Sorry Mom...

This was our last weekend in Thailand and we wanted to make the most of it. We took a quick trip down to Chiang Mai again and visited the Elephants and Tigers! We also ate real hamburgers and had a rack of ribs made by some guy from New Orleans who looked just like Santa. This elephant liked the feel of my beard and kept giving me "Kisses" they were more like suction cups on your face that leave trails of snot haha but I got a kiss from a 2 ton Powerhouse of an animal. That in it's self is awesome. 

Before the show, all the elephants go down and get to play in the water. It was so funny seeing them walk into the river and just fall over with a huge splash. They are so smart and you don't doubt for a second that they aren't happy and in control. 

 

At the show the elephants played soccer, painted, played the harmonica and threw darts! So we figured out how the elephants paint. The men standing next to them tug on their ear in the direction the paintbrush needs to go. That aside, An elephant actually makes the stroke with the right pressure, distance and shape. It was amazing to see. They are quickly becoming my favorite animal. I also picked up a painting that an elephant did. I can cross that off my bucket list. 

This little guy is 5 months old. Elephant facts: It can take up to 2 years of pregnancy for an elephant to have a baby. The babies nurse for 1 year before eating solid food. This one liked shoes and wasn't really aware of what his trunk was used fore yet. We played in his water together for a few minutes. I would swish the water around and he would mimic. 

Mom this is my liability waiver in case I got mauled...

I had the option of Big, medium or small (the cubs). Go big or go home. So I went BIG!!!!

The Tigers aren't sedated and the place will whip into a frenzy if you even suggest it. These guys have been raised since cubs to be around people and trained to listen to the workers. They are just chill. There are rules you have to follow for sure. Like don't make sudden movements, don't go near the head or touch the front paws, don't try to play with them and keep your camera flash off. Stuff like that. 

It's just solid muscle and when you step into their cage (it was raining so they were in cages) the workers say, "oh just lay on them and rub they tummies firmly" My tiger enjoyed that a lot and flipped over like a dog! haha. I was a little nervous when that happened because his massive leg rapped around my arm and he sat up and looked at me with his Tiger eyes, yawned and then flopped back down on his back. My heart was racing and I think that was his way of saying, "if i really wanted to kill you I would have done it by now..."

All in all it was the best 12 dollars I have spent in a long long time. I love tigers now and I feel like I really took some sort of energy and power from these big cats. There is nothing like waking up in the morning and petting a 300 lbs Tiger and feeling his muscles and knowing he could kill everyone in the cage in seconds without a second thought. What Power! The best word I can think of to describe how it felt to be so close to a Tiger is Majestic. 

I'm pulling kind of the same face my niece Cora pulled when she was holding her little sister Bella for the first time. I think that there is definitely some "Cora"-lation between these two relationships. 

Part of the sustainable farming is chickens. A local school teaches the kids to raise them and they donated 8 of these guys to us. as you can see in the video, this is pretty routine. Yep...the chickens in the bag....5 in the pink one and 3 in the white. 

They didn't kick too much, they just pretty much laid down and slept the whole hour drive through the back streets and mountain side until we got to the village and gave them to the village preacher. He's one of the chosen candidates to do the sustainable farming. 

They made it!!! and they looked pretty happy to be out of the bag :)

Wait a second....I only count 4....

I guess 5 in a bag was too much for too long. 

4 died....

So in a few weeks they will bring them up more lol. We felt horrible. We think that the fighting we heard on the way there was their fight for air....so sad....

the preacher said that they were having chicken for dinner that night haha so I guess we just saved him a little work right?

One week to go

 we went to Chiang Mai this last weekend to pick two of these puppies up. They are Bio-sand water filters. Its really interesting, all it really is is big rocks at the bottom, smaller rocks on that, and sand on top of the smaller rocks...the really tricky part is you pour water through them once a day for 21 days and bacteria builds up and eats any bad bacteria in the water. the sand catches all the other stuff and the rocks and cement shape keep it cool. No maintenance required.

The beard is back. Each one of these guys weighed over 100lbs. Our little pick-up performed very well in spite of the extra weight. 

Stephen (the guy who works there) helped us get them into the truck. He was really nice and even came to work on a Saturday to teach us how to use it. They were 2,800 Baht so divide that by 30.5 and you have a inexpensive, roughly mobile way to provide clean water for 3 families. 

This was at one of the YMCA English camps that we did. We got sweet shirts, and a free weekend vacation to a little sleepy Chinese town called Mae Solong. 

If that cat isn't out of the bag already, I am driving lol. Chang Mai has a lot more people and more scooters than the country-side where I am from. I think its the difference between St. Anthony, ID and Seattle, WA. I got pretty good at switching between first and second gear that weekend. Because of my known lack of directions, what should have taken us 30 minutes to find the water filter place ended up taking three hours. sorry team :(  But all was well because gas was stipend ;) 

Sydney is usually my co-pilot. We take turns driving she is much better at remembering that there are people in the truck bed than I am. So I did all the city and straight-away driving and she gave the others a relatively smooth ride through the winding mountains. 

I love the view, I am going to miss it the most. vast seas of green rice patties that stop at jungle hills that stop at shear rock-faced mountains. 

So Friday I drove 3 hours, Saturday I drove close to 10 and Sunday I drove 3 and a half more. If this isn't a crash course (no pun intended) in driving stick, I don't know what is. All photos were graciously provided by Sydney and her iPhone. 

One week to go and we are busy wrapping things up. The sustainable farming is going great. They just finished building the stalls so this Wednesday we will buy the animals and get that going. 

Sustainable farming is a go!

Great news! so we met with A-mow today and went to the village where they want to do the sustainable farming. we listed our terms and conditions and after some back and forth, came to an agreement (pretty much A-mows original plans) and we figured we have enough to fund 4 families with the works. They will each get pigs, chickens, fish and stuff to grow seeds. We pay the money upfront for the 4 families for the supplies and in one years' time, when the next HELP group get here, each family that received this year will give half of their goods to another family. In one years time from then, the next HELP group with over see the next families and so on. Pretty sustainable if I do say so myself. If things go to plan we will buy the stuff we need this Saturday and start building on Monday. Our goal is to have everything set up and finished by the time we leave. A-mow will oversee the progress of the families. Another plus is that the 4 families are the village preacher, the village leader, the woman's organization leader and another leader. So it will be good to see how they progress next year. Anyway this is just a quick update we are all pretty excited about.

some of what the pig stalls will look like. 

Pigs have two litters a year of anywhere from 8 to 12 piglets. 

Here A-mow is explaining to us about how his NGO has done sustainable farming in the past at the village where we will continue it. 

I think he was showing us random plants we could eat.

This is a garden that will be replicated for the families. 

update 2nd wave

This is my beard at a month. The next day I shaved it to a nice mustache. 

This is a shout out to my Dad and uncles pictures. Can you see the resemblance?

These guys were actually pretty easy to ride. They have a really flat back and if you ever wondered about what it felt like to ride a giant chicken, or a raptor, this is about what it feels like. 

So you hold onto the wings and they put a bag over its head and then when they pull the bag off you just start flying haha.

This is a cute Karen girl from the long neck tribe. 

A karen woman. Really nice but not what we expected. We wanted to see their village and talk with them. Not shop for row after row of scarves. On a side note I nearly bought elephant tusks...for 10 bucks...is that worth life in prison? haha

This is a picture of the scouting trash clean up we did

We were presented at the monk school with some pretty cool stuff. This is a bag with the princesses emblem on it. 

The teachers in the uniforms are government workers and the other teachers are either volunteers or were hired by the school.

does it really surprise you that this is a boys room. monks or not, boys are still boys. 

Just a taste of how tan I am really getting haha. this was a waterfall that we went to after church one Sunday. 

At 9-cool with Sujung. they sell different desserts there like cake and creme brule.  

This is a children's rights outreach that we participated in with 6 different schools. It was pretty much a stay in school program. It was really cheap and really effective. 

Hey mom! I was cast as the sunshine background!!

The Artists house we stayed at. His house is in an interior design magazine lol. 

He took us to visit all his other artist friends who are world renowned. 

Stephen and I always had a matching problem. 

my favorite picture of his friends artwork. 

then he took us to a temple and we saw more of his other friends stuff. 

another friends ceramic village. He just had tons and tons of stuff.

this guy is the most famous artist in Thailand. He bought me breakfast. His stuff is mindblowing. 

The great hall. Those are anaconda skins on the tables.

the whole floor was covered in alligator skins

just so you can get perspective on how big the monster in the middle of the room was, this is how big each shell is to my foot. 

Our fourth of July parade!!

A-mow taking us to different villages to see their pigs and how they farm. we are planning on helping other villagers start their own farms.

this rooster was wrapped in suran wrap. lol it was falling asleep so i had to take a pic. 

my last day at the monk school!