Kamarapon 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?

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 ...

... really poorly, and got infected, and he was completely de-clawed, on both front and hind legs, probably in order to make him less scary-looking to tourists... so tourists could come up and take their picture with him. There are gibbons here who were kept at pets. They're adorable as babies, so people illegally buy them and keep them in their house as pets. But at 4 or 5 years old (and keep in mind, some ...

... one roommate Sally (20, Australian) left on Sunday and she was really sad to go. I wonder how I'll feel when I leave--sad, ready to go, a little of both? Before her bed was even cold, another new girl moved in. June and July have massive amounts of volunteers, there are hardly enough plates at dinner. My new roommate's name is Lieke, and she's about mid-20s from Holland. (Charlotte, 19, from Wales, is still my other ...

... Emma, the volunteer coordinator at the sanctuary, and inform her that I was at the bus stop. I had thought I might wander around first before calling her, but found it difficult with my big bag and I was a bit overwhelmed by all the motorcycle taxi drivers trying to get me to get on their bike. So instead I just sat down and made my first Thai phone call. She picked up and said a driver would be there in about 20 minutes ...

... Immediately I was invited to come and see her work on the following day. She's a social worker and delivers free meals to impoverished rural schools. Next day we were at the school - i even got to dish out the food to those kids. The kids are extremely well-behaved and appreciative of the food. They even bowed and thanked the teachers, and washed up afterwards. It turned out that the social worker knows a very good ...

To get some fresh air from Bangkok's smog we headed to Kancahnaburi, a beautiful town set in the mountains with a river running through it. Unfortunately 60 years ago it was home to the building of a section, made famous by the WW2 film, of the Thai-Burma ...