פיל, פיל, פילפילון

I write this update from the middle of an elephant sanctuary, though it won’t get posted until I’m back in Chiang Mai, with a decent internet connection.

ELEPHANTS! When I went to book my tour, the guesthouse receptionist asked if I wanted an elephant riding tour, or no elephant riding. Having done my research, I knew that riding elephants is ethically questionable, so I went with the non-riding sanctuary. I also went with the two day tour, so I am spending the night adjacent to a Karan village (Karan is one of the hill tribes), and tomorrow I get to spend some more time with adorable pachyderms, the youngest of which is three months old. When we arrived at the sanctuary this morning, we fed the elephants bananas and sugar cane, and watch them drink from the river (interesting fact—for some reason I had always thought that elephants drink through their trunks. They don’t—they use their trunks as a straw, sucking up water, and then squirt the water into their mouths). Also, elephant trunks are hella dexterous. If an elephant saw that I had bananas behind my back, she would reach her trunk behind my back to try and grab them. I also got some shmushy elephant kisses.

Following elephant lunch and human lunch, we stripped down to our bathing suits, jumped into the mud where the elephants were cooling off, and started slinging mud at them. Add this to the list of things that my mother would never do, but SO MUCH FUN. While we rinsed off both the elephants and the humans in a river, I’ve been picking mud out of my ears for the past few hours… We also made medicine balls for the elephants, involving banana, cooked rice, raw rice and some tree bark. Apparently, both the raw rice and the tree bark help with digestion.

Update from Monday: After feeding a bunch more elephants in the morning, we hiked to a Karan village to see some of their handicrafts, and then hiked to a river and a waterfall. I jumped off a rock ledge into the side of the waterfall. After hanging out with a few more elephants, I hung off the back of a truck while getting ride to town, where I transferred to my main ride back to Chiang Mai.

Backing up to last Monday….

Diving on Ko Lanta was gorgeous, with far better visibility than on Ko Tao. On Monday I went to Hin Meung and Hin Daeng (Hin means rock in Thai, so these are Red Rock and Purple Rock. Can’t really explain Red Rock, but Purple Rock is covered with purple coral), and saw eight manta rays (OK, some of them may have been repeat performances, but the dive master claims that she saw 6 distinct ones). I went diving at Ko Phi Phi on Tuesday, and saw an octopus. I think I saw the outline of a whaleshark, but the visibility was poor, and it was pretty far away.

Islamic school is on Monday night on Ko Lanta, and I got to hear adorable children chanting at the mosque, and then watched them walk home while twirling their workbooks.

On Wednesday I flew from Krabi (beachtown near Ko Lanta) to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. I wandered around the city on Thursday, got a facial in the hopes of healing my peeling skin (while you don’t get sunburnt while diving, you do while swimming on your back after returning from a dive. Directly through your plastic mask), On Thursday evening I went on a night safari (basically two tram rides at a zoo, where you can feed animals from the sides of the vehicles). There were two different tram tours advertised: Thai and English. I went on the English tour, which turned out to be mostly Chinese with a little English. I was the only white person on the tour—everyone else was Chinese. On Friday, when I did a hike in Doi Inthanon, a national park, there were no Chinese on the hike, but many at the waterfalls that we drove to. Of all the days that I had been diving, there was a lone Chinese woman on one of my dives, despite the fact that I was diving during peak Chinese tourism season—the two weeks around Chinese New Year. A British couple who was on my hike theorized that since many wealthy Chinese are only one generation removed from heavy labor occupations, they are not keen on doing active things on vacation, and prefer to be driven from place to place, and take pictures.

While the animals that I saw on the night safari were incredible: gorgeous Bengali tigers, emus, ostriches, black bears, zebras, antelope, kangaroos, tapers, lions, giraffes, deer (ok, those weren’t so exciting to me), hippopotami, rhinos, and elephants, I was also a bit concerned about the ethics behind handing hordes of tourists baskets of food to feed to the zebras, giraffes and deer that came up to the trams—aren’t they concerned about overfeeding? Still, the variety of animals present was pretty astonishing. Following the two tram rides, there was a lion and tiger show which was quite boring, and brought to mind kitschy circus performances. The 200 Chinese people around me seemed super into it.

Doi Inthanon is the highest peak in Thailand. It also has two temples near the peak—one for the king and one for the queen (the queen’s is purple, and much prettier). Surrounding each temple are well-manicured gardens and gorgeous vistas. The Doi Inthanon peak is part of a cloud forest, but it was fairly sunny on Friday, and we didn’t see any clouds. Following our hike, we stopped at a Lanna market, where I bought fresh strawberries and fresh gooseberries, along with almonds with chocolate powder--YUM

I returned to Chiang Mai just before Shabbat, and had my first Chabad in Asia experience. My walk to Chabad involved passing the Merkaz LaMetayel HaYisraeli (The Jewish Agency’s shop in Chiang Mai), a restaurant called Sababa, and multiple stores with Hebrew language signs (including one advertising Botox, exclusively in Hebrew and English). There were 200ish people at Chabad, almost all Israeli, though not primarily post-army backpackers. I saw multiple young couples on their honeymoons, and lot of middle-aged people, particularly middle-aged Sephardim. I learned that there is an Israeli tour agency through which you can book Hebrew-language tours. I also met people who were exclusively going to cities in Thailand with Chabad houses (Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai and Koh Samui). Most importantly, I learned that the Hebrew word for Manta Ray is chatul yam.

Entirely by accident, I happened to be in Chiang Mai for the flower festival, an annual fair displaying the flowers from around the province. My walk to Chabad on Shabbat morning involved walking through the parade route. While the flowers on the floats were very impressive, far more entertaining were the high school marching bands, complete with flag twirlers. The first one, which was quite good, played the title song from “Fame”. The second one wasn’t particularly talented, and played indecipherable music. The third one played the Battle Hymn of the Republic (????). My favorite part were the metaplim/attendants that followed each band, carrying toilet paper and bottles of water to help cool off the performers.

*For the reference in the title, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL8TiQtSjPw