THE DAY MY DREAM CAME TRUE

Ayutthaya, Thailand

May 27^th, 2013

Have you ever had your ultimate dream come true? I can honestly say it is an extraordinary thing.

I don’t know when my love of elephants started exactly, but I believe it was around 15 years ago while visiting a zoo in New Mexico and my 20 year old self buying a stuffed elephant in the zoo’s gift shop (his name is Elmer and he still sleeps on my bed to this day). At some point I fell head over heels in love with elephants, and my ultimate dream to spend quality time with them was born.

Three years ago I found a website for a program in Thailand that allowed people to work side by side with retired elephants. I, literally, spent the rest of the day reading through pages and pages of testimonials from people who spent time with the program, crying at my computer and already setting in motion how to make a trip to Thailand possible.

The program’s name is ElephantStay. It is run by two Aussie women at a working elephant village just outside of Ayutthaya.  The elephant village was created years ago to provide a safe and caring environment for elephants and their mahouts (caretakers), as well as a rehabilitation area for elephants that most other individuals would turn away, like those with dangerous temperaments. Michelle and Ewa were brought on board to create a program that would give people the opportunity to work up close with some of the retired elephants, a program that allows each person to look after and take care of an elephant just like the mahouts do. Sign me up!

Through my research, I learned that most elephants in Thailand are domesticated and have been for decades—and domesticated elephants cannot be released into the wild. Elephants are also incredibly expensive to take care of, so finding work for the elephants is crucial for the mahout and his family. The tourist trade is what keeps a lot of these elephants alive, but it’s very important to find companies who treat their elephants with the proper care and respect they deserve. After a week at the elephant village, I can rest assured that these elephants are well taken care of.

Well, on to the adventure! Here’s the account from our first day at ElephantStay.

We woke up early Monday morning in Bangkok, ready for our 7:30am pick-up, checked out of the True Siam and climbed into our driver’s van. We waved goodbye to Bangkok and said hello to the Thai country side. It took just over an hour to get to Ayutthaya, and then we were pulling in to the elephant village. Miriam had the video camera trained on me, ready for the tears that my audience was expecting, but none came because I was thinking about how the driver forgot to take us to a bank so we could get out additional funds to pay for our stay. We had to head back in to Ayutthaya and find an ATM.

Once we were back at the village, we were greeted by Katie and Paul, who help run the ElephantStay program, and were informed we had just missed a big ceremony where they were trimming the tusks of a huge bull elephant, aptly named Big. Monks, reporters and cameras and everything. And we missed it because we had to go to the ATM. Doh!

Our day to day schedule

Our elephants

We were shown to our little hut, simple but cute (and air conditioned! Phew!), and told to meet Katie back in the team hut in about 15 minutes for our welcome inductions. In the team hut we met Mackenzie and Emily from Canada and JT from Australia, the three ElephantStayers with whom we would be spending the week. All three had arrived the week prior, JT finishing out her 11 day stay and Mackenzie and Emily finishing their two week stay.

Our home away from home

Our private outdoor bathroom and shower 

Inside our private hut

The team hut, where all our meals took place

In my team tshirt 

Katie filled us in on safety procedures and what to expect from our stay. We then met Ewa, who explained a little more about the program, and Paul handed us our work shirts-- it was time to meet the elephants!

There are, literally, elephants everywhere the eye can see. The nursery was off to our left, where the older babies (over a year old) are kept in a paddock with their moms until they are done nursing.  Any babies small enough not to cause too much trouble should tourists come around, are allowed to run around outside the paddock. And, luckily for us, there was a two and a half month old baby girl by the name of Bumblebee! She is super cute but a big ol’ brat. We were warned that she likes to charge at people and try to knock them down and enjoys kicking and stealing things to stomp on them. Troublemaker. Even at two and a half months, she weighs a couple hundred pounds, so she packs a punch in her horseplay! But at the same time, she also loves sucking our thumbs and getting a good scratch.

Bumblebee sucking my thumb

Rasamee, Yitor, and Rumruay

All the ElephantStay ladies

The working elephants and the elephants who prefer not to work (the elephants aren’t forced to work if they don’t want to—all elephants are cared for, regardless) are kept off to the right. The ElephantStay ladies have a small paddock by the driveway, and the dangerous elephants are kept on a separate island at the back of the village, so as to give them much needed space.

Miriam and Jumpee

Tricia and Yitor

Miriam was paired up with Jumpee, a spirited girl who loves to play in the water. I was paired up with Yitor, a stubborn and sneaky girl, who was just like me! It was love at first sight. We also met the other ElephantStay eles: Rosukon (Mackenzie’s girl), Rumruay (Emily’s girl), Rasamee (JT’s girl), Pisamy, Gatin, Sinuwan, and Honey. It was feeding time!

First things first, we had to give the girls some water. Each elephant has their own way of drinking water from the hose. Yitor likes to have the water poured directly into her trunk so she can suck it up and spray it into her mouth; a couple of the other girls like to grab the hose and hold it right in their mouths. It was amusing to see each of their personalities come out simply in how they like to drink their water.

These ladies love pineapple plant leaves, and usually there’s a pineapple plant delivery every few days. The secret, we quickly learned, was to scour the new delivery for actual pineapples and save them as treats for our girls. No new delivery that day, but we did find some pineapples that had been missed in the previous delivery.

After the girls were watered and fed, we spent some time playing with the mischievous Bumblebee, and then it was time to ride! A part of our daily routine with our elephants was riding them mahout-style down to the river twice a day for a good walk and some play time in the water. I was both excited and scared. I’m afraid of heights, but I’ve always wanted to ride an elephant! We grabbed our packamaws—the bits of cloth we would use as seatbelts—wrapped them tightly around our waists and headed to the stairs to await our elephants.
The elephants came over one by one, led by their mahouts, and stopped by the stairs to allow for us to climb on to their necks. Paul and my mahout Ret were there to hang on to me as I apprehensively climbed on to Yitor’s neck. I was so nervous! Yitor’s gait rocked me from side to side, and I was afraid I would slip right off her neck, but Ret kept tight hold of my packamaw so that I wouldn’t fall. As a group, we walked down the road, through the village, and into the nearby river for some splashing around. I was much more confident with water all around, until I saw the giant elephant poo floating by! I wasn’t so willing to fall into the water with floaters!

Miriam with Peer on Jumpee

Tricia with Ret on Yitor

After a brief swim in the river, Miriam and I were pulled aside with our eles and taught a few basic commands that the other three ElephantStayers already knew.

Hua was the word for “go”, and saying that while tapping the back of their ears with our dangling feet tells them to start moving.

Ben was the word for “turn”—if we wanted them to turn right, we would say this and tap the back of their left ear, basically turning their head in the direction we want them to go.

How was the word for “stop”—important word to know! We would say this while squeezing our knees and feet into their necks.

Toi was the word for “back up” which allowed us to get them to back up while rocking our hips forward and backwards.

Erre was the word for praise. A good pat on the head while growling errrrrrrre lets them know that they are doing a good job.

They taught us these phrases and then let us try them out on our eles. Once we got some practice in, we all set off back to the paddock.

Lunch time! Something I was looking forward to almost as much as meeting the elephants was the week of homemade Thai food! Thai food is my favorite ethnic food, and I had read amazing testimonials about the ElephantStay food that had me drooling. And the first meal did not disappoint. Fried rice with fried eggs and fresh vegetables. So good! It was made even better with a visit from the ice cream man, too.

A man drove up with his scooter and an attached freezer full of fun ice cream while we were eating our meal. Mackenzie excitedly told us that the ice cream man comes every day around lunch so that we can buy some desserts from him—which was perfect, since it was well into the 90s F (30s C).

We had a little free time after lunch, so Miriam and I went to look around (and maybe play with Bumblebee a little…and take a ton of photos…). We also purchased some tank tops to change into, it being too hot for tshirts. It was then time to give some of the eles a good scrub!

First up was Miriam’s Jumpee. She was brought over to the scrubbing area, where Miriam got the honor of hosing her down. Then we all moved in with our scrub brushes and got to work. Eventually it became a water fight between whoever had the hose and the rest of us. It was a lot of fun. And, hey, we didn’t mind—did I mention it was hot? Because it was. Hot. After Jumpee was scrubbed clean, Rasamee moved in and we all got busy scrubbing her clean. Where Jumpee wouldn’t stop moving around (she lives up to her name), Rasamee was incredibly calm and enjoyed her bath.

We had a little more free time after the scrubbing to play around and take photos, and then we were feeding our girls and preparing for our afternoon ride. This time, we were sent out to the yard to practice the commands we learned before taking our full walk to the river.

After the fun playtime in the river, it was time to put the girls in their night spots. Every evening the elephants are sent out to the pasture and chained up in individual night spots, with enough chain to allow them to walk around, grab their piles of food, and yet not be able to bother each other (some of them can get a bit testy if someone else creeps in their space). We said goodnight to our ladies and then headed back to the team hut. Time to shower off all the sweat and grime and spend the evening getting to know my fellow ElephantStayers!

If every day was going to be like the first, I knew I was going to have a blast. And I couldn’t wait.

ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK

Bangkok, Thailand

May 26, 2013

Now that I’ve got that song properly stuck in your head, I’ll admit it was actually two nights we spent in Bangkok. But we were literally falling asleep standing up the first night, so it doesn’t really count, right?

We woke up bright and early for our one and only full day in Bangkok, ready for a whole lot of sight-seeing. I discovered that, at some point the day before, my calves broke out in a strange rash. I still haven’t figured out the cause, whether it was something that aggravated my skin on the plane or the suntan lotion mixing with my sweat, but it was rather disconcerting to be in a foreign country and have some sort of spreading rash. Luckily, we came prepared with all sorts of medicines and creams, so I took an allergy pill and spread antihistamine anti-itch cream all over myself and crossed my fingers. 

When booking our hotel, we opted to go with the room rate that did not include the buffet breakfast, since the buffet breakfast by itself was kind of expensive, and we figured we could find breakfast elsewhere for much cheaper. So we packed up our fanny packs (oh, yes, I DID just say fanny packs) and refilled our water bottles with the free water supplied by our hotel (we weren’t risking drinking the tap water) and headed to the Sky Train.

We took the Sky Train to the Saphan Taksin stop and made our way to the Chao Phraya Express Boat at the Central Pier. We planned on seeing the Grand Palace and a few wats (temples) that day, and the easiest way to get to those destinations was by boat. I had done my research and discovered that, aside from the local Thai boat, there was a hop-on-hop-off tourist boat that ran all day, but it was on the expensive side, by Thai standards. We decided we would take whatever boat arrived first, which just happened to be a local one.

 We climbed on board with a bunch of Thai people, and when the woman came around to collect the fare, we discovered it cost a mere 15 baht (around 45 cents US) to travel to Ta Chang (Chang pier), where the Grand Palace is located. 15 baht! Can’t beat that.

The ride was really pretty and the breeze off the river was particularly nice. It was going to be a bright, sunny, and HOT day, so the smallest reprieve was well appreciated.

Once we got to our first destination, we disembarked, along with a bunch of other tourists, but rather than following the whole lot, we stopped to get a bite to eat at one of the little shops on the pier. (By the way, you definitely know when you are at a popular tourist destination pier, as they are covered with food and souvenir stalls. Lots of them.) Miriam was going to grab a small box of cereal and what she thought was simply strawberry flavored milk, but when Miriam pointed to the strawberry milk on the menu, the woman whipped up a strawberry-milk smoothie and blended in the cereal. It was so yummy I had to get one for myself!

We left the pier and walked straight ahead to the palace, all the while prepared to be bombarded with scammers who approach tourists and tell them that the palace is closed for the day (it’s never closed unless there is a big Thai holiday) and try to convince the gullible tourists to go elsewhere (like a friend’s shop), but no one approached us at all.

My friend Adam, who lives in Bangkok, had given me the low-down on what to wear for the palace and the wats, so we came prepared with pants long enough to cover our knees, tshirts with sleeves long enough to properly cover our shoulders and breast plates, and a scarf to wrap around us, just in case they weren’t satisfied with our outfits.

The chedi popping up over the Middle Court wall.

Once inside the main gates (we passed the clothing test), we could see the tops of the huge chedis (large Buddhist shrines) peering over the inner palace walls. It was pretty darn amazing, but little did we know exactly what breathtaking beauty we were about to behold. 

We did get distracted right before the ticket gate by the mini post office selling postcards and stamps. The postcards were half the price of what we were seeing in Chatuchak Market the day before, and it was the first place we saw that sold stamps, so we had to stop and take a look. We ended up buying most of the postcards we needed.

After our stop off we proceeded through the entrance into Wat Phra Kaeo, the palace’s temple. To say the view we walked into was breathtaking would be an understatement. There was so much sparkling color to behold that my eyes didn’t know where to look first.

Immediately, upon entering, we noticed the temple guardians towering over us with fierce faces and glittering bodies. Every building shimmered in the sunlight, dazzling us with bright colors of blues, greens, yellow, oranges, and reds. Every building was adorned with various mythical Thai creatures, guarding the Buddha within. To our left was the giant, golden Phra Si Rattana Chedi, a tall stupa built of gold tiles. Tucked behind it was a model of the Angkor Wat, which was really big with amazing detail and had been installed over 150 years ago when Cambodia was still under Thai rule.

Venturing around the various buildings we happened upon the Ramakien murals, portraying scenes from the Ramayan, a great Hindu epic. They stretched along the cloistered walls of the buildings with intricate detail. They were nice to look at since it got us out of the blistering hot sun for a little bit.

The murals 

Praying to Buddha 

Model of Angkor Wat 

After having a look around at all the amazing architecture we headed into the bot (ordination hall) where the Emerald Buddha is housed. We followed Thai tradition and kicked off our shoes before entering. There were signs everywhere stating no pictures, but me being the rebel that I am, I decided to sneak some. And got caught. Whoops. The guard made me delete the two photos I had taken, and then Miriam made fun of me. Interestingly enough, when we left the ordination hall we passed the entrance and had a clear view of the Emerald Buddha, and since we were outside, we were allowed to take photos. Don’t know what the point was of not allowing photos inside when they were perfectly fine letting us take them outside…

The ordination hall 

Emerald Buddha with my zoom lens

After we finished with Wat Phra Kaeo, we headed over to the Dusit Throne Hall, where we posed with the guard standing on the steps. He was amused by us, especially Miriam, who was cracking jokes. By this point we were incredibly hot, sweaty, and hungry. Then, like a mirage in a desert, we saw the Haagen Dazs shop. Hallelujah! We willingly paid 250 Baht ($7.50 US) for a couple scoops of ice cream in a delicious cone. Now that’s what I call lunch.

Trying to join the family photo 

Miriam harassing the guard 

Around the corner from the Grand Palace is Wat Pho, which houses the large Reclining Buddha, so once we finished at the Grand Palace we hiked around the block to the Wat Pho entrance. Our 100 baht entrance fee came with a free bottle of water, which was much appreciated.

The very first building we entered was the Reclining Buddha, which was a surprise to us, since we figured that building would be farther within the walls of the wat, but what an exciting surprise it was! The Reclining Buddha was absolutely massive. They say it is 45 meters long (150 feet) and, at the tallest part, 15 meters high (49 feet). Its feet are inlaid with mother-of-pearl, depicting 108 signs of Buddha. It was so large that it was impossible to capture the whole of it in my camera lens. It was a rather impressive sight.

Wat Pho is not as grand as Wat Phra Kaeo, but it houses around 100 chedis so it was really cool to walk around. Also amongst the grounds were small mountains with stone hermits on them, all of them in various yoga-like positions intended to teach people the healing positions for the body. We also discovered the bot, which houses a large, bronze, meditating Buddha, but, being tired of taking off our shoes, we opted to view it from the doorway.

And then…the piece de resistance: the Thai massage school. Wat Pho is best known for, well, the Reclining Buddha, but following closely behind is the school for Thai massage. Miriam and I had been dreaming of getting a Thai massage since I first started planning for the trip, so this was a necessary stop, especially after walking around for almost four hours in overwhelming heat.

The prices were about double what the Wat Pho website said, but, in truth, the prices were still ridiculously cheap. We had the option of getting half hour or full hour massages and could get a foot massage or a Thai massage. We figured, you only live once, so we opted for both the 30-minute foot massage AND the 30-minute Thai massage. One of the best decisions of my life, let me tell you. The foot massage was 280 Baht for the half hour and the Thai massage was 250 Baht. I got an amazing hour long massage for less than $20 US. Ridiculous. And it was way better than any massage I've ever gotten at the fancy, expensive spas in the US, too. 

I was worried the young girl working on me wouldn't be able to handle me, but she certainly packed a punch. I was carrying tension in places I didn't even know existed, but she found them and worked them out. It was so lovely to walk out of there feeling all refreshed and ready to continue on our adventure-- I'm already looking forward to getting more Thai massages once I reach Phuket...but I digress.

We had saved the massages for last at Wat Pho, so once we finished we snuck out a side exit and went in search of the Ta Tien (Tien pier). Something I've loved about Thailand is that everyone is willing to help you, whether they can speak English with you or not. The Thai people are so nice. And the difference between Thai people and some other countries is that they don't expect anything from you in return. No tips or handouts necessary-- they just want to help you along. I mention this because a very nice elderly man saw Miriam and me trying to make heads or tails of where we were, and he pointed us in the right direction.

Once we found the pier we paid the 3 Baht (10 cents) for the cross river ferry that would take us to Wat Arun, the next temple on our self-guided tour. It took about five minutes to cross the river, and where we docked was right next to the wat. Pretty convenient. Even better was that it only cost 50 Baht to enter. Out of all the research I did, that was the only entrance fee that was accurate.

Wat Arun is known as the Temple of Dawn and has one tall central prang (spire) and a number of smaller prang. All of the architecture is covered in recycled ceramic-- broken porcelain that Chinese trading ships used as ballast until off-loaded in Thailand. It made all the detail of the buildings very interesting to look at, since it was all so different.

One more flight to go!

View of the canals from the top of Wat Arun.

We were allowed to climb up most of the way to the top of the central prang, which was really fun and provided a really neat view of Bangkok and the canals, but being that it was practically a vertical climb, it freaked this girl out a bit. I’m slightly scared of heights. And by slightly I mean I’m REALLY scared of heights. But I did it and lived to tell the tale.

This was the shortest visit of all the wats that day, but by this time it was around 3pm. We were hot and tired, but we did want to hit up the Jim Thompson house before it closed for the day, so we jumped back on the cross river ferry and caught the boat back to the central pier. From there we took the Sky Train all the way to the Jim Thompson house.

Jim Thompson was an American who moved to Thailand and revived the Thai art of silk weaving. He went out for a walk one day when on holiday and never returned. His disappearance is still a mystery, his body having never been found. After he was pronounced dead, his nephew turned his home into a museum. Miriam and I are not museum people, but we were interested in seeing what the shop had to offer. When we arrived at the house, we discovered that our entrance fee came with a guided tour. We weren’t exactly thrilled with that because we had intended on going through the house fairly quickly, not taking 45 minutes. Oh well. It was an interesting tour, and I did learn a lot about Buddhism. And the house was really beautiful—an original Thai teak house. The garden was really lovely, too, albeit small. 

Watching the ancient art of Thai silk weaving.

One of the broken Buddha images.

One thing I did find kind of poetic was how the tour guide was showing us the broken Buddha images that Jim Thompson had collected. She said that Buddhists believed it was bad karma to keep broken Buddha images in the home, but Jim Thompson didn’t believe in that (he was Christian), so he collected the broken images…and then he disappeared… *cue dramatic music* 

We ventured into the shop, hoping to find some really nice silk pieces to bring back as gifts or souvenirs, but when we saw the prices, we thought better of it. One silk scarf I found with elephants on it was $255 US. Way too much for this girl.

Once we finished with the Jim Thompson house, we were ready to collapse. We made it back to the hotel and passed out for a small nap, after which I showered off and revived myself for the night.

We wanted to find an ATM in order to take out money to pay for our ElephantStay the following morning, but the ATMs near our hotel weren’t working. We then decided that we would try to find a no-fee ATM. Looking on-line we discovered that the Aeon bank offered no-fee ATMs for foreign cards, and the nearest and most accessible one was at Terminal 21 mall. So off we went.

The Rome floor

Terminal 21 was a typical mall but the architecture was really fun. Each floor was dedicated to a different place in the world, be it Paris, Tokyo, Rome, San Francisco, etc. We found a computerized mall map where we were able to search for the Aeon bank and discovered it was on the bottom floor by the food court. We made our way down to the food court, stopping off in a little pharmacy store to pick up insect repellent for our week with the elephants, and then made our way to the bank…only to discover it had closed 20 minutes prior and all the ATMs were located inside… We gave up on finding a no-fee ATM at that point and jumped onto one of the many other ATMs out and available for use. As soon as we finished there, we went in search of food and, since it was nearing closing time for the mall, we eventually settled on a small Japanese place and got miso soup, chicken, and rice. It was okay for what it was, but nothing special. Luckily it cost us next to nothing.

The Tokyo floor

By the time we finished eating they were making the announcement that the mall was closed, so we made our way up to the bridge that would take us directly to the Sky Train. Good thing for that covered bridge, too, because a torrential downpour had started, and we simply watched from the safety of the train platform the people running in the rain. By the time we came to our stop it was barely raining anymore, but we pulled out our rain ponchos anyways, just to say we used them.

On the Sky Train platform with the rain pouring down on the tracks.

Sadly, our short stay in Bangkok was coming to an end. Almost all our friends who had been to Bangkok told us we wouldn’t need more than a day or two to look around, that they didn’t really care for Bangkok, but we really enjoyed ourselves and wished we had an extra day or two to keep exploring. Oh well. There’s always next time!

We got back to the hotel and starting packing up so that we would be ready for an early morning pick up and then promptly fell asleep. It was almost time for my ultimate dream to come true!