Chang

This weekend came as a wonderful break from teaching, speaking Thai and being called a Fralang. It all began when I met WorldTeach volunteers in Nakhon Phanom Friday afternoon. We ate dinner and hung out around the city. Events were going on along the waterfront as a celebration for the Princess who was visiting (she wasn’t at this “fair”). At 12:30 the WT Thailand Krew loaded up two vans and we made the 6 hour drive to the Province of Surin. We arrived around just in time for sunrise and the yung (mosquitoes) to attack us as we were waiting in the lobby of the hotel. We left our belongings in the office and headed out for our adventure with only about 3-4 hours of sleep. Fortunately we found a place to eat Ky Dtiao (omlet) and Kow Niao (sticky rice) before attending the Elephant Roundup. While eating breakfast we realized that we were amongst a lot of Fralang and thus had less people staring at us and pointing us out. Although seeing a lot of white people around was a bit of a culture shock at first it was nice to not be pointed at every 10 steps.

The elephant roundup was pretty amazing. There were roughly 325 elephants in the show 14 of which were babies born within the year and 1 that was 21 days old. Fact, baby elephants are born being able to walk. There were actually more elephants at the show because at least one elephant was pregnant. Yep she was showing off her big squirmy belly. I know this because after the show I got to meet her and rub her kicking belly. It was pretty sad to know how exhausted she must be carrying around all the weight but I admit that feeling her kicking Ellie was a pretty magical experience.

Pregnant Ellie

Back to the show though- It was a cultural performance as well as a performance to show how intelligent the Asian Elephant is. The highlights were the Elephants showing off their talents of drawing pictures, hula hooping, handstands, dancing and bucking up on their back legs and walking. The elephants showed off more agility acts by playing a game of soccer in which the game had to end with a shoot out. This was by far the most hilarious act of them all. They showed such personality, for example of how they kick the ball- front or back leg, picking up the ball in their trunk and tossing it to kick it or preference of a big elephant sized soccer ball or a normal sized ball. People from the crowd were invited down to have a number of elephants walk over them. As the elephant was walking over a person sometimes they would place their foot on a person’s back and give them a massage or take their trunk and sniff the person up and down making sure they were ok to cross over. The commentary of this event (yep it was in English) was absolutely hilarious!!! A new group of people got to go out and play tug-of-war with the elephant. One of the WT volunteers, Amanda, went out on the field with her friend Jake who was visiting and they tugged as hard as they could with the other 40 or so people but the elephant still whooped their butts.

The closing of the ceremony was a battle that reenacted an elephant-back fight between Naresuan the Great of Ayutthaya and the Burmese Crown Prince in 1592. It was pretty exciting at first because they actually brought out cannons and had holes dug in the field that had little bombs explode. One erupted right next to a cannon and nearly blew 4 people to bits because they were within about 5-10 feet from it (no one was hurt though). They would also light arrows on fire and the two sides would shoot them at each other (they were far enough away of course so they wouldn’t hit the people rather land in the middle of the playing field. They would then approach each other and have full on sword fights while trying to avoid the still flaming arrows left on the ground.

The most shocking part of the Roundup is that in America, people would have had to sign their life away before anyone would let an elephant step over them or even hold on to the other end of the rope for the tug-of-war. People for sure wouldn’t have fought in their bare feet over flaming arrows either.

After the round up the elephants came out and rides around the stadium were available. I took the opportunity to ride one. The only reason I did was because the owner let me climb up the trunk/tusks of the massive animal. (No signing my life away again for that either and this would never have been allowed in America.) Yet this ride cost me 300 bhat, a huge ripe off, but at least between my 300 and my friend Heather’s 300 we will now be feeding the man and his family for a month. The rest of the day was spent resting, eating lunch, taking a warm shower, dinner at the night market and an meeting another group of American teachers from another teacher program.

Getting some Ellie love

One expensive ride

Elephant soccer shoot out

After our long 6 hour drive back to NKP I stayed in the city for the afternoon and evening celebrating Loy Khrathong with Sarah, a WT volunteer, a teacher from my school and her son. My teacher told me Friday that she was going to take me on a boat on the river so I asked her what time we were going on the boat upon my return Sunday afternoon but found out later there was not boat ride scheduled. Because I asked about a boat ride though she thought I wanted to go on one so we walked all over town trying to get on one and that was when I realized what she meant Friday about the boat. She called the Khrathong a boat and that is what goes in the river. She was telling me I would be placing a Khrathong in the river but it came out “we go on boat on Sunday”. She bought Sarah and me a Khrathong and her son took us to the dock and showed us how to light it and place it in the river while saying a prayer. We walked around the waterfront watching people launch their lanterns into the sky, some of which caught on fire before having a chance to float into the sky. At the end of the night the teacher wanted to drive me home but while I was with her son launching my Khrathong she was busy drinking her “Heineken is the beer for me”. YEIKS!!! Fortunately she had a friend around to drive us back to her home.

Surprisingly coming back to teach today I wasn’t all that exhausted like I thought I would be. I got to bed at a decent hour last night and some quality nap time in the van on our ride back. What a fun filled weekend for roughly $60 (van rental, gas, Elephant Roundup ticket, hotel, elephant ride, souvenirs and of course food.) (SEE SLIDSHOW TO THE TOP RIGHT OF PAGE FOR MORE PICTURES)

Making my Khrathong

Khrathong offering

Lanterns