Nakprasith School and Sam Phran Elephant Grounds

So last week Evan and I got jobs at a school called Nakprasith which, in case you're wondering, is situated in Sam Phran, Nakhon Pathom, and is about 50 km outside of Bangkok. For those of you still using that tired old system of measurement called the mile, that's very roughly thirty miles. With traffic, it takes about an hour to get in or out of Bangkok, which is perfect for weekend trips, although we're so new here that we haven't taken one yet.

More about the school later, and more about Sam Phran later too, because this post is about the Sam Phran Elephant grounds, and our excursion there last weekend.

The Elephant Ground doesn't have only elephants:



Yes, that man is sticking his hand into a crocodile's mouth. And not only into, through the flap at the back of the mouth, and into what I can only presume is the throat. There were three guys doing this at the crocodile show, and they all seemed fairly comfortable putting their heads and hands into the crocs' mouths (very carefully), but when they weren't doing this, they were pretty wary of getting to close to the biting end.




Not just crocodiles either:






But also, plenty of elephants.












They had an elephant show with mock battles, and simulated soccer games, which were very entertaining to watch, although of course the issue of how they are treated does come up. I think they don't lead great lives, but they don't seem appallingly mistreated. I was still glad to be able to see them up close and touch them a bit.

Travel Updates

It turns out that I am horrible at updating blogs. I keep promising that I will put up information, and I keep putting it off... big surprise. I'll see if I can make up for some of the lack of effort.

Let's go back, back in time to when this journey started: Jessica and I arrived at the airport with nearly 300lbs of luggage between our checked and carry-on bags. We wait in line and go to process our E-tickets, that goes well and we print out our tickets. Now the problems start. First Jessica's international tickets do not print, alright not a big deal. She has a different last name than I do, and maybe they just need to verify the information. The lady at the desk comes over and starts to print out baggage labels. All of a sudden she stops and asks if we have a return ticket, we say no as we are unsure of the duration of out stay. She then goes on to say how she can not let us board the flight as we do not have any return ticket... Well that is going to be a problem. We try and reason with her, but she will not budge and we get sent over to the lady at the first class desk. To keep the story brief, and hour and a half later we have two fully refundable tickets to Guam and 40min to make it though security. Off we were on our adventure with an interesting start as well. After we arrived in Bangkok we have talked with many people who have come over without return tickets. It seems that we just had the wrong lady, or American Airlines is overly stringent.

Fast forward a couple of days: We have arrived safely in Bangkok with all of our luggage and we have spent our first day in the city. It is around 7pm and we decided it is time to head back. The hotel we were staying at was out near the airport and when we left in the morning we received a sheet of paper with directions to give to a taxi driver for a return trip. We hail a taxi, give him the piece of paper and he points at some Thai lettering, we nod our heads and off we go. An hour later we are at the airport. For a moment both Jessica and I are speechless, would we really go to the airport with only a camelback as luggage? Then we both start staying no, and pointing to the name of the hotel. The driver gets out and asks someone and we are back on our way. Jessica and I both now have the impression that our driver either A. Can't read or B. Isn't Thai and can't read that well. The driver then spends the next hour and a half driving in circles and stopping every 15min and asking a different group of people for directions. At one point he finds someone with a cell phone who kindly calls the hotel to find the location. She tells the taxi driver and off we go again, but alas we still can't find the hotel. Eventually Jessica spots the sign and we guide the taxi driver to the right location. At this point we were both to tired to argue with him and just paid the fair. The extra $6 it cost us for driving around wasn't worth the effort, and I think he genuinely didn't know where to go.

I'll do my best to put up more info which is more current tomorrow. For now I'll leave you with two pictures.

Rooftop shrines:


Sitting under and awning during a storm:

Our life so far . . .

Here are some pictures from our trip so far:


Evan and I and all our stuff at the SF airport, saying goodbye. We probably brought way too much, but we so far haven't lost anything on our trek. Getting through the airport with all of it was not easy, though.



We made it to Tokyo Narita airport at roughly the middle of the night for us, after a 12 hour flight and having to buy tickets to Guam (don't even ask, apparently they won't let you on the plane without a return ticket). I slept there and took this picture.

It was six pm there, 2 am for us. I was too tired to even care about being in Japan.

Once we arrived in Thailand, things went pretty smoothly, aside from numerous taxi drivers being unable to find our first hotel.


The cold drinks are delicious, and apparently the ice is all government made, so it's mostly safe to drink. We have to drink and buy bottled water, and we're trying to stay away from salad, but we don't feel we have to be overly cautious.

The Thai government has some pretty strict regulations about alcohol and how late bars can be open. Right now they have to close at 1 am, before it was midnight but that proved very unpopular. At the moment, this sign is the only thing we've seen to mark the political unrest we've heard about in Bangkok:

Life seems to be proceeding normally everywhere, from what we can see.

Of course, the wildlife is beautiful.




And finally, some pictures of us in our Bangkok outfits.



Let us know how you are all doing without us!

WELCOME TO BANGKOK!

I might as well start off my part of this blog with

WELCOME TO BANGKOK!

It is around 12:30am local time, we have all of our luggage and made it though without any major problems.

I'll post again tomorrow night and talk more about getting over here, as we did run into one snag.

Evan

Bye Rats :-(

I gave the rats away today, to a 17 year old girl and her mother who seem like they will take good care of them. It was hard to say goodbye, but I'm really glad that I have a good solution for them.

So bye kids. Miss you lots. I won't forget about you.