Saturday, January 2, 2010!

Well, New Year's Eve was absolutely amazing - I don't think I've ever had such a great New Year and Scott and I determined that foreign countries are much better for this celebration (except we missed friends). We started off with a later dinner where I had Tom Yum soup. Yum is right! It was too spicy for me, but because it was the best thing I've ever eaten, I just took an hour to work on it. We sat next to a man from Holland who is one of the most interesting people I've ever met. He works as an interculturalist, teaching business people how to be in different cultures. He actually wrote a book called "Dealing with the Dutch," which has apparently ben very successful among Americans. I wan this job! Anyway, it was great conversing with him over diner. We next went to John's Place bar, which we had been to twice already. We looked for our favorite bartender, who is an incredibly sweet girl. We shared drinks with her and enjoyed talking to her. We also met a Canadian guy who first introduced himself when we said something about YMCA and he jumped in saying he was part of a group who won competitions dancing to "YMCA". It was 4 guys and a crazy hobo - hysterical story! We then found out that he was going to a Buddhist temple was up in the mountains to do a month's meditation retreat. I would love to speak to him afterwards to hear how it went but we lost him when we went outside for midnight.

The sky had been beautiful since it was dark with people letting off the lanterns in the sky but at midnight, it was incredible. There were hundreds of these candles let off, fireworks al around and just general excitement from everyone (probably no one as much as me, though!) It was so magical! They would never allow this to happen in the US due to safety reasons and the trash that comes back down, but it was more beautiful than you can possibly imagine.

The sweet bartender ended up giving me her bracelet after I told her I liked it. A friend had brought it to her from Phuket and it was one of the sweetest gifts I've ever received. I felt bad taking it, but I got her address so I can send her a gift from San Diego.

We next went to another bar where we were the only Westerners. There were a few Thai girls dancing up on a table and I joined them much ot everyone's excitement. One girl was dancing like crazy wiht me and people were taing pictures all over. Again - they've probably never seen anyone so white! It was really funny.

We went back to the Irish pub, where I saw the workers exchanging gifts. It's the big thing in Thailand to exchange gifts for the New Year, since this was their big Holiday. It was fun to see all their excitement and they shared some of their tasty treats too. One girl just got a big box of Ramen type soup and seemed a bit annoyed - I felt so bad for her!

We went to another bar (I know - crazy) where there was almost no one left because it was so late. They were playing very fun music, so I had fun singing and dancing. I even danced all aroun dthe bar to Abba with 2 other girls (this video got corrupt - but the others are all intact!) At one point, I went to the bathroom across the street and met a guy from Antarctica. I didn't even know people could live there - crazy!

We closed the bar talking to one more guy and then finally headed back to our hotel at almost 5 AM - go us! It was a really amazing night. We didn't get too many pictures, but did get a lot of video - check it out.






Other people stayed out that late every night, but us old timers can only do it for certain occassions now. We heard them coming in every other morning. Although our place, the Pop House was super cute and nice and brand new, the walls were paper thin and you could hear everything.






We still slept in New Year's Day and had a pretty lazy day. We went to the Tiger Kingdom, which I kin of wish we hadn't gone to. It mad me pretty unformfortable. It was a cool idea because I got to go in an actually pet yong and adult tigers and I think they are amazingly beautiful. However, although some of the reviews I read said they seemed well taken care of and happy, I didn't quite agree. It just seemed like a very unnatural way to keep them. The trainers held sticks, which they would probably use if the tigers "misbehaved". They moved them all around and pushed things in their faces to try to get reactions and pictures thye thought people would want. Some of htese pictures look super cute and natural, but it did not feel natural to me. I would have rathered just see them play wiht each other. Oh well - very cool to see them up so close and feel their fur.

That night, we went over to the night bazaar area, which was just way to crowded and touristy for our likes. Maybe it was due to it being New Year's Day, but we didn't stay for very long. WE did see some Thai dancing while we ate, which was very beautiful to watch.

We're now headed back to Bangkok and then up to Ayutthaya. I can't believe our trip is so close to coming to a close. I am really not ready to go back home. I feel so incredibly hapy, relaxed and in love! I hope these feelings continue on!

Thursday, December 31st

Last night we decided to part from the Thai culture and visited a Southwestern steakhouse for burgers and an Irish Pub for Guiness and Jack Daniels. A little strange in the middle of Chiang Mai, but it was a nice break. In the Irish Pub, there was an Irish band and I started doing my Irish dancing in the back of the bar. An older Irish guy told the band and they asked the proper Irish dancer to come up front. How embarrasing.. but of course I did. :-) Then the rest of the night, people were coming up and telling me "great job". Guess there's not a lot of Westerners in Thailand (even Irish) who have taken an Irish Dancing Class.




Today was abolutely amazing - one of my favorite days thus far here. We went to an Elephant Park that was started by a woman who grew up in a village, seeing how elephants are treated for the tourist trade. 100 years ago, there were 100,000 elephants in Thailand. Today, there are only 5,000. THey were used as laborers for logging, working to kill their own habitats and many becoming severely injured or killed. The logging trade was stopped when they realized the flooding from the monsoons became worse due to logging. However, once it stopped, there were many domestiated elephants who now had no job and no ability to live in the wild. Many, of course died and many have been used for tourism. We learned that the elephants used for tourism, including city street begging are treated extremely poorly to break them of their wild nature and to try to tame them. It is dispicable to see what they villge people do to the elephants, greatly hurting them.




This woman (Lek) "rescues" elephants by buying them from people who would otherwise mistreat them (she's the one in the photo holding onto the baby). She was able to start this center by a donation from a man from Austin, TX and keeps it going by donations and people like us paying to go and visit. She has 34 elephants now that she takes care of, feeds, etc andtries to teach them to live a more natural life and give them healthcare when she rescues them, when often badly injured.




We were able to feed the elephants, pet them, walk with them and even swim with them and bathe them. They are magnificant creatures - I now understand why my Grammy loves elephants so much! They are very gentle, basically just using their strength for protection. They also very much like affection, even from humans. There were babies that just loved to play and be touchd. They even played with a soccer ball!




All of the elephants had at least one human handler (called a Mahoot) to take care of them. The people who end up doing this are chosen because an elephants develops a bond with them. It's very seet to see them together. One elephant, Hope was rescued after he was orphoned when his mother was killed. He's quite a rowdy teenager and actually has to have 2 mahoots. He also wears a bell around his neck so they always know where he is.




Another one, Nokia was blinded when she was used for logging work. She was pregnant when she was brought to do this and was working when her baby was born. She was not able to stop and take care of her baby and the baby died. She was heartbroken and started refusing to work. They were mean to her, poking her and eventually blinded her by harsh measures to force her to work. Thank God she was rescued by this wonderful woman. She is a very sweet elephant.







My favorite was Medo who had beautiful markings and perhaps one of the sweetest temperaments. She was rescued having a broken back because she was hit by a car. She doesn't look quite the same as the othes and likely experiences a lot of pain. However, she is now very well taken care of and is shown lots of love every day. The elephants adopt the new ones who come in and they travel in packs so that there are always ones who are very close to each other and take care of each other.




If you ever make it to Thailand, I strongly recommend making a visit to this wonderful place. It's a great experience and your money goes to such a good cause. You can even do overnight trips and can also volunteer there for a week or two. And of course they take donations so that they can rescue more hurt and threatened elephants.

http://www.elephantnaturepark.org

More on December 30th

We just visited a few Wats in Chiang Mai and it was so interesting! The first one we went to is the most popular in Chiang Mai. There were people, monks and even shops everywhere. There were streams of money flowing down everywhere inside - so much it wasn't easy to see things. After we walked out and around for a while, we heard singing and went back in to see. There were a bunch of monks over to he side while one was singing.

We then went to another, less popular Wat. It was made of all teak and was quite gorgeous inside and out.

We last went to a wat that used to be the tallest building in Old Chiang Mai. It's not as tall anymore, likely due to fire or war, but is still quite impresive. The active temple in frong and some around the back ha what looked like really old monks meditating, but many were in glass cases. We thought they were wax, butthey looked so real! (In talking to a friend of mine who was a monk in Thailand years ago, he explained that they believe in Buddhism that when you die during your heavy meditative state that these older monks achieve, the body does not disintegrate when they die. He said this is one of the reasons that they put them out like this. However, he is not sure if they use some sort of chemicals on the body to keep it from decaying - he said the Buddhists in the temples would not admit to doing this, but he's not sure.) On the way back around, we heard monks chanting and when we went back in, it had beentransformed from very bare to many, many monks kneeling and chanting - it was beautiful and awesome! I just loved sitting in there and hearing their beautiful voices. I can see where that could really help one to meditate. I have so many quesitons now about the Buddhist religion We tried to find a monk to talk to at a monk talk at one of the wats where you can ask them lots of questions, but were perhaps looking on a wrong day. What a great experience to even get to see this different way of life.