Happy Birthday to me!

On my sister's good suggestion, I am no longer going to worry about blogging things in the order that they've occurred.  When I focus on writing in chronological order, I get stressed out when I'm already 2 days post whenever something has happened, and instead of just writing about it then, I ignore the blog altogether.  And here we are, almost a week after my last post and I still haven't written about riding my scooter in Goa or any of my time in Bangkok.

So, until I write about those things, and hopefully I will, sit back and read all about yesterday -- my 29th birthday!

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The Grand Palace in Bangkok. Something I'll blog about later.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Those of you who talked to me about my plans for this trip last year when I started scheming probably remember me talking about wanting to do one thing in particular in SE Asia: volunteering to work with elephants.

After wasting 5 days in Bangkok, I booked myself out of there on a night train and scheduled to volunteer on Saturday and Sunday so I could be back in Chiang Mai for my birthday on Monday.  I got into my new guest house on Friday morning after the surprisingly comfortable train ride, spent a nice day wandering around and exploring, and got to bed early so I could be awake and ready to be picked up at 8am Saturday morning.

That morning, I woke up so excited --  it was like the first day of school.  I had laid out my outfit, packed my bag, and pre-ordered my breakfast the night before.  At 7:45am, I went down to the lobby to eat my breakfast and met up with some of the other people who were also going to the park that day.  I was so psyched that I couldn't even finish my breakfast...

Saw this when exploring on Saturday.  Cool.

At 8:20am, a man walked up to our guest house and called off everyones name but mine.  I asked if I was on the list and he said I wasn't and that because I was a night guest, there must be another van coming for me.  A little bummed that I wouldn't be sharing a ride to the park with 2 lovely Dutch ladies that I'd already met, I sat back down and waited for my van to show.

At 8:45am, still no van.  I asked the guesthouse owner if she could call and check for me to make sure they were coming.  After being on the phone for a minute or two, the owner looked at me and said, "They have you down for August 14th and 15th."

My response: "Well, they're wrong.  I am supposed to go there today.  I scheduled it online the other day."

She said something in Thai again and then hung up the phone.  She told me that even if I was right, it was now too late to go for the day because all of the vans had already left for the park.  I'd have to go from Sunday to Monday, which meant I'd be there for my birthday.  I almost started crying, because as excited as I was to be going there, I didn't exactly want to be picking up elephant poop on my birthday.  I went into my email and checked to look at my reservation.  Yup, they were right: I had scheduled myself for the following weekend.  All 4 confirmation emails had those days on them and still I had missed it.

That day, in lieu of my elephant trip, I went to see a Buddhist monk who almost gave me a sacred Sak Yant tattoo, but ultimately I chickened out when I realized that there was no real translation of any of the tattoos there.  I really didn't want to find out in 2 years that my really awesome Thai tattoo actually meant "I'm a stupid farang" (Thai word for Westerner.)  I continued to get more and more frustrated throughout the day as I saw things like that pictured above and I tried to occupy the time that I hadn't prepared to have.  I really hoped the elephants would be worth all of this trouble and frustration.

Jokia: blind in both eyes.

Take 2: Sunday morning, I got up and did the same thing as the morning before.  Again, at 8:45am, still no van.  I again asked the guesthouse owner to call for me...

Turns out, this time they forgot about me, so they had to send a new van to come get me.  I had the van take me up there late and I was alone.  Shaking my head, now I REALLY hoped this would be worth it.  About 10 minutes into the ride, the driver turned on a video for me to watch.  It was an episode of a nature tv show that had focused on Asian elephants and had specifically focused on the park I was headed to.  I learned about Jokia, a elephant who had been blinded by her owners when she refused to work anymore after she'd miscarried her baby.  She had been forced to work when she was almost at term.  I also learned about Hope, an orphaned baby elephant who had come to the park 10 years ago and now was a healthy 11 year old teenager.

When I arrived at the camp, I quickly joined my group and within 20 minutes, I was feeding Jokia!  I have to tell you, it was one of the coolest experiences I've ever experienced.  This poor elephant who was once blinded with arrows for refusing to work was now roaming free at this park and eating watermelon and corn from my hand!

Bath time!

Half an hour later, I was feeding another few elephants, trying to get them to let me shake their trunks as if we were shaking hands, but they were too interested in the food.  I decided I'd try it later on some of the others.

After that, it was bath time, and all of the elephants went to the river to cool off and bathe.  Some of them rolled around in the water alone while other acted like they had a fear of water.  All of the volunteers threw buckets of water on them to help clean and cool them off.  I lost a flip-flop and frowned as it floated away, but I wasn't about to go swim between two massive elephants to get it.

Getting a kiss!

For the rest of the day, we rotated between feeding and bathing the elephants, watching them interact with eachother, and watched a documentary.  I won't detail the hour long film for you all, but to make a long story short, the atrocities that have been committed against elephants is depressing and terrible, and I urge you all to go to the park's website to learn a little bit more.

At the end of the afternoon, the day visitors were bused home and I stayed at the park with a few other night volunteers.  By 8pm, everyone was headed to their huts, and I decided to go to bed by 8:30pm for my first full nights sleep in weeks.

I woke up on my 29th birthday to elephants trumpeting.  Not bad.

The second day was much like the first, but with a few added bonuses.  In the morning, our guide took us for a 2 hour walk around the grounds to visit each of the elephants.  We learned all of their names, where they were from, their ages, and which family they belonged to.  We met Malai Tong, a 24 year old elephant who stepped on a land mind when logging in Burma and now has a bum back leg.  However, she is pregnant now and apparently happy, and we saw the baby moving when we met her!  She's due any month now (FYI an elephant is pregnant anywhere from 18 - 22 months!)

Love the quotation marks around my name! :)

The other awesome thing that happened on the second day was my surprise birthday cake!  During lunch, I heard 'Happy Birthday' being sung by lots of people with thick Thai accents and I didn't have to look around to know it was for me.  They delivered the cake to my table and took photos of me.  It was a really special moment because I knew that the park works on donations and the fact that they spent money to get me a cake was really really unnecessary but well appreciated.

That afternoon at 4pm, we had one last elephant feeding and I got some alone time with one of the babies.  The 1 year old eagerly ate the bananas I gave her and what do you know -- let me shake her trunk a bunch of times!

As we drove away from the park that night, I hoped I'd find someone back in Chiang Mai to go get some birthday dinner with, but if I didn't, I had spent an incredible birthday doing something that I'd dreamt of doing for a long time, and it had totally surpassed my expectations.

Shaking with one of the babies!

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Go here to learn more about the park and the elephants I spent 2 days with!