New Year … Huay Pakoot style
New Year … Huay Pakoot style
By Stacey Kelly, Australia
Elephant poo paper. Not exactly what you imagine yourself to
be making on New Year’s Day following
instructions such as boil poo for 8
hours / bleach poo / blend poo / 1:1 ratio poo to newspaper. (It is still
drying two days later so I can’t currently comment on its success). But then
again, it wasn’t exactly a usual New Year’s Eve. Sitting around a camp fire
with glow sticks (brought all the way from Manchester) telling bad jokes, poor riddles
or else strumming guitars or dancing Gangnam Style with new found friends on our
bamboo base hut (surprisingly sturdy) with head torches put on strobe setting
for effect. Limited local alcohol (I’m sure the 40% alcohol warning was an
understatement), masks and streamers bought from Chiang Mai, most going to bed
prior to midnight although 6 of us were committed to seeing in 2013. Like most
random and unplanned New Year’s Eve nights, it was one of the most fun and
memorable.
The night had started with a pot luck dinner supplied by our
local host families. All dishes put in the centre of the circle. The only rules
being that you pass to the left and you leave enough so others can try the dish
too (those who have been here long enough have developed the ability to
differentiate between the best white rice dishes simply on sight). Sitting
crossed legged around a feast we discovered differences and similarities
between random people thrown together from across the globe and celebrated the
small joys of eating banana and coconut cake made in the rice cooker.The whole evening was an unexpectedly awesome ending to a magical day.
It was my first day on project which coincided with elephant
feeding day. After trekking for a couple of hours, we met our 5 elephants and
were suddenly the favored guests with bananas in hand. We then followed the
elephants through the forests – battering the branches and shrubs were worth
the amazing experience of being so close to the elephants in the wild. Seeing
first hand their relationship with the Mahouts; or when Song Kran (a 2 year old
calf) put his trunk in his mother’s (Boon Jan) mouth for comfort (almost like a baby sucking
his thumb); or when Mana reprimanded Song Kran (a 5 year old calf) seemingly
for playing too roughly with Pbee Mai. We were all memorized.
It’s definitely one New Year that I won’t forget.
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