Thailand Evaluation 219.4

Thailand

Likes: Pirate the otter at the Zoo, the best beaches in the world (so far), warm seas, seeing the in-laws in an unfamiliar setting, getting a free upgrade at the hotel which included free afternoon tea and private infinity pool, all the islands in the south, people nonchalantly saying 'oh no we don't have that' when you order anything off a menu', the food at the Shangri-la Bangkok- out of this world!,

Dislikes: Thai bra sizes being different to British (it appears that 34 inches in Britain is 40 in Thailand- i feel like a heifer), cuts getting infected at the zoo, not being able to renew our visa's in country, the noise of a Gibbon at 7.30am (breakfast time), rain,

Sunrises witnessed: well 14 thanks to the Zoo project, and another 22 happily slumbered through

Places visited: Phuket, Koh Lanta, Koh Phi Phi, Bangkok, Hua Hin.

Number of times i wanted to come home: 2. It was hard seeing people from home and not wishing to experience more familarness and Britishness.

Favourite hotel: Phi Phi Villages, Phi Phi.

Favourite memory: Getting up and taking a boat to Bon Island, to slumber on beds as comfy as a mattress and wander in the warm waters, mixed with reading, snoozing and eating good food. Returning home tired and relaxed.

Worst day: Once it rained almost all day when we wanted to sunbath, haha. oh the hardships.

Favourite new food or drink: Pineapple curry

Best/worst smell: Worst- Our bathroom at the zoo. So bad we didn't go in there and used the communal resources instead.

Best/worst noise: On a small wooden walkway at night over a square pond at the Everson resort a single frog started croaking, then another until a whole frog chorus occurred. Wonderful

Number of Monkeys to be fed at the Zoo each day: 196

Number of Monkeys fed on the days I organised the feeding team:195

Number of times i called the Animal rescue centre a 'Zoo' in front of the manager: 1 (i learnt my lesson)

Animals I met that were missing at least one limb: 9

Best Norwich City Victory: 2:1 away win against Sheffield United. (the in-laws and Us watched the late goal on the I-touch).

Weirdest country fact: Despite Thailand being a place where it is expected and polite to wear tops that cover your shoulders and knee length shorts, why can you only by hot pant shorts??

New thing learnt: I like animals, but i still cant help be mystified by people dedicating their whole lives to help them. Although a Nobel cause, i cant understand why people think it is better to help animals than defenseless children. This trip has reconfirmed and strengthened many of my convictions that i knew i already held as thoughts.

Country Score: 219.4

Talking with Blue

This is Blue the Macaw. He speaks English and Thai. Yesterday when i was cleaning him out, in a small 2m square cage, complete with numerous poles, platforms and bars (fun for him, difficult for me to duck under), he was following me around and quite often getting quite close to my face. Eventually this got too much, so i said directly to him, ' Look Blue, I'm sorry but i cant understand if you are being nice or horrible?' to which he said perfectly clearly, 'Horrible'. So i got out the cage.

My new Bra

I have been bra shopping and the new bra that i got (minus matching pants :( ) is a sizer bigger than i normally buy. Therefore i have been examining the current environment i find myself in to look for a correlation between behaviour change and bra size. Here are my suggestions:

1) Monkey wee on the skin. Most of the Gibbons here have cages with floors a couple of meters above the ground in an effort to get them to understand that they live in the trees not on the ground. This means that several paths go under Gibbons cages and certain Gibbons have perfected the art of peeing on people as they swing overhead. its quite an art, and quite a way to start the day at 6.30 am.

2) Eating copious amounts of Thai food. All food is provided at the zoo so i eat peanut butter toast for breakfast, but come lunch time am starving so usually dig into two plates of cooked Thai food (typically rice, satay potato's, stir fry vegetables, sweet and sour chicken, bread crumbed potato, fried corn cakes). Bu dinner time it is cooler and i am still hungry so i usually have 2 more plates of Thai food from the buffet. Perhaps its not only my chest size which has increased?

3) learning monkey. Most monkeys communicate with us in some way, Xss's favourite does a repetitive kissing motion then turns around and scratches his backside and front at the same time while looking back. Apparently this is nice. They also make lots of noise and it is hard to not copy them and try to interact through crazy facial actions whilst feeding them. Are bizarre facial exercises responsible?

4) Constantly standing in poo. Everyday at 9am, straight after breakfast each team has a 'special task' these often include cleaning out pools in the enclosures. ALL of the animals enjoy swimming and then pooing in their pools. Therefore each day we take off our shoes and climb into a partically drained pool to bucket out the rest of the water and scrub it with a handheld brush before it is refilled. Is bear poo a brilliant fertiliser for growth?

5) Sunshine and water. It is hot here, we know its going to get hotter as we travel more, so we try not to complain, but most of the time it feels like someone is holding a hand dryer to your skin as soon as you step out of the shade. This is accompanied by drinking mugs full of water on each and every break. Is an increase in energy input responsible?

6) Living in mild peril. Some of the monkeys here are a little aggressive when you go near their cages and you have to stay back from them. Even ones missing limbs like Bandit below (one armed bandit!) try to scare you. The animal most people are scared of though is Randy the horn-bill (whom Xss actually likes) i was in his cage cleaning out (very hurriedly at that) whilst someone else distracted him from outside the cage with a stick (he thinks he's a dog). However, that got boring and he swooped for me. As i ducked in a hurry i fell on my backside. It was funny, but i then ran out the cage as quick as possible. Does fear give off a growth hormone?

Bandit giving a thoughful pose

7) Small Thai peoples. Thai women are undoubtedly smaller than me in everyway. It is indeed possible that the whole country mislabels their lingerie on purpose just to boost self esteem? Seems nice if this is true. In England we like to steal self esteem and when you go to buy your wedding dress, the day you want to seem slimmest, they mark up the sizes so that you order a dress 2 sizes bigger than you normally wear. That almost made me cry. Isn't that sad.

well, there are numerous positive correlations here but as to them being cause and effect? All i can say is that i am happy, relaxed and smiling inside and out so who cares.

My so called Zoo life

My Favourite- the Loris', who unfortunately sleep during the day. lazies.

I love it. I really do. I am not sure if part of it is that i am in one place for long enough to do washing AND hang it up to dry, or that they cook all my meals, give me innumerable breaks (in fact its more like the work is a break from sitting around reading and chatting), and i get to spend time with Xss.

Recently Xss had been discussing whether in the future we might be able to run a hotel together, and then came to the conclusion that we cant. As he wont agree with all the decisions i want to make. He is so unreasonable! BUT perhaps we could run a zoo together.....

Our day starts at 6.30am everyday, which sometimes makes me feel like i might be going on a childhood holiday when you get up in the middle of the night to leave. Well, i am romanticising that a bit, really i feel like i want to die, but social pressures to meet the rest of my team means i get up. We then feed some sort of animals. Initially as you are shown around you think, 'oh, this is great you can get really close to the animals and could if you wanted to touch them through the cage', as soon as you've been around to feed anything you think, 'oh, not so great, the animals try to 'touch YOU' through the cage'. I got grabbed by a Gibbon my first day, he wouldn't let go but someone freed me with no shirt rippage!

The Bears, waiting to 'touch me'.

We generally then clean out, clean a pool in an enclosure or prepare some treats for the animals. Then there's lunch at 12, a selection of Thai dishes, and nothing to do until 2pm. In the afternoon we generally feed again and tidy things up, lock up and put the rubbish out. Xss has been doing different things to me and today played football with a long billed bird (i don't know what exactly) for about 15 minutes. Unfortunately towards the end of this time Randy (the bird) said he would not support Norwich City, as he wanted to remain neutral since there are so many nationalities at the zoo. There are about 30 volunteers here of all ages and nationalities. But since English is the best language in the world, everyone speaks English to each other.

One of the five elephants, June. They really are quite ugly. Here she is refusing to got the way the people 'walking her' want her to go.

Zoo..m

We are here at the Zoo! There are several Oxfam shop animals, including a dog with literally no back half, yet he still manages to walk around with just his front legs, he is called Bruce, and i quite like him, a tiger called Meow, who walks very shakily, and many more healthy Gibbons, Loris', Bears, Otters (one called Pirate- sure to be a favourite), crocodile (this lives just outside our room (in a cage)), and some random other things. We will be working 6.30am until 5pm with an hour for lunch and an hour for breakfast, so it'll be hard work for sure. However, it is simply just the next adventure in the series for Xss and I.

It was our wedding anniversary on the 3rd and Xss took me to a roof top restaurant at the Banyan tree which was lovely, as I got a rose and a cocktail served in dry ice afterwards! Really great. The view of Bangkok was ok, but the view of Xss was better! hahah. Four years in and he is increasingly a bigger and better friend than i ever dreamed of. Anyway, we then stayed at the Bangkok Hilton (hotel not prison) on the 6th as this was the night we arrived on our honeymoon there, mostly thanks to me booking flights on the wrong day. That's why I'm not a real adult.

So this morning at 10am a Thai man in a woolly hat (its not warm enough for him, its only 34 degrees C) and shades arrived and hung around outside the Hilton in his 'car' to collect us and bring us to the Zoo. I say car as it was really a sound system on wheels. This guy can afford a speaker system that nearly fills his car (Xss's feet were on the bass speaker and mine on the mixing box), but cannot afford to fix the massive crack in his windscreen! As we drove through Bangkok he buckled up his seat belt into the passenger side seat as his was missing (presumably taken out to make room for the microphone and Karaoke system he is installing next week), but then promptly unbuckled as soon as we were out of town. It was a great reminder of all that we have been away from for the previous few weeks whilst staying with Xss's parents. We have easily adopted part of Thai culture- just go with the flow, it'll all work out in the end. We arrived at the Zoo in one piece. Objective achieved.

How to tell when you are on holiday with your in-laws....

1) You expend vast amounts of energy restraining yourself from throwing the small items you would typically launch at Xss when no one is looking. This is usually thin plastic cups, sweets, pens, etc

2) Your accommodation has its own private infinity pool. This was a free upgrade and worth every penny. A villa with free room service, pool, swinging sofa, kitchen and unlimited golf buggy rides anywhere. Oh and free afternoon Tea at the cafe everyday.

3) You no longer feel like people will ask you politely to leave the nice hotel you stay in as you don't look the part (are wrinkles not in fashion?) Just let them try with Glastonbury around!

4) You don't have to carry your backpack an inch. It magically moves itself. Or more likely bellhops carry it to the room before i get there.

5) All rooms have TV's with English movies on!

6) You make a list of British TV shows you want to watch after discussing Christmas and new TV shows that are out. Is it wrong to want to watch Upstairs Downstairs?

Increasingly this situation is making us miss home and romanticise the cold weather and dark nights. But then i remember certain times when i am standing on a dark council estate, untying my bike in the rain wondering how i am going to get to my next destination and not be soaking wet with frost enthused rain water skipped up my back?

However, our next stop is the Thai Zoo, where we get to pretend to be zoo keepers and do nothing more productive than pay to feed and clean up after wild animals we are not allowed to touch. For some reason we thought this would be a laugh. I guess not everyone gets to meet the Thai zoo keeper version of themselves.

Thailand- the land of the Hats and Kohs.

Thailand is such a welcome relief after freezing our asses off in Japan and America. We both have hearty coughs but now we also have tans again as well.

A typical day involves getting up for breakfast before ten, going to our room to 'sun-lotion up', laying on the beach or near a pool for as many hours as possible, reading and taking a few dips in any nearby water (today even a puddle would do its so hot), a possible late lunch at a beach side bar, in the afternoon i like to fit in a sleep along with repetition of morning activities. Then we take some photos of the sunsetting, go home shower and dress, to eat dinner and then sleep. All in all the pace of life has changed a lot from Japan where we woke up each morning in a hurry to try and fit in all the sight seeing and cultural experiences we could, often missing lunch in the process. However, i cant understand how i have had a half started letter to True next to my bed for almost a week now, and cannot find the time to finish it. hahah. Its amazing how you adapt so quickly to each new place and speed of life.

We have also been joined by Xss's parents, which is a welcome change as we now have some other source of conversation!

sorry, issues with uploading photos again, talk amongst yourselves as i try to rectify this problem right now........