28 February 2013

Return to the Forest

Over on the right, I have included a link to the documentary:  

Return to the Forest
 
it's only 31 minutes in length and a must see. My understanding is that it will be viewable on VIMEO until 28th March (possibly longer), coincidentally the last full day of my trip. 
It documents the desperate situation of the Asian elephant in Thailand and the battle to save them, the forests that they live in and their co-dependency.

21 February 2013

Time is zooming by



Time is zooming by. Just two more weeks now and the final bits and pieces are coming together in preparation for my trip.

I arrive in Chiang Mai late on Friday 8th March after about 24 hours of travel (17 hours of flying) and will spend three nights at the U Chiang Mai hotel. On Monday morning, March 11th I will be picked up at 8:00am and head out to Elephant Nature Park, about a 1 hour (60km) drive north of the city. I will spend two full weeks there volunteering - feeding, washing and playing with the elephants, food preparation - and a bit of ele-poo scooping too! The evening of March 24th I return to Chiang Mai for five more nights at U Chiang Mai and time to do more sightseeing.

 


If you'd like to buy an elephant lunch, click here:
   
www.elephantnaturepark.org/howyoucanhelp.htm


Reading so much about the work of Lek Chailert at Elephant Park these past months, I'm very excited to be going there and being of some help to all of the elephants, dogs, cats, goats, the water buffalo herd and a moon bear. 

I’m happy my new iPhone5 arrived this week as it will come in handy. I’ll also have my laptop, so fingers crossed that there is good internet connection at ENP! ..... I'll be posting here as often as I can.

7 February 2013

Four weeks and counting



It's just one month today and I’ll be on my way. Things are falling into place in preparation for the trip – I’ve checked in with the Travel and Vaccination Centre, taken my Typhoid vaccination, have some money exchanged into Thai Baht, my passport is good and the packing list is being fine tuned almost daily.

I have so far kept to my New Year’s resolution of learning one Thai word or phrase each day since January 1st until my departure day, another twenty eight more to go! So far I can say hello, thank you, order a coffee and ask directions to the washroom …. all very useful and important stuff.

I’m hoping to keep this blog going throughout my trip, perhaps not as wordy as some might be, but there will be plenty of photos accompanied by the details of that day’s events.

Over to the right are some links to pages of interest related to this trip.