Tongue THAI-ed

Today was our second day surveying at Patara Elephant Farm. We arrived around 8:15 and awaited for participants to arrive. The baby elephant, Tonwaa, really wanted to play with us because was full of energy this morning and started to run around like the cute little toddler she is. We met a lot of very nice families from all over the United States as well as people from the surrounding countries of Thailand. After the first round of participants were oriented, we sat down for a Thai lesson with Pi Poad. We learned many question words as well as various vocabulary words that we can use while ordering dinner or speaking to the locals.

A few words we learned today were:

    

water- nam

milk-nom

snack- ka nom

spicy- ped

delicious- a roi

mango- mammoa

elephant- chang

pineapple- zaparro

In our first Thai lesson on our first day here we learned that if a female is speaking, she should end her sentence with "ka" and if a male if speaking, he should end his sentence with "krup". These endings show politeness and signal that the sentence is over.

After our Thai lesson, we started to make a lesson plan to teach English to the mahouts. We made a list of words and phrases that are commonly used when describing elephants and questions that tourists commonly ask the mahouts during their experience at Patara. We split the lesson plan into five sections so teams of two people from our group would all get the chance to teach the mahouts. We then met with the veterinarian at Patara. She gave us a short presentation on the treating of the elephants. In one case, an elephant had a tumor under her bladder and needed it to be removed. In another case, Boon Pak had food stuck in his esophagus. The veterinarian showed us pictures and the process of how they managed to help the two elephants. It was impressive hearing that special tools had to be made to accommodate the size of elephants. Both elephants recovered well and are now healthy.

We then went to lunch at Thachang Hill, which was a beautiful restaurant that overlooked the forest. The food was great but the biggest highlight was their ice cream! We each ordered something different and got to try the classic flavors as well as the exotic flavors like taro. One we returned to Patara we learned about singing bowl therapy.  Singing bowl therapy reduces stress and mental and emotional strain. The bowls are struck with a mallet to produce a ringing sound. It has been used on an elephant who was previously was in a circus and had trauma. She was rejecting her baby and refusing to nurse her baby. After several sessions of the therapy her mood improved and she starting caring for her baby.

Hey guys its me Ireland again!

Patara has been incredible. Our day as a tourist on Tuesday was honestly the most fun and exciting thing I have experienced. My elephant for the day's name was Chana. He was a handsome and smart 10 year old that was definitely a little trouble maker! He loved getting into other elephant's business and seeing what they were up to and eating everything in sight. Riding Chana was so much fun and honestly was like the best roller coaster I've been on! I'm glad we've gotten to go back to Patara these past few days because in our spare time we get to see our elephants again. I'm looking forward to this weekend when we go explore the city for ourselves, come back for updates to see what we find!

Hi it's Juli again

These past few days at Patara has been one of the best experiences of my life. My elephant's name was Saitong. She is 30 years old and a mother of two elephants. When I got there, she was in the middle of trying to mate with another male elephant. A mahout told us we were lucky that we got to see it happening, it's not everyday that visitors get to see the mating process. Saitong was a gentle elephant and I had a great time spending my day with her. I want to say khop khun ka (thank you) to Saitong's mahout who made sure I had a safe experience. I hope I get to see Saitong again before I leave Thailand.