Emma, the volunteer coordinator, had to make a visa run to Malaysia, so she wasn't around for my last few days. We said goodbye on Monday night or something like that, and she gave me a hug, and said thank you. She acknowledged that I did a good job and that she probably doesn't say that enough to the volunteers. I really appreciated that; it's ...

Oh, something horrible happened yesterday. About 8.5 weeks ago, a macaque that lives out in one of our fields had a baby called Sunday. (I believe she was born on a Sunday). The mom had the baby for 2 weeks and the staff here could see that she wasn't caring for her properly and almost didn't know how to care for a baby--so the staff took the ba...

Working on bears is really, really hard. I'm going to tell Emma (volunteer coordinator) that I prefer primates and hopefully I'll be switched over on Primates 1 more often. I've even had to train new people on Bears today, and it's just not my favorite thing to do. Lots of heavy lifting, cleaning up tons bear poop in the grass, trying to urge th...

Bad things: 1. A cockroach ran over my hand when I was working on preparing the primates' breakfast yesterday. It was two inches long! I've had some bad bug experiences, but that one was gross. 2. I got grabbed again on the wrist by Zack, the leader of the teenage gibbon gang. Seriously, there are 9 teenagers all in one enclosure and they're abs...

Yesterday I got to take the puppies for a walk. Some random person dropped off 2 newborn puppies at the center a few months ago, and we've been raising them. One volunteer who was here at the time just fell in love with them and she recently paid to have them flown to England to live with her (over $10,000!). I was the one who took them on their...

Yesterday there was word going about the center that we'd be able to go on an ELEPHANT NIGHT SAFARI... but that only 14 of us could go. It was first opened to the people who are solely volunteering with the Elephant Project (not me--I'm doing the Wildlife Rescue Project, but they're both part of the overarching Wildlife Friends of Thailand, www....

Tomorrow is my day off, so I'm going to be able to write a more complete update, but I'm at the (slow!) internet cafe right now with my camera and camera hook-up, so I thought I'd upload the pictures now. Before describing the sanctuary, which I think I'll do tomorrow, let me describe the internet cafe. The chairs and desks are hot pink and hot ...

Phetcburi is a nice small city. You can walk nearly anywhere you need to go although it has gotten quite warm and humid that last couple of days. Just gave what I needed for an excuse to siesta. After my overnight journey and bus back down to here and walk around town was just what I needed. My guesthouse gave me a nice map which included a sugg...

We got here last night Phetchaburi is a really nice change , a laid back city about 2 hours SW of Bangkok. We ride the train here from Surat Thani a 6 hour journey through a part of Thailand I never actually seen since I have always skipped through it in the middle of the night. It turned out to be very nice, lots of farm land with some amazing ...