Buffetting : CM Day 2

The drive to camp, was as awful as any drives if had before in Chiang Mai, but the fresh air in the camp on the instance I got off the car was energizing.

Tork , our tour guide, ranger, whatever you call him showed us around on the basic locations we will be moving about in the camp including the dog and cat shelters, the meeting quarters, the dining quarters, the viewing bays and platforms, as well as the gift shop.

The first trio we encountered was Yindee, his aunt Mae Lae Tong, and the mom Si Pei

To be honest I have no idea how to differentiate each of them, maybe a longer stay will change that. T

Next up we went for lunch in the dining area with full vegetarian buffet.the food was just homey, maybe a little tinge of northern Thailand taste.

The weird phenomenon I noticed in the weekly volunteer program is, I'm the freakin only non Thai Asian here!! There are people from London, Perth, Michigan and heck, Barcelona but I'm the only sepet from Kuala Lumpur.

It took toll a little on me when there were these girls from London and Manchester talking with me stuck in the middle. I got lost when they started talking about their traveling routes in west coast of America.

 I broke the awkward moment getting myself a 200 baht cap when I started to get really stucked in between.

After lunch was documentary on the dark ends of elephant tourism, which gave me some questions on the differences end have with the other training camps out there

1- the ceremony to break the elephants down,paja, how will it fare when it comes to the traditionalists out there?

2-caring with love is one thing after another, but the restrain in chain part, how do you go about in treating those elephants needing it?

3- mahout training and elephant riding, how do you see it? Permissible if not hurting the elephants in general!

4- human intervention as it is. If the best thing is to send the elephants back into the wild, we are also intervening right now putting them into sanctuaries. What about those owning them personally? Will you see this as loopholes instead?

Picking up my room was a little intense, because there were 10 times more ladies than guys in this week, Pete knows why. In the end I got a room, all to myself *floats in air *

Just to realize, heck a roommate would be so much fun than being aimless looking for a table during the meal hours. Bummer

Anyways, the afternoon we get to bath the elephant, it was fun and intense; fun because you get to splash everyone else and the elephant, intense because you get to be so close to the elephants.

We wrapped up , showered and headed back to the dinning area for a blessing ceremony before our dinner. It was like how monks blessed me back during weasel, just that it's the village elderly ones doing this here instead of the monks.

I ended the night with a hard time to sleep, with scratches and boils all over my calves the next morning. It was a good Monday, looking forward to Tuesday.

The nice thing happened today w

as meeting with the Millards. Susan the mom was really nice, and I have to say she and her husband, Bill did a bang up job raising Nathaniel into a fine young man.