Casuarina Resort Phetchaburi

We arrived in Phetchaburi at 7.30 am. We went straight to our accomodation and this is where "The Gospel" (Rough Guide to Thailand) let us down for the first time. The guesthouse rooms were like prison cells. Tiny ****** little rooms where it was too warm altogether. It was only 120Baht a night so 1 night wouldnt kill us...would it?<br><br>We decided to go view the temples that ...

... It, the second cave temple, and bring us back all for 80B. At the time we thought this was a bit steep, but once we had seen how far out it was, we happily paid it. Once at the cave, we made our way past the resident monkey guard and inside. Here, we had a couple of women start following us and pointing things out in broken English. Having learned our lesson in Kanchanaburi with our non-Englsih speaking "guide", we quickly dismissed ...

... most volunteers form with the animals mean that we really come together as a team at those times. The deaths of Mac and Emma's lovely puppy Jingle Bells were grieved by everyone at the centre, and at times it was hard to move on and concentrate on those animals we are able to help. The serow rescue was another particularly turbulent time, but I don't think I could explain the situation any better than ...

... Today we were to give enrichment to the solitary gibbons and macaques, which of course are the ones that need it the most. They are only kept in solitary conditions if it is necessary for their welfare - many of the animals here are damaged in so many ways from the abuse and neglect they suffered before being rescued by Wildlife Friends. For enrichment today we stuffed mashed fruit, fruit pieces and nuts into bamboo tubes, blocked the ends with fruit ...

... Job duty: Primates 1. See pictures in this entry for illustration. There's no poop involved-we get to do lots of preparing, feeding and cleaning. Specific animal: Dum Dum, the 2 year old baby gibbon, which I found out means Black Black (Dum = Black in Thai). Taxi driver: There are 5 or so Thai taxi drivers that we hire out, and they're all nice, but Tek is my favorite. He's kind ...

... well, so he gave a baby gibbon (6 weeks old) that he and Noi have been hand-raising to Lucy, a brand new volunteer, and me to hold and feed with a bottle. Lucy actually held her, I just helped. We were sitting on a bench with the baby gibbon (who made little squeaking sounds and pooped on Lucy's shirt) when the vet and the other staff came outside the hospital with Sunday in a tiny laundry basket, covered with towels and blankets, and hooked up to an oxygen thing that ...

... to the primates in their different areas, clean out the food house where you work, and then do jobs like picking back up the food bowls, filling up their water buckets, cleaning out the water buckets, cleaning and washing all 100+ food bowls, washing the food baskets, etc etc. Bears is different. While you're on Bears, you also feed them. It's way easier to chop their food, because there are just less bears than primates ...

I'm just writing for a second to say that I'm here safely, but I'm not having fun yet because I have everything to learn and I'm dirty all the time (animal dirt, food dirt, regular dirt, sunscreen and bug lotion dirt, all kinds of dirt ...

Arrived late in Petchaburi, the bus dumped at the roadside on the outskirts of Petchaburi - how nice of them! luckily after 10 mins of going err where are we and which way you wanna head a motorbike taxi pulled in. Another 10 mins of language barrier stuff trying to explain we wouldnt both fit on the back of his bike with 2 huge rucksacks and day bags (funny) with him driving and we werent going separate he managed to ...

... history. Our base for the week was a resort located near to the River Kwai. The infamous river, whose crossing during the second world war was such a strategic focus for both sides, and is now a solemn memorial to the many thousands of people who died in its construction. Despite its morbid history the river has retained its natural beauty and is well set up for tourism. But, being rainy season, appropriately it rained...and rained... and rained ...