Thailand Journal Entry #7

I'm very sunburned and covered in rashes and itchy. But happy.

I can't stop listening to the conversation of the American people next to us - the whole discussion is a face-palm. They're basically trying to explain why they're all more British than each other.

Aek thinks the way we say "banana" is funny - he always imitates us and goes "banAna" with a real nasally "A." We do say it like that, too. He also makes fun of how British people talk which makes me very happy - the way they say "wa-ah" for "water" and "wa-ah bah-ole."

We bathed 5 elephants at four o'clock - Mae Perm and Jokia and three others including the one who's been hit by a car and has a fucked up pelvis and hips. Not as fun as yesterday because the Canadians weren't there and I was stuck next to Brooklyn. Fucking Brooklyn. I got her wet, apparently. While in the river throwing buckets of water on giant muddy elephants she gets upset with me for sabotaging her dryness.

Ashley and Jessica sometimes speak Hungarian to each other so that the rest of us won't know what they're saying. I have to assume they're talking about us, right? I mean, why else would they switch languages?

Now the American/Brits are patting themselves on the back for all of the dogs they've rescued. It's mostly this one woman in a purple shirt with a bun and glasses.

I'm sitting with the Canadians at the main hut. We're all journal-ing and chatting. Yesterday after the elephant bathing we took a group shower in our bathing suits. Alex and I talked for a long time post-elephant-bathing today and it was really fun. I got to talk to Thor and Ruby one-on-one too - more on that later.

They did a welcoming ceremony for the new arrivals tonight. I didn't want to go (secretly) but the Canadians were going so I tagged along - instantly regretted it when I saw how hard-to-sneak-out-of the ceremony was. We sat cross-legged on these square mats and a Thai guy got up in front and said a bunch of stuff I couldn't hear. Then they took this little platform thing and gave it to another guy and some Thai elders. The guy did a lot of chanting and handed the box/platform off to two young Thai boys who went to put it in the river - it symbolized all of our bad luck.

Then he took a small stand draped with white ribbons and did some more chanting and then singing, dipping a flower in what I assume was something akin to holy water and flinging the water at the people around him. (I was way in the back.) Then he gave the ribbons to the elders, and those of us in the audience could approach them, one-by-one, and they would tie one of the blessed ribbons around your wrist. (Left for girls, right for boys.) The ribbons were good luck and you were supposed to take them off after 3 days, to maintain their whiteness. I was the only one in the audience who chose not to get a good-luck-ribbon, much to the chagrin of the pushy woman behind me who told me to go up and get one. (She was one of the American/British dog-rescuing tourists.)

My reasons, although I did not detail them aloud, were these:

1. I don't believe in luck, but I know myself and my specific obsessions and compulsions. I am not superstitious or religious, but I would still not be able to ever throw the ribbon away as a result of my weird paranoia that maybe this is the one religion that is right about the world and I have just disrespected the gods and will face eternal punishment. Letting something I don't even believe in have power over me like that would be very frustrating.

2. I don't want to trivialize a spiritual belief or tradition that other people believe in whole-heartedly.

Later the Dog Messiah behind me criticized the "intelligence of the group," (she literally said that, I wouldn't have written it down otherwise). I don't regret my decision.