Abroad in Thailand: Elephants, Adventures, and Wats

I’m finding that one of the best times to write a blog post is after our Friday adventure, when I’m too physically tired to do anything but sit in bed and too mentally exhausted to put together a coherent Thai sentence….so here’s a re-cap from the last week or so:

Last weekend we went to an elephant conservation camp. It was interesting! We saw all the elephants take baths and then an elephant show where the trainers had the elephants do activities like play catch, roll logs, and bow. We also saw some baby elephants and the hospital where the animals are taken if they are sick. I’m still not sure how I feel about wild animals in captivity being trained to perform like that, but I guess you just have to trust that they are being treated well. Although it definitely never gets old seeing such beautiful and massive animals in such close proximity!

The elephants also painted during the show.

Up close and personal!

Baby elephant!

Elephant bath time.

This school week was also full of adventures. I’m finding that with ISDSI, just when you think you can’t stand sitting in another classroom, you won’t be. As part of Foundations, we’re learning about the city of Chiang Mai. Normally we have lecture in the afternoon, but on Tuesday and Wednesday we headed into the Old City, where we learned about the city’s history. Chiang Mai used to be gated (the walls still stand, but now only define the original old city), and we learned that it was designed in the shape of a human body; one gate at the north for the head, two east and west for arms, and two south for feet. Consistent with Thai culture, the North gate was only for the King to enter (because the head is the most sacred part of the body) and all deceased persons would exit the city through one of the southern most gates (because feet are the dirtiest part of the body). We also visited several Wats and talked with a couple monks, where we learned that temples are increasingly becoming community centers, educating people and holding events in order to preserve cultural identity and foster within the people a pride in their heritage.

Some of these Buddhist scripts are 700 years old!

Thursday, instead of Thai class, we all headed to the market to buy food to cook lunch, and of course to put our wonderful Thai language skills to use! Obviously we can’t become fluent in a language in five weeks so they definitely structure our learning based on what we need to know to get by and by what pertains most to our classes. Even so, it is still nice to learn something in the classroom, and then be able to immediately apply it in the “real world”!

Today, Friday, our field trip was a hike up a mountain to a temple. This temple is famous in Chiang Mai because it houses some of the Buddha’s ashes and is built on top of a mountain. We started at the bottom, stopped at one temple to look around and eat lunch around midday, and then made it to the top- and the Doi Suthep temple- in the afternoon. The Doi Suthep temple, although beautiful and extremely ornate, was much too crowded and touristy for my liking, and I probably speak for everyone when I say that the first temple in the forest was much more appealing. Still, it was fun to see the view of Chiang Mai from the top, and even more rewarding knowing we had hiked all the way up!