Category: Thai Society/Culture

A Visit to Baan Tha Klang Elephant Village

On December 31st of last year, we went to visit Max and Mina’s great grandmother in Surin. This is the second year we have stopped on the way at Baan Tha Klang Elephant Village on the way.

This is the affordable elephant village in Thailand for mainly Thais, as compared to the overpriced one for foreigners in Chiangmai. Prices for everything are much cheaper here, especially for high ticket items like elephant rides and elephant paintings. Also, the experience here is raw – you are closer to the animals and may even get into slightly dangerous situations (if being molested or trampled on by an elephant could be described as such). For these reasons, I recommend Baan Tha Klang in Surin Province as the best place to go see elephants, except for the faint of heart, or people who don’t mind paying $150 for a Dumbo painting.

Wikipedia says:

These villagers are descendants of the Suay or Kuay Ethnic group, who have a long history elephant husbandry. Unlike northern Thailand where elephant is kept for labor, Ta Klang people consider elephant as their friends who can share the same house.

Insofar as they are all living in the same dusty village, this much seems to be true. The mahouts in Chiangmai are probably told not to speak with all the thousands of guests they see every day. The mahouts here openly ask for money to buy the elephants food. It’s just a more genuine experience, as exploitation of large mammals on a large scale goes. Anyway. Elephants!!

 
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Looking back through our photo archives, I found that I’d never had time to blog about last year’s visit. I found footage of the main show, where we almost got trampled by Jumbo and Baby Dumbo:

Hin Suay Nam Sai Resort, Rayong

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I’m in Rayong with 110 students and 10 teachers on a business English education project. It’s hot and sunny here, but these are some of my favorite beaches in Thailand.
For me, Rayong is the perfect mix of convenience, desolation, and value for money. You can eat fresh seafood under the tall shade trees running almost all 12 kilometres up the coast, then run down to the water and pretty much be alone for hours, if you’ve chosen a good spot. The one hour separation from the fleshpots of Pattaya keeps most farang away, and Rayong is primarily a resort town for Thais – this fact in itself makes Rayong appealing, but it also serves to keep prices down and keep parasitic vendors, taxis, and ladyboy hordes away.
Anyway, I’m here for work. My unofficial role, as always, is as facilitator, so I’m about to go facilitate the hell out of the breakfast buffet followed by a facilitative facilitation of a morning swim in the sea.
This resort, which literally translates as Pretty Rock Clear Water Resort, is an interesting mix of crusty old failed bubble venture and competent staff. The climb to and from the beach is a bit hard for young kids, otherwise I’d think about bringing the family here some time.

“…credible and meaningful in foreign cultures.”

The university where I teach, Rajabhat Maha Sarakham, used to be a teacher’s training college. My uni is just one Rajabhat institute of about 40 spread all over Thailand, that were turned into universities by the king with something called the Rajabhat Act in 1995. Therefore, when we clean up, move, or renovate offices and I see asset tags with “teacher’s college” or the like, I know I’ve found something at least 17 years old, and sometimes much older.

The last time somebody cleaned out a storage room on the 3rd floor, above my office on the 2nd floor, a bunch of cool old stuff was put out to be thrown away. I’ve started documenting what I’ve saved, and this is one of my coolest finds:

 

I’d never even heard of the United States Information Agency before, and I can only assume that “U.S. Information Service” was an alternative name for the agency.

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Now if I can only find a working 16mm film projector!

Isan X-mas 2011

I haven’t been home for Christmas for so many years now, I only miss it in theory. Living in Japan and Thailand, I work on western holidays if it falls on work days, and often forget about many of them. Christmas is celebrated (read: utilized for marketing purposes, just like in the west) just enough here that I’ve never forgotten about it, but we don’t celebrate it really. At most, we go out as a family, as we did today… which is of course the most important part of the holidays, anyway.

I’ll be going on a trip to Chonburi and Pattaya from 5 AM tomorrow for a few days, to visit students interning at hotels and resorts, tourist police stations and Tourism of Thailand offices. I might even have time to moblog, which is such a rare occasion for me that even the word itself has almost disappeared.