Yesterday was my first full day in Phuket and I was offered a tour around the island by Manit, my friendly guesthouse owner. After a breakfast of Ngor and coconut yoghurt we were on our way. FYI: Ngor is a fruit otherwise known as rambutan and kind of looks like an alien. It's spiky and you open it with your fingernails to reveal a sticky inner fruit with a seed inside. I would attach a photo here, only I can't seem to figure out how to do this from my iPhone. Watch this space. Where was I? Oh yeah, 'the tour'.
We drove south and looked at somebody the beaches and I soon picked up on Manit's love of fishing, an cars. He showed my his cute little - pink - fishing boat and I marvelled at the size of Phuket. It's a lot bigger than I was expecting. Mid morning we arrived at Wat Chalong, Phuket's largest monestary. It was breathtaking. Just to be in and around such beautiful sacred surroundings really was quite exceptional. After about half an hour of wondering I noticed that loud explosions seemed to be going off every ten minutes or so. This was coming from a man who was entering, what looked like, a large chimney and laying out rounds of gunpowder and then lighting it. I learned later from Manit that the loud noise was supposed to bring good luck. I sure don't think it's going to bring much good luck to the man who is lighting it, he's probably going to be deaf in a week.
At this point I will say that before going to Thailand I had vowed to myself that I wouldn't do anything that supported the use and abuse of animals. One such thing was riding an elephant. Well, Manit, he talked me into it. I need to learn to be more assertive dammit! It makes me sad to see such beautiful intelligent creatures being treated like shite. The minute I was on top of the elephant I knew it was wrong. It started pissing down with rain, I got a sinking feeling in my gut, and I looked over my right shoulder to see something I would rather not have. An 'elephant rider' was atop an elephant sitting on his head and the elephant was swaying from side to side - doing what elephants do - so he yelled something in Thai and got his bull hook and swing it and whaked the elephants head. There was a gleaming red stain in the middle of the elephants head and I felt like crying. Instead I had another 30 minutes to endure. I was reminded of a conversation I'd had with Mum about driving once upon a time. She had told me a story about being in the passenger seat while Pop was driving erratically and she'd asked him to stop the car so she could get out. Mum had said to me 'If you're ever in a car and don't feel safe, ask the driver to stop and just get out'. Well sitting high up there I wanted to scream 'abort! Abort!' Only I couldn't. I was locked in. So I promised myself, and my lovely 30 year old elephant by the name of Natalie that I would do my best to never do something of the sort again. If you have a gut feeling. Go with it.
oh no those poor elephants! You're so right though Tess, always go with your gut instinct. Loving your posts xxxx
ReplyDeleteJust caught up with your blog after wondering how you are. The elephant ride is bringing on tears, I guess when we're in a situation like that it's so hard for us, cos as tourists we can't really do or say anything so not participating is our only option. I remember with Dad I vowed just not to participate in his craziness, but it's very hard not to offend. There's a wonderful place in Thailand I saw a programme about where they rescue and rehabilitate elephants, here's a link to one I found, unsure if it's the one in the programme,http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/.
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