and we fed them sticky tamarind pods, which they love.

If you’d like to visit, or donate, or get involved in any way with this incredible organization, this is the link to the Elephant Nature Park