Thailand Journal Entry #1

5-9-13
In-flight to LAX from Detroit.

5-12-13, 7:00 a.m.
It's Sunday - I feel like a human again. There's that Firefly quote about the cows - River says it. She says they weren't cows when they were on the ship but then they see the sky and remember what they are. Is it bad that that makes perfect sense to me?
27 hours in the air - I still have no concept of the fact that I'm halfway around the world.
We got to the Elephant Nature Park yesterday. I promptly fell asleep upon hitting the pillow at about 6:30 p.m. Thailand time and woke up today at 5:30 a.m. feeling a million times better. I can hear an elephant trumpeting from my porch.
I came to peace overnight with the bugs and salamanders and ghetto toilets. My favorite thing about this place so far is that it's crawling with cats and dogs - they're everywhere. Yesterday I found a cat walking up to me and as we stood there cats started emerging from the foliage all around us. I guess there are around 400 cats and dogs here, as well as buffalo and cows. (And one peacock and I think one monkey.) We're leaving on the elephant welcome tour soon. Thailand is fucking beautiful. My initial observation was that driving on the roads here is terrifying.
At breakfast today I met three pre-vet students from MSU. We talked veterinary for a while but they generally seemed uninterested in meeting me. (And a little snooty.)

Thai Phrases:

Elephant: "sh-yahng"
Dog: "Mah"

This is Aek

Cat: "Meahw" (basically a cat noise)
Banana: "g-rdoy" (this one is tricky)
Pumpkin: "fuk tong"
Stop: "how"

There are several good and bad things happening - I will try to get to them all.

Thor is from Bangkok, she's very skinny. Aek is our guide here at the ENP. He speaks English well, although with a strong accent. (I was the first to figure out what he was saying yesterday when he said the dogs had "freeze" - he meant fleas.) He still manages to be very crass. I like him but I have a feeling that he makes fun of us in Thai to the other employees. I'm going to work hard enough to earn their respect this week.

Ruby is a guide-in-training who is an example of an apparently common phenomenon here in Thailand that Aek refers to as "lady-boy." Thor pointed a lady-boy out to me on our drive here from the office in Chiang Mai. To me it looked like an attractive woman in a little black jumpsuit riding on the back of a motorbike. (The motorbikes are 50% of why the roads are so scary.) Ruby is a biological man who identifies as a woman. She introduced herself as "Ruby, R-U- B-Y." Aek has not stopped teasing her about being a lady-boy. She doesn't seem to mind.

The turd-pumpkin.

I like Thor - I think she can tell when I'm unhappy. I asked her if the staff here doesn't like the volunteers and if we get in the way. She sort of said no. I've just been feeling useless - nobody will let me do anything or tell me what to do. There's nothing I hate more than standing around. YES, Thai elephant handler, I know that I'm useless. You don't have to glare at me. I think being in a foreign country is bringing out my paranoia. THEY'RE ALL TALKING ABOUT ME.

The elephant handlers are called "mahouts."
On our walking tour, Aek showed us an elephant turd with a pumpkin (fuk-tong) plant growing out of it. (fuk-king. Aek told us that whenever we hear people saying these things in Thai, they are not saying unsavory things about us, they are talking about plants.)