An Unintentional Adventure - To Thailand We Go

So it’s a Friday night and you’ve had a couple of wines, and as you scroll through BBC news you watch a horrific and violent attack on elephants in India… with that vino empowered rage, and utter vindication for any action, you jump online and start searching for opportunities to be a HELP rather than a hindrance… you sign up in the wee hours of the morning… you SHALL volunteer with the elephants… You SHALL make a difference.

Upon waking it is your realisation that you have, in some ways fortunately, signed up to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand, rather than India. But upon consideration, determine that all elephants are worth saving, regardless of their nationality… One should avoid prejudice, shouldn’t one?

It is something that is going to happen in the future, another time… nothing to worry about. But the 10 months between signing up and D-Day flew by quickly… and suddenly there were four weeks until you fly to Thailand… and spend a week in the jungle… hiking every day and living in EXTREMELY close proximity to other humans… (a thing I’m not particularly fond of…)

And as usual, that ‘virtue’… rather, that personality flaw, prevents you from cancelling the thing you’ve said you’re going to do. Regardless of how PETRIFIED you are of doing the thing, no matter the fact you are having ACTUAL recurring nightmares about doing the thing… knowing that you’re possibly not even physically capable of doing the thing… PRIDE…

Ah what a business pride is, and what disastrous scenario’s it gets us into… and sometimes, what exceptionally life changing accidents…

So, four weeks out, I madly email my fitness queen highschool friend begging her for an exercise regime to, at the very least, improve my fitness enough that I don’t need to be carried back to the village by poor far-smaller-than-me village people, or heaven forbid, a donkey-drawn cart. My imagination going wild for all the dreadful things that could occur!

Between mad exercising, I stock up on Tetley Tea & Longlife Milk, its one thing to be out in the jungle, its another not to have a nice cup of tea in the morning. I worry endlessly about these ‘good humans’, the ‘volunteering’ type of humans, likely all vegan, if not at the very least vegetarian. Hiking with their well warn boots and dreadlocks and flowing armpit hair… I know they’ll take one look at me and wonder ‘what… POSSESSED her?! She clearly doesn’t belong here”, and I’m inclined to agree.

I argue with myself as to whether to take the backpack or the wheely bag… will they think I’m a bit of a princess if I take a wheely bag? But its far more convenient to find everything… I try on different tops, do they look ‘jungle-ee’? What about Sammy? Sammy the soft-toy dog… but if I DON’T take him and there is only one pillow, I’ll regret it… he makes an EXCELLENT pillow… but if I DO take him… I’m a grown woman with a soft-toy… in… the… jungle.

As you can see I was calm, cool and collected… and all of a sudden I was in Chaing Mai, the smell of incense in the air, people wandering about sipping from coconuts and me, about to being my adventure.

Strangely, upon meeting Jade, one of the employees from the sanctuary, I felt an immediate connection. In later conversations she said the same. I was still intimidated, with her birds next of dreadlock hair balancing on her head, shoeless and cross-legged, informing myself and the other volunteers of what to expect… two delightful Canadians, three Americans and a short-lived Swede.

Said Swede had missed her flight so arrived (as my room-mate) at 2am… and upon arrival proceeded to spend the following three hours explaining her amazing adventures in Cambodia, washing her underwear in the sink and clarifying whether “no shoulders and knees” to be shown in the village, meant you could still show your midriff… my answer, to her surprise… was no…

The next day we piled into the back of a Hi-Lux truck, cattle style, and started bouncing our way through Chaing Mai, up one mountain and down another, for five hours.

Some people say I’m brave, adventurous…. That I’m clearly SO confident… Do you know how exhausting it is to pretend to be like that? I’m the girl who ate her lunch in her car at University for fear of… well something… Its exhausting… exhausting…. to keep your cool, when you’re sitting in the back of a truck with these perfectly constructed individuals, one whose dedicated their life to saving animals, two others whose hiking boots and health practically glow from them to the point you consider wearing sunglasses just to look at them… the only person who made me feel redeemed was the Swede, who, with a full face of make-up, explained that as a flight attendant she was shocked at the complete lack of safety sitting in the back of the truck with no windows or seatbelts, and furthermore, that without said window, it was very windy, resulting in her perfectly straightened hair whipping her in the face (I refrained from suggesting she tie her hair up…)

Sidenote… OOOHHHH THE AIR! After the last six months in China, this was the first breath of fresh air I’d had, and the further into the countryside we got, the sweeter that glorious green scented oxygen… Not to mention the trees, the water, the shimmering sunshine… Thailand so far? Heaven.

After winding up and down and all around, we finally took a right off the tarmac and onto a white gravel ‘road’… maybe track is a more appropriate description.

I was somewhat apprehensive of what the ‘village’ would actually be. In China, oftentimes I’ve expected a Disney-Mulan version of a place, only to arrive to a plastic-tastic cement jungle…

As we carried on down the gravel track I entered, not only a foreign land, but a different time. Chickens darted before us, to the honk of the Hi-Lux horn, women tended fires, puppies bounced excitedly at the commotion of the incoming vehicle… I don’t think I saw a brick of cement… all was wood and…. 

Did I mention the Oxen? Yes… there was Ox…

I always thought the concept of purgatory was a negative idea… but upon arrival I was at once in heaven, with the nature and simplicity and extraordinary realisation that something outside Western ‘modernity’ existed…. And the absolute hell of being the Emu amongst the Ostriches… similar looking, but very very very different. So maybe infact… purgatory, is really just the middle… and that is where I found myself.

I jumped off the tray of the truck and pointed, embarrassed, to the wheelly bag on the roof… (yes I went with ease and more logical packing options versus the ‘traveller’ look, and I stand by my decision… figure it represents some level of personal growth…) and was directed by another possibly flowing arm-pit-haired woman to follow “Bea”.

Now Bea… soon as I saw her I knew she wasn’t a fan of me, she didn’t so much look me up and down, but there was a “something” as she walked me down around the village to my ‘homestay’. Her though, this beaming, well-adjusted girl, with excellent taste in earrings, in her mid-twenties, was soon to discover that we were one and the same…

We walked through the village, and goodness knows whether we took a left or a right… I had no idea where I was going or where I was before, even in the smallest village I’ve ever been in. Approaching a particular homestead with a fully grown dog that looked like a tiny version of The Willow (my parents dog / my favourite thing) Bea introduced me to a gorgeous and smiling woman whom I would be living with for the next 7 days.

“DaBlu” means hello, goodbye AND thankyou… its an excellent language! And so, I DaBlu’d and took in my new home.

So, two story wooden slat, hand-made home… You (after taking off your shoes) walk up two sets of stairs and then there is an open ‘veranda’ (traditional space for eating food with family/friends), then a door into my bedroom with a mattress on the floor with a pink mosquito net. The walls and the roof don’t completely touch, so at all times you can hear the flowing river and the cats and dogs and oxen and pigs. Back down stairs there is a western style toilet (endlessly happy at this revelation!), next to this is a bucket of water (there is no plumbing, so this enables flushing), and a showerhead – only cold water, but still pretty amazing).

I dropped my bag. Sat down, well squatted down, and breathed. In… and out… and… “You can do this…”

That evening I cooked dinner with my homestay Mum, a lovely, beautiful lady who was rather impressed with my chopping skills! Admittedly I did flick some vegies out of the skillet while trying to prove my culinary skills - fortunately the wee pup quickly hid my errors...

And so it began. My unexpected adventure...

The next week was the most extraordinary six days of my life…