Mar 9 2010

We're back!

Adam and I had the most magical honeymoon volunteering at the Elephant Nature Park in northern Thailand for two weeks. It was all we could have possibly hoped for.

Our daily waking life at the park seemed to play a much bigger role in Adam's sleep talking than it does at home. So, for today's special sort-of-happy-to-be-back post, I've included a number of such musings.

"Oh, such wrinkly skin. And oh so hairy. Yeah, like grandmothers with trunks."

"I want an elephant race, with hurdles and everything... Watch them jump over ditches. And we can stick little dogs on top as jockeys. Doggie jockeys."

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Adam said this one, along with a few extremely rude insults, on a night that we were sleeping out in the jungle with 12 other people. We had hiked up into the mountain with 5 elephants, some volunteers and a number of thai workers. The other volunteers all missed hearing it (we were sleeping a bit away from them), but the thais right next to us certainly didn't.

The rest of the time, Adam and I had a hut in "The Palace," which is a raised structure comprised of 6 huts and 5 bathrooms, made mostly of bamboo and wood. Anytime anyone walked around, the entire structure shook with their footfall. I assume that explains this one:

"Stop bouncing the floor. Stop it, seriously, I need to pee. I need to pee and I can't pee in the toilet when you're bouncing the floor... Fuck you shit-for-brains, that's it, I'm gonna piss up and down your body every time you bounce... There we go."

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"What goes in one hole hot comes out the other hole hot. Burning fucking curry. Awesome stuff."

"Elephants with two arms!... Oh no, it's the tail."

"Fatal falling figs"

The Palace had been built around an enormous fig tree, which was left growing out of the middle of the structure. Lucky us, the tree happened to hang right above our hut's roof. So at night, when the wind kicked up, figs would thump onto the roof above our heads, then roll down, and thump again onto the floor outside (you can hear them in the last recording). This, along with the periodic howling of the park's 50 + dogs, did not always make for the most restful night's sleep.

Finally, for anyone who has ever shoveled elephant poo, this one needs no explanation:

"Totally green snowballs. Giant ones! They look wrong. They sound wrong when they hit you. And boy do they smell wrong."

If anyone out there wants to know about the park, we're happy to talk about our experience. By the way, we were told that a day-visitor at the park asked for us, but it was a couple of days before we arrived. If this is you, make yourself known to us!

We missed you guys, and as hard as it is to go back to real life, we're happy to be back on the blog.