Finding Sanctuary at Elephant Nature Park

The mighty elephant. I think my appreciation originated with Babar. There was a phase when each day after school I would come home and immediately pop our worn copy of the animated film into the VCR. I had a stuffed animal too but I'm not sure if he's still hiding out at my parents' house or has moved on to greener pastures.

I missed out on the camel rides in Morocco and India, so when I came to Thailand I was fully intent on doing an elephant trek; it seemed so exotic and, of course, everyone does it. But when I started looking up camps to go to, I had a change of heart. On Koh Chang, even the "best" (i.e. allegedly the most humane) camp had mixed reviews. Most TripAdvisor reviewers raved about the experience, except for the unlucky few who got paired with an abusive mahout (handler) and witnessed their elephant getting beaten with a metal rod until it screamed and sometimes bled. So instead I waited until I got to Chiang Mai, where I took a day trip out to Elephant Nature Park - a sanctuary for retired elephants and rescued dogs.  

Elephants were commonly used in Thailand for logging until the industry was banned in the early 1980s, after which most were appropriated for touristic purposes, either by performing in shows or giving rides. Younger ones are also taken to the streets of some major Thai cities, because they help net their owners more money in one night than the average Thai makes in a week. But no matter the job, the process of domesticating an elephant is absolutely brutal. A young elephant (typically female, because males are more aggressive by nature) is placed in a cage so small she can't move for several days, during which a group of men break her spirit through physical and psychological abuse - prodding her with sticks that have sharp nails sticking out of the end and not allowing her to sleep. Sometimes they gouge her eyes.

About a decade ago, a woman nicknamed Lek established the park as a haven for elephants, rescuing them from the conditions described above. At Elephant Nature Park, the residents can roam free, bathe in the river that runs through the property and get access to medical care and all the food they can eat. It's truly heaven for elephants who are blind from abuse or have broken backs after their former owners repeatedly forced them to mate. Ironically the sanctuary is located adjacent to a number of trekking camps, but our guide says that they maintain a decent relationship by offering free veterinary services. 

The park is a bit expensive to visit (2500 baht for one day), but that's how it manages to stay open. And, in most cases, they have to buy the elephants' freedom in order to save them from cruelty. We didn't do much beyond feeding and bathing the animals and walking around the grounds, but I honestly couldn't have asked for more; I was just in awe the entire time being so close to them. It's also possible to stay overnight, and up to one week, which allows you to do more hands-on activities.  (Little known fact: you can also volunteer to help with the dogs, in which case room and board are free).

In an ideal world the abuse would cease, but the demand from tourists keeps the malpractice alive. So until more visitors show an interest in playing with and caring for the elephants over riding them, the cycle will just continue. 

Falling for Chiang Mai

Despite being Thailand's second-largest city, Chiang Mai has a wonderfully friendly, laid-back vibe with a historical center full of Buddhist temples, coffee shops (with free wifi), delicious street food (a meal will set you back 1-2 USD) and a surprising number of vintage and second-hand clothing boutiques. Call it quirky, hipster, offbeat or whatever other alternative synonym, but the more I wandered around, the more I was reminded of the film Last Life in the Universe.  (Which, if we're being entirely accurate, was actually shot in Bangkok, but whatever it was still my first glimpse of Thailand).

It's the general atmosphere, I guess - a strange serenity beneath which lies a hazy malaise. (Dare I say it's vaguely Lynchian in that respect?) But even years later, I can't think about that movie without also remembering the boy who introduced it to me; who I harbored an all-consuming crush on for much of middle and high school, and who also turned me on to other films that I would later count amongst my favorites. I haven't been in touch with him for quite some time, but I often wonder what he's up to now. (Confession: thanks to Google, I sort of know the answer).

I've never been the type of girl to constantly chase after potential boyfriends, but the amount of wedding and engagement updates polluting my Facebook newsfeed in recent months has got me thinking or, to be perfectly honest, feeling slightly anxious. I thought your (early) twenties was the time to figure yourself out and start a career, not a family.  But to each their own priorities, I suppose.

And yet, these days I find myself reflecting on the last few guys I felt any kind of connection with; the one that I met my last night at Stanford; the platonic friend in Paris who surprised me with a kiss when we said goodbye; the one that I came to know during my last hours in India. (If there's one generalization I can make about my personal life it's that the timing is always suboptimal). I know that it's dangerous to spend too many thoughts elaborating on the words "what if," but sometimes temptation wins out over logic and reason. 

What if I hadn't left when I did? Where would we be now? 

*** 

If you go... 

Enjoy coffee and unpretentious health food at Bird's Nest Cafe. 

Take a class at Yoga Tree (drop-ins welcome). 

Get a massage, meal or both at the Chiang Mai Women's Prison Massage Center, which equips inmates with vocational skills.

*** 

Cooking in...Thailand

I was preparing to exit the partitioned area designated for women passing through security at Indira Gandhi International Airport, when the agent, before handing back my passport and boarding pass, decided to grill me a little on my next destination.

"What's so special about Thailand?" 

I'm sure she meant it in a friendly way but, in my flustered mind, after someone frisks me all I can think about is getting my personal space back.

"Uh...the food?" 

She smiled, but evidently this was not the answer she was looking for because she repeated the question. Thinking about my imminent flight to Bangkok, the first things that came to mind were boxing matches, burlesque shows and clubbing. Probably not good answers either. I thought harder.

"The Golden Palace! The temples!"

Learned how to make roses out of tomato peels.

Success. She handed over my things and I continued on my way. But as I headed toward my gate, I couldn't help but feel a little indignant. Combining my inner foodie and anthropologist, cuisine speaks volumes about local culture and history, from the ingredients used (indigenous versus introduced through trade) to the cooking methods. I think food is a perfectly valid reason to visit a place, which is why I've been so adamant about taking cooking classes wherever I go (see: Spain, Morocco, India). (On another cultural note, it's interesting to see - taste, rather - how authentic cuisine varies from the Americanized versions I'm used to eating at home).

On my last day on Koh Chang, I went up the coast to the Klong Prao area for a lesson with Ya at Blue Lagoon Cooking School. And, seriously, I cannot say enough good things about this place. First of all, the space: an open-air kitchen and dining area, partially situated over a river. So much attention has been paid to every little detail, from the general atmosphere and lighting to small touches like wrapping each place setting in banana leaves tied with a piece of twine. Presentation - even of the raw ingredients - was paramount; my pickiest chefs at LCB would have been pleased.

And then there's Ya -  a cool, funny, knowledgable Thai lady really passionate about food. She took the time to explain the overall significance of various staples of the Thai diet and how they're used beyond cooking, and still managed to teach us how to make a plethora of dishes. Not to brag or anything, but I was the most dedicated student. My peers, two middle-aged French women, left before the dessert course. ("Ooh la la, c'est trop!") So at the end I was rewarded with little bundles of sticky rice wrapped in leaves.

I won't reproduce the recipes here, because we really did cover a lot, but if you're lucky maybe I will impart some of my knowledge upon returning home. Thanks to Ya, I can make some kick-ass pad thai, fried rice, tom yum, tom kha, green mango salad, satay sauce and sticky rice with mango. Feast your eyes below and see more of Koh Chang on Flickr.

Lonely Girl Goes to Lonely Beach

My dad sent me a message a few days after I arrived in India, saying that there was nothing wrong with bailing out early and heading somewhere else. For contrary to what most backpackers would probably advise, I had my complete three-month itinerary fully fleshed out before I left Paris with almost everything booked and ready to go; it's the Type A virgo in me that feared not being able to get to my next destination because maybe the flight was fully or the price had spiked and exceeded my budget. Besides, I like knowing where I'll be in x days. Uncertainty is my greatest fear and enemy.

Lonely Beach.

I wanted to fall in love with India, I suppose because I had such a romanticized, exotic vision of it going in, but the turning point came fairly early on in Agra when I began to feel overwhelmed. Too much heat and humidity. Too much unwanted attention. Too much anxiety over getting sick. (As much as I love dal, curries, naan and rice, I missed being able to enjoy summer staples like salads, fresh fruit and iced drinks). These were a lot of the same issues I had in Morocco, only there it was more tolerable because I was rarely alone.

India has backpackers in the sense that there are plenty of foreigners around carrying weeks/months' worth of stuff on their backs, but it lacks the youth hostel culture that has been integral in me making new friends on this trip. Instead there are guest houses and luxury hotels, neither of which are particularly conducive to meeting people. (I did manage to socialize with other travelers; just noticeably less than in previous countries). I was already heading to Bangkok and Chiang Mai after...but wasn't everyone always raving about Thai beaches?

So, it was decided: I would cut out Jaisalmer, and take a much-needed vacation from vacation. Lonely Beach on Koh Chang seemed appropriate and, conveniently, I could get there by bus directly from BKK airport. (Lonely Beach is actually a misnomer; normally it's party central for the budget traveler set but since this is low season it was pretty chill). The problem was that I'm not good at doing nothing. 

Here is what I did on the first day:

Woke up around 10am.

Ate breakfast.

Went to the beach and sprawled out in the sun.

Thought about writing or taking photos, but pulled neither notebook nor camera out of my bag.

Stayed until it started raining.

Ate a late lunch.

Got a Thai massage.

Still raining.

Got a pedicure.

Walked along the short street that constitutes the "village" of Lonely Beach.

Returned to bungalow and lounged in hammock.

Ate dinner.

Read in bed.

Went to sleep.

Chill time.

As lovely as it was, I knew that I would die of boredom before enduring two more days like that. So I started planning.

The following day I went with Koh Chang Boat Tours out to several nearby islands for a day of swimming, snorkeling and squinting out at the sun reflecting off the endless undulating sea. Except for some initial rockiness that made some passengers sea sick (and for me induced a hangover-like desire to curl up into a ball and not move), it was great. I felt like a little kid again splashing through schools of fish and checking out coral and sea urchins on the ocean floor. 

I got thoroughly sunburnt, which I'm actually okay with because it ought to help restore my skin to being a uniform color. Having eschewed tank tops, shorts and dresses for the last five weeks out of respect for certain sartorially conservative countries, my arms are quite brown as are my perpetually sandaled feet, as though these parts belong to a different ethnicity. (Many Thai people have asked me if I'm Vietnamese, whereas at home my usual shade of pale tends to beg the question, "Are you Korean?")

Next time: I take a Thai cooking class. 

Learning to Adapt

Back in Agra, I was talking to an English traveler one night who said that, for him, the view of the Taj Mahal from the fort perfectly summed up India: crazy traffic - tuk tuks, cars, animals, pedestrians - on a litter-strewn street, a dirty river, and, in the distance, a magnificent monument that didn't quite seem like it belonged there. Based on the cities that I visited, this assessment is fairly accurate.

There are a great many things I noticed about India that, at worst, seemed inefficient or downright useless; at best, illogical. Like how when you book a first class train ticket, instead of automatically getting assigned a seat you have to look for your name on a sheet of paper taped to the side of the train car (which, incidentally, is always somewhere in the middle and not in the front; if you're boarding at a station other than the origin and have only a few minutes to get on there's a good chance you'll be running to find your car in the 20+ long train). Stops aren't announced either, so if you plan to get off before the final destination you'd better hope that the 3G gods are on your side and you can trace your location or else you could be in for an unplanned adventure. Many institutions are more of a bureaucratic headache than their French equivalents - just try buying a train ticket from abroad or getting a SIM card when you arrive. There are no cars allowed within several hundred meters of the Taj Mahal supposedly because of concerns for pollution, but when you consider that the overall air quality is probably worse than that of Los Angeles, I don't know who they're kidding. And, finally, the metro in Delhi has separate lines for men and women to buy tickets; if you're a girl traveling with a guy be prepared to wait.

I won't deny that I was a little scared heading to India on my own, but quickly found that the anxiety was unfounded. Yeah, I played it safe by not going out at night unless I was in a group, taking private transportation instead of public, and not really drinking, but in all honesty my biggest fear turned out to be running out of hand sanitizer an inopportune moments. Or toilet paper. 

I've gotten mixed reactions for saying this but, as an American with no prior experience visiting developing countries, India was like a more exaggerated version of Morocco - i.e. more people, more poverty, more general filth. And I don't mean to rag on these two countries, which possess many redeeming qualities that have hopefully been illuminated in previous posts, but because of my sheltered, upper middle-class background I found them, at times, to be quite difficult. The culture shock was only exacerbated by the fact that I was there a lone, female traveler. 

India and Morocco also felt similar in other ways. They are both patriarchal societies, for example, with strong religious proclivities and a tendency toward general social conservatism. The way I see it, because social interaction - to a certain degree - is discouraged between young men and women (something to do with pre-marital sex being a big taboo?), you end up with all these groups of idle men on the streets. (Girls, I guess, are engaged more with indoor activities). I'm sure unemployment doesn't help. So what I wrote earlier about the kite flying party in Jodhpur being like an awkward middle school dance really applies to pretty much everywhere I went in both countries.

At first I kept looking around, thinking, where the hell are all the girls? But then that would inevitably lead to making eye contact with a guy, who would consequently think that I was interested. So instead I stopped questioning the testosterone-heavy environment and got used to wearing my sunglasses all the time and perfecting ways of looking not-quite at people; instead either at their feet or just over their shoulder. Indian guys didn't catcall like Moroccans, but they certainly stared. A lot. And while I generally found strangers to be friendly enough if I needed directions, it didn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to see how someday the sexual tension might reach a breaking point and result in one of those awful, high-profile gang-rape incidents. Not that everyone is a rapist but, empirically speaking, guys in India do tend to travel in packs, so I can understand how a girl going out alone (or even with a partner, as two of the incidents I'm thinking of took place) and crossing paths with the wrong crowd would be quite vulnerable.

This American student's account of her study abroad in India bears mentioning, not only for its content but also for the fierce debate it has sparked in the comments. Certain things I find implausible, like the hotel incident, because every place I stayed was staffed almost exclusively by men, who I felt were more attentive to me and my wellbeing because I was a girl traveling alone. Other situations, like being followed, I could relate to, though not in as extreme a capacity as her. (It happened in Morocco, too; a guy comes up and introduces himself, then asks if it would bother me if he walked with - read: followed - me. When all else fails, tell him to fuck off. It's like a well-traveled friend once put it: why would a person who was completely secure in his identity, culture and environment want to talk to me, a complete stranger? The answer: you meet a lot of weirdos while on the road). Some of the reactions from readers are just as shocking, because they basically amount to the same as slut-shaming.

It's important to be aware of what's going on in the places that you're visiting, but I don't think that fear should ever hold you back. Bad things happen everywhere all the time, and the media typically makes things seem worse than they are. (I have friends who have been to Egypt in the last few months, for example, and they've all come back unscathed). I listened to David Sedaris recount a taxi ride in a foreign country when the driver asked him, in complete seriousness, how he managed to live in America and not get shot. If all you knew about the US was what you heard on the news (particularly in the last 12 months)  then, yes, that would be a completely logical question.

Now, I've tried to capture some essence of what these places are like through the lens of my camera and my own observations, but I've also been collecting memorable things people have said to me in some of their most candid moments. I won't reveal which country (Morocco or India) the speaker was originally addressing, because I think that they apply equally to both. These quotes paint a fairly grim picture that the guidebooks only hint at when they mention bargaining, beggars and the like but, you know, food for thought. Everything seems a lot rosier when I post on Facebook, Instagram, etc., so for any readers out there planning their own first-time visits: brace yourself. 

"A big part of living here is paying people off." - an expat

"It's lovely until you get to the parts with all the people." - a traveler I met on a train

"I hate my own people." - a local

"I need to get out of this country." - a local (child) 

In an attempt to end this on a semi-positive note, I offer this as suggested further reading. It's a hilarious and potentially offensive account of an American guy's travels through India. I've never gone as far as he has in the acting department, but I have pretended not to understand English just so people will leave me alone. Every day is an adventure...

Humans of India

For a while when people asked to take pictures of me, I categorically said no. It was weird, and it made me feel even more uncomfortable and self-conscious than normal. Then I started making exceptions for women and children (it's usually guys that ask, and god knows what they do with the photo afterwards), but I got annoyed with saying no all the time. People are persistent, and with the heat and humidity I didn't always have it in me to fight. So i reached a compromise of sorts: a picture for a picture.

What bothered me about being photographed by strangers (although I guess I should be grateful to the ones who actually asked my permission; others just pointed their camera phones at me surreptitiously) is the inherent objectification of the act. They only cared that I was a foreigner so that they could show me off to their friends and family. Like the men who have approached me only because I'm Asian and they have yellow fever, who I am as a person doesn't matter to them. (I have so many thoughts on this phenomenon that it's expanded into multiple drafts of several essays, which I hope to publish very soon). 

But with the tables turned and my camera pointed at them, I realized I had a great creative opportunity in my hands. The first few times the photographers became the subjects, I was taken aback that they actually posed without any prompting from me. All guys, mind you. I'd been to enough tourist sites by then to know that Indian guys like to look really stoic in their photos; it always made laugh because, well, it's not a mugshot!  

Inspired by one of my favorite websites, Humans of New York, I tried to talk to the subjects because every person has a story to tell. It worked better with some than with others, but my only wish is that I had taken this approach from the beginning.   

Seen at Albert Hall Museum, Jaipur.

"Why do you want a photo of me?" "Because you are a foreigner, and I am Indian!" 

Seen in Jodhpur. Grandma pulled her away before I could do a proper interview.

Nisha, Banraj and Minu. They saw me walking back from the fort in Jodhpur and chased me down the street saying, "Picture! Picture!" Then they asked for ink pens and rupees, in that order.

Seen at Albert Hall Museum, Jaipur.

I was momentarily stuck in front of their house due to a traffic jam, so they asked me to take their picture. Tried asking how old they were, but they either didn't understand or didn't know.

This little one came out to see what the commotion was about.

Seen at the Wind Palace, Jaipur. When his friend took the photo of us together, he asked me to kiss him. I declined.

The Blue City in Photos

From street level "The Blue City" may seem like a misnomer, but once you get up to the hill where Mehrangarh Fort is, suddenly it all makes sense. There isn't a whole lot to do in Jodhpur, but I think you'd agree from below that there are at least a few things worth seeing.

1. Clock Tower/Sardar Market. There's a place called Mishrilal Hotel that serves THE BEST lassis. 

2. Mehrangarh Fort. 

3. The Blue City from above.

4. Jaswant Thada, a mausoleum not far from the fort.  

5. Autorickshaws. A stand near the guest house. 

More of Jodhpur here.