Birth, Death and more spider bites
Trip Start
Jul 29, 2003
1
7
31
Trip End
Dec 01, 2003
Kao Look Chang,
Thailand
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
So much has happened since I last wrote in this I don't know where to start...
Old volunteers have left, new people have arrived...the group at the moment is really fun.
I should name them all just in case of future reference...
Charlotte (23, English), Sanne (28, Dutch), Herman (24, Dutch), Mel (27, English), Olivier (25, French), Rachael (30, NZ), Truls (22, Norwegian). There's also a Spanish guy called Federico, but he doesnt talk much and when he does he says the animals are going to die.
Then there's the guy who runs the place, Edwin (37, Dutch), and two sort of long term volunteers - Bram (26, Dutch) and Amy (26, English), along with 4 Thai people - Pin, little Pin, Nom and Nong. They're not the Thai people's real names but Thai names are so complicated and long that they all have nicknames. Little Pin has also given all of us nicknames basically likening us to the animals at the sanctuary and she decided today that I was like Peanuts, one of the baby Malayan sun bears. I think its cos I'm small. Hopefully not cos I look like a fat baby bear...
Its pretty funny trying to communicate with them since they hardly speak any english and about all I can say in Thai is numbers, please, thank you, hello, whats your name, etc.
Did learn a new word though which we probably use the most - "kathoeui" which means "transvestite" which I used to refer to Herman today so now both Pin's keep teasing him, shouting "lady boy" and telling him to work in Go Go bars in Patpong in Bangkok.
Over the last few days I've acquired several more mosquito bites - one night I got about 20 so I'm sure I must have been sleeping on a mosquito...as well as another couple of spider bites. I also found and squashed 2 spiders the size of a CD and a scorpion in my bathroom.
Eva, a German Shepherd dog at the centre gave birth to 9 puppies a few days ago but one was still born and another 4 died in the following couple of days. On Monday Eva got really sick and we had to rush her to the vets on Tuesday and found out she had blood poisoning so had to have her uterus removed. Thankfully she's doing much better now but it means we have to hand rear the puppies and bottle feed them every couple of hours. Peanuts, the baby bear also got sick as she had an ingrowing tooth because her previous owners kept her on a chain as a tourist attraction and only fed her milk so her teeth as all messed up. She's awaiting an operation with a dental specialist in Bangkok but in the meantime we discovered the only way she would take her antibiotics was if you put it in yoghurt but it seems to work well.
There was an eagle called Sam at the centre which was in a really bad way and everyone thougth it would be better off put to sleep but Edwin insisted he was going to get it an operation but it died a few days ago.
On Monday I went to Kaeng Krachan National Park with Edwin, Olivier, Herman and a German vet called Uli who is based at a rescue centre in Vietnam and she's staying with us for a week or so.
Didn't see as many animals as we hoped and the weather was pretty bad - misty and ranining - so we ended up cutting the trip short which was just as well cos I couldn't stand much more of Edwin being all testosterone-y. Most of the animals we saw were at night - some civets (a kind of small cat), a loris, a leopard cat, rare species of owls, snakes, but sadly no elephants again!
I'm convinced there was a civet outside my tent at night too as I could hear something snuffling but I was too scared to look in case it was a bear!
We left really early the next morning as the Emperor of Japan's son was meant to be coming so they had to close the park, and on the way Edwin stopped to try and see if any of the gibbons were about, When he got out of the car and started making gibbon calls I nearly wet myself cos he looked like such an idiot. Needless to say we didn't see any gibbons - he probably scared them off.
Anyway...I finally got a day off yesterday, with Charlotte, so all of us went out for pizza in Hua Hin on Wednesday night, and me and Charlotte stayed the night so we finally got to have a hot water shower and to not wake up to the sound of gibbon calls at 6am. Got a Burger King breakfast then went to the beach and it was pretty sunny for about half an hour then it rained really hard so we got soaked and these guys who I guess are sun lounger attendants kept running over with more umbrellas trying to shield us from the rain. They also found it really funny that we were working on a "monkey farm" as they called it. After about 2 hours of rain we decided we weren't going to get any kind of tan so we packed up our stuff but then one of the guys came running over saying "you leave?! wait, I get you banana!" ...so we got a free banana...hmmm....
We then went to get a massage which was a weird experience cos everyone is in one room and you have to strip off everything except your pants and then we discovered they not only massage your back but also your front, so me and Charlotte were trying not to laugh!
When we got back to the sanctuary though we both found out that somehow we were really sunburnt, so today we're in lots of pain and everyone else is finding it really funny.
So much more has happened and I've been having such a great time but a lot of it would take far too long to explain here and might not make much sense as it would be kind of an inside joke. I wish I was staying here longer now but then a lot of the people are leaving next week so it might not be so fun after that.
Hope everyone is well and sorry to all those I haven't really been in touch with but I've been so busy!
xxx
