Cruel and unusual: Slowing down a Slow Loris in Phuket

We didn't know what it was, but as the days roll on the guilt builds. The more I know, the less proud I am. I feel like I went from an animal rights, "PETA certified", servant of the wild to a 6-year-old boy with a magnifying glass -- but only in reflection.

It was dark and Jackie riding pillion as we ground up the the dark hill near our house. There, flat in the middle of the back road and sprawled out as if it had been crushed, was a little swath of fur.

Interested, keen and animal roadkill savvy, I pulled over to have me an investigation: not roadkill -- roadliving. The small creature turned its flat face up to us. One armed was stretched out. There was something desperate and compelling about its prostrated posture, about its sad, wet noise and seemingly teary eyes. It looked sick. It hardly seemed to have the energy to move once caught in our light. Like I said we didn't know what it was. Not a monkey. A lemur? A marmoset?

I wasn't sure what to do. It didn't seem injured just tired, exhausted -- slow. A man (Simon) and woman drove by us on the main road. I waved them down. It was instinctual, because I recognized them. Though just four hours earlier I had seen them and thought "God, I hate those two." It was nothing personal of course, but one was a farang and the other a Thai woman; they both had bright-red dyed hair and his was just a little ratty top-ponytail. They looked ridiculous. Early that day wasn't the first time I had seen them -- that hair was hard to miss.

They stopped and came down. They also thought it was sick. Simone, who we later found out was vegetarian after someone joked about eating the animal, offered to take it home and then to the veterinarian the next day. He and his girlfriend were incredibly nice, it looks like my snap judgment has started to fail me, might explain some poker issues.

We all crouched around the little animal, who kept turning its face down, hiding, but not running -- clearly a sick creature or maybe just a sad lost creature. (It turns out the Slow Loris is native to Phuket and the slowest mammal in the world.) A pickup truck started to rumble up the hill, and already another moped had stopped. The woman on the moped asked if the animal was a dog. No dog, no monkey, it's a . . .  well, none of us knew.

Simon tried to pick it up and get it out of the road. It then somehow managed to bite his girlfriend. She screamed and threw her purse, which the creature had managed to end up on. It landed on the seat of Simon's motorbike, and there it lay.

The truck driver, catching onto the obvious commotion, pulled over to have a look.

The poor animal, had the air of a mother who had lost its child as we tried to figure out how to get it into the purse, so Simon could take it to the vet. The Thai man in the truck, knew what it was, though he didn't know the English name, leaving us all with a set of sounds with a very clear meaning . . . whatever we had in front of us, but no context to put it in.

In one of the many attempts to get the loris in the bag the man was bitten. He squeezed his finger and a drop of blood appeared.

In our attempts to move the loris, which was really very chilled out and kept tucking its head down, trying to get away from the lights and commotion, it fell to the ground with a horrible thud.

Shortly after, I can't remember exactly how, it ended up wrapped around the clutch of the motorcycle. The Thai man firmly pulled and wiggled and tried his best to pull the loris free, but it refused to budge -- its sudden strength and obvious "fuck off" attitude didn't ring bells for anyone. We had established it was "sick" and were working solely from that premise -- no time to re-evaluate

Finally, by prying the the poor loris's fingers off one by one they were able to sack the little animal. Now they could take it to the hospital in the morning.





















I didn't figure out what that it was a slow loris until I did a little Google research the next day.

I didn't know that it was supposedly the slowest moving mammal in the world until Chris mentioned it at lunch.

I didn't realize that my will, no matter its intentions, actually bought about the torture of a tiny, wild, benign and endangered creature.

Simone and his girlfriend will no-doubt be spotted again at some point. I look forward to following up on the happenings of our poor loris and perhaps apologizing to them also -- it had to be very embarrassing to take a slow loris to a vet and ask him why it had seemed so sluggish and unhappy in the bright lights and cacophony of curiosity we had inundated it with.

Chiang Mai Part 1: Temples

 After 4 months in Thailand I finally left Phuket to explore another part of country. For Christmas break I flew up north to Chiang Mai, trading in beaches for mountains. I was thrilled to get off the plane and suddenly be somewhere new and different. Phuket is great but with a full time job and a 6:30pm sunset I don’t get out exploring much and was starting to feel stagnant, boring, and bored. The week long trip to Chiang Mai helped put my mind at ease again and rejuvenated my wilting sense of adventure.

I had decided not to plan anything for the trip, traveling without a guide book worked so well for Tonsai I figured why not try it again? During my last few trips guide books have started making me feel trapped or coerced into doing all the ‘coolest’ things at the sacrifice of letting me discover my own favorite places or exploring on my own time frame. I think most of this sudden distaste for guides comes from being a resident instead of a tourist, even in distant regions (24 hrs by bus), I still know that I can and will visit most of these places again, so I am in no rush to see and do everything exciting all in one week. I was also going on vacation with the ulterior motive of testing the northern region to see if I would enjoy living there more permanently, so I was trying to stay out of the super touristy areas.

Planning each day as it unwound, I had a spectacular time living from moment to moment, lingering indefinitely at places I liked, leaving quickly when I didn’t. Exploring in this lackadaisical style, going with the flow of each day, every day of the trip was so different from any other that I’m going to try to break them down into different blogs over the next few weeks.

 Day 1: temples. After only few hours of sleep I jumped out of my bed in a shared dorm room, excited to explore the new city.  After wondering about how best to start my adventure, I decided to familiarize myself with the city by taking a much needed respite from motorbikes and wandering the city on foot. While this was fantastic for 4-5 hours, because Chiang Mai is more conservative than Phuket and bare shoulders and shorts are not allowed inside temples, I was burning up wearing jeans and a jacket in 90 °F heat and exhausted by the end of the day.

  There are over 300 temples in CM, making them more profuse than McDonalds and Starbucks combined in the entire state of Indiana. I had heard about two especially noteworthy temples and my goal was to eventually wander to them, but without a map. Every temple had something new to see, whether it be deeply engraved gold doors depicting ancient stories, various famous Buddha images, fountains, or giant glimmering dragons guarding the entrances. However, even though each was unique, after 5 hours all the incredible statues and ornamentation that had awed me initially became blurred together with all of the other statues and reliefs of other temples. The day is a blur of gold decorations, stained glass dragons, giant Buddha’s, and monks swathed in orange.

There are two exceptions to this blur, even 2 weeks after returning home Wat Chedi Lueang and Wat Pra That  Doi Suthep still remain clear in my memory. Wat Chedi Lueang consists of many temples (Wats) of varying size and importance. While the main temple was similar to many of the other temples I had visited that day, there was also a magnificent and crumbling ancient Lanna style temple towering over it. Not having looked anything up in a guide book I had no idea what the structure was at the time. But I spent 2 hours wandering around it, utterly fascinated and awestruck.

                   (Wat Chedi Lueang)                                     (Wat Pra That  Doi Suthep )

The building is made of brick and appeared extremely old, the dome at the top has crumbled and only half remains, looking blackened as if it had survived a massive fire. There did not seem to be any easy way to get inside and what I initially perceived to be 4 entrances, one in each cardinal direction, turned out to be hollowed out shrines housing Buddha images. Each statue is ~50ft up the structure and leading to each is a long, very steep paved ‘sidewalk’ that would be absolutely terrifying to walk down.  Guarding the base of each were 2 six headed dragons that appeared to be slightly newer than the rest of the building. On the southern wall there were 6 beautifully carved elephants high on the rampart. One had lost it trunk and ears and had been worn smooth by time. While this was confusing at the time, later I looked it up and found that the temple had been built in the 14^th century but was partially restored in the 1990’s when it became a UNESCO world heritage site. The dome had not been restored because no one knew what the original looked like and one elephant was left untouched for reasons I don’t know.  The structure was incredible though and seemed to have a personality and aged grace that demanded reverence, even without knowing its remarkable history.

                              

The second truly remarkable temple was Wat Pra That  Doi Suthep, a temple at the peak of a mountain. In order to get to the temple each visitor must climb a 309 step staircase with magnificent stained glass studded dragons following the entire stair case.  Small children from the nearby Hmong villages are brought there daily in full black velvet clothing, intricately beaded hats and shoes, and heavy makeup. Most of the children were girls under the age of 5 and looked absolutely miserable, chided and told to stay still and smile at the tourists so that they will get money. Those little girls had some of the saddest smiles I have ever seen.  They would often get distracted from their ‘job’ and would crawl around comfortable on all fours, showing just how young they were.

                                                                                                   

(Hmong village children)

The stairs give way to a beautiful panoramic view of Chiang Mai and the most gold I have ever seen or will ever see in my life. Absolutely everything in the outdoor Wat was covered in gold and shone brilliantly in the sun, to the extent that I had to keep my sunglasses on throughout my visit. It was very crowded and between the crush of people, intense heat, burning incense, and the shining gold surfaces I was in a sensory overload and had to keep ducking off into shaded corners to escape the crowds and to view the temple from a quieter, more stationary position.

 My favorite part of the temple, outside the fact that it was like being in King Midas’s palace, was a large trough of oil with 7 lamps, one for each day of the week. Similar to Ghana, the day you were born is very important in the Buddhist tradition. Luckily, thanks to Ghanaian culture I already knew that I was born on a Monday so I knew which Buddha position I should light a lamp for (or keep alight).  In this temple people took turns ladling oil into shallow lamps to keep the flames burning ceaselessly. It was a pleasant and peaceful tradition and one of the few I felt comfortable doing. Most of the time I feel like an idiot or a fraud when I participate in any Buddhist ritual, no matter how minor, unless I am with one of my Thai friends and they explain what to do and why . Even though I enjoy watching most rituals and would probably enjoy doing them, I am very uncomfortable mimicking religious rituals with no idea what their purpose or importance to the religion is.

 The other very memorable part of the temple was its long exit, rimmed with bells of varying sizes and voices. As you exit the Wat you can ring all of the 100 bells that are strung out in rows 2 bells high. I was impressed with how many people went through the effort of crouching to reach the low bells and make every one chime until I started doing it. It is highly addictive and I was laughing as I rang the bells, waiting patiently as little kids ran past me, darting their tiny hands into the bells as they raced to chime them all as fast as possible.

Dive Column: Sunshine story of 10-year-old diver

Sadly there was a nasty editor mistake in the printed version of the story, but I believe it was fixed before being put online.

http://www.phuketgazette.net/archives/phuketlifestyle/2012/article12101.html

Reading the paper

Photo by: Stefano Corso

A couple of drinks and one broken glass later, these things happen you know, I found myself in bed reading the Bangkok Post's Sunday paper.

I'm trying to shut down the computer for a little bit everyday, otherwise I spend over 90% of any given day in front of a screen: work, curiosity fix, social network (friends), family and entertainment. It doesn't feed me or get me to work, but outside of that I might as well just be synced up and into the matrix.

With the computer "sleeping", I was dragged into a story by the lead of the Post's front page sidebar on Burma. The course grained paper of a daily feels good, better than a Kindle. I didn't even take the rubber-band off it -- just left it quartered.

Finally carefully I began to dissect the paper and remove the funny pages. When was the last time I had actually held the funny pages? -- ever? Not in my "adult" life, but there I was lounging in my big bed in Thailand, reading Garfield and Blonde, and thinking about a time that I only briefly existed in, when paper was the medium for information.

Christmas in Phuket

Christmas Eve:

It was Christmas Eve and I was furious. Pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of Phuket Town, after having worked until 4:00pm, it was hard not to just yell, not that yelling was going to fix the bad connection between Jackie's and my phones.

It was going on 5:30. I had been out of work for an hour and half and I was still scrambling around, running all the last minute errands that Jackie could have taken care of while I was at work. But instead I was having to deal with poor reception, traffic and the snowballing frustration of just not being home yet.

I was doing my best not to just lash out or break down, but I could tell that my best really was faltering.

We hadn't really connected once since I had gotten back from KL earlier this week and I had almost written the entire holiday off after having spent the majority of my time in KL gleefully shopping for presents. We had no plans, nothing to get excited about, nothing to look forward and the fact that Jackie had been out late at a co-worker's fairwell party just compounded my frustration with the entire situation.

Then, just when I thought that I had finished shopping for everything we needed at the Super Cheap and was headed home, I got a call and had to turn around and go to Tesco for chocolate and Italian sausages.

No Italian sausages. The best I could do was individually wrapped smoked sausages, but I was over it -- I just wanted to be home.

It was dark as I shifted into second gear and made way down the pot-holed hill to our house.

I could see Christmas lights twinkling through the gap of the full-length curtains of my bedroom -- it was suddenly Christmas. I was coming back to a home and not a house.

The Grinch spirit that had commandeered me on my motorbike over the last couple hours was waltzed away, leaving only the spirit of Christmas Present.

"Come in and know me better man," he beckoned.

A little snowman cut-out, snatched from school I don't doubt, hung on the side door of the house. The bags of food, drink, and fireworks I had been irritatingly gathering were now prizes won and gifts to pass out.

Hanging from my bedroom door was an upside down Santa hat -- my stocking stuffed to the point that the flowers and a mask were poking out of the top.

The house was beautiful and Jackie, having spent the better part of the day decorating and preparing for our Christmas celebrations was in the shower, but clearly in seasonal cheer.

I unpacked my loot: eggs, donuts, sausages, chocolate, cabernet sauvignon, champagne, brandy, some big fireworks and two Chinese lanterns.

Next to the fresh produce and ingredients for  dinner to was become quite a display.

I would have immediately gone to my room to see the decorations and Christmas lights that Jackie had set up, but the door was locked. A surprise waiting for me inside?

No, it turned out the door, which we didn't have a key for, had accidentally been locked, forcing Jackie and I to exercise our breaking-and-entering skills, which were up to the task.

My room, with the red sheets and the dim white Christmas lights mirrored my childhood memories of Christmas Eve in Indiana.

I started on the eggnog, while Jackie minced some garlic and began working on the marinara sauce, which turned out to be one of the best red sauces I've ever had (most likely it had a lot to do with the all  the smoke sausage fat added to it).

Full and sleepy I crawled into bed to give Santa a little time to do some more of his magic.

Christmas Day:

With the aircon blasting I woke up under the covers to that warm feeling, which seems to most often come when you wake up warm on a cold winters day. We sifted through our stockings [I had actually not made Jackie a stocking (my favorite part of Christmas) this year, because I had become so disheartened with the whole affair. However the night before, inspired by her beautiful stocking, I had scooted back out of the house to pick up something for the sauce and ended up buying almost every delicious chocolate treat I could find for her makeshift stocking.]

We poured ourselves little breakfast eggnog and then started with the gift exchange. There were plenty of gifts for both of us to unwrap (Thanks Mom and Dad!).

Jackie holds up her make-shit stocking (A Mad Rock climbing shoe bag)

Green seemed to be the theme of the day for my presents as I got an awesome green polo and a green banded watch, which I wear daily.

With newspaper wrapping shredded around us (sorry Phuket Gazette) and gifts neatly stacked to the side, we started playing A Christmas Story on my laptop. Hidden by the comforter from the aircon's cold, all my childhood memories came rushing back. Even now I'm smiling thinking about how well crafted the moment that I got my first BB gun was -- straight out of the movie.

The sad thing about Christmas is that once the presents are unwrapped and stacked to the side the anticipation for the day is lost. There was no snow to play in, nothing "Christmasy" left. Even at home there would of course be hours of games and delicious food to come, but the big moments would have already passed.

Jackie and I cured this little Christmas dilemma with a new tradition, a grafting of Thai celebration onto our own Christian holiday -- fireworks and Chinese lanterns. After a day of lounging about on the ocean, we returned home, ordered a pizza and headed to the beach for fireworks and champagne.

The weather had changed and the wind was blowing hard over the ocean. Friendship beach, was a sliver of sand at high tide and we were worried about the wind snatching the Chinese lanterns up and throwing them, with or Christmas wishes, into the trees on the shoreline.

Not wanting to completely give up on our new "tradition" we popped the champagne cork and set up the mortar style fireworks.

 Taking turns we would craddle a match, blocking the wind, and several matches later there would be a hiss as the fuse caught. We'd dash to safety and "pop" the mortar would be airborne and then burst over our heads. Taking turns we shot off the better part of a dozen mortars before retiring to the house to finish our champagne and start in on the Julia Child's chocolate mouse we had made up the night before.

Children's Day

Today was yet another holiday at the school. While I used to get angry when we lost our days off because of random school events, now I look forward to them because I love the people in my department and the more ridiculous the event, the more fun we have. This time not only were we in charge of setting up, cleaning up, buying gifts, and entertaining children all day but we were told the day before that we were also supposed to dress like cartoon characters. A great theme if we were back home but exceedingly hard on a moments (and budgets) notice.

Three of my friends and I decided to do a face painting booth and though none of us are artistically inclined, we had a blast drawing rainbows and flowers, dolphins, flags, butterflies, and scary faces on the kids, and the kids loved it! The best part was that we did all of the painting using only colored pencils dipped in water, no messy paint required. I don’t think any of us looked up for 3.5 hours, though I know many kids hit the line over and over to have their arms and hands done as well. We were the last booth to close down and we were exhausted and sweaty from the 90 degree heat, but happy to see all the painted up children running around. 

  

(All of these were drawn using only colored pencils dipped in water)

                         

 (We did WAAAYYY more than rainbows and scars but that seems to be all I took pics of)

 It was a celebration for the kids but I think the teachers had just as much fun.  We spent hours painting everyone in our department until we were all covered in designs and everyone had added something to everyone’s skin. Most of us managed to throw together uber jank costumes and had a blast looking like fools parading around the school.

('Powerpuff girls' and the Dr.)

Christmas in the Chamber (Dive Column)

Unfortunately there will be an untimely break before I get the next dive column out. Between work and well, work, I'm having a hard time making the contacts for the column. However the ball looks like it might be rolling again. Here is the latest from my dice column: http://www.phuketgazette.net/news/detail.asp?id=11824

Doing what I came here to do

View of the ocean from one of the lounging bars

To say that life has shipped either Jackie or me in the direction that we imagined it would is an out right lie.

I had imagined that I would be living it up in Thailand with a stunning and intelligent girl friend as I crushed souls online for maybe 30 hours a week and divided the remainder of my time between scuba diving, rock climbing and creative writing.

It feels like I had stepped up to homeplate aiming for the fences, and then got a signal from the third-base coach (or the man up stairs) to bunt. After two big swings and misses it looks like I finally gave up trying to send one over the fences for this at bat. Instead I just laid a little dribbling bunt down the third-base line to advance the runners.

Currently, I'm eeking by on about half the money that I expected to be making from poker as an editor and putting in about twice the amount of hours. Nonetheless I love my new job, and with Father's Day (The King's birthday on December 5th) and one holiday all ready in the bank Jackie and I were able to slide out of Phuket for a glimpse of the dream I once had . . . deep water soloing (DWS) in Krabi.

Towering islands just beyond Ton Sai's beach as the tide heads out.

Ton Sai, name ring a bell? Yes, after Jackie returned from her stunning trip with her good friend Michelle and told me that it was a climber's paradise, I had no choice but to ship off to those seemingly mythical shores at my first opportunity. It wasn't until the day before we left that Jackie confirmed that she would be joining me on the adventure

With two Cuban cigars, a bottle of decent dark rum and all my climbing gear packed away I was stoked out of my mind for the trip.

The cork of the rum broke off into the bottle so we had to bag -- jankest bottle ever.

Going deep water soloing has been one of my lifetime climbing goals. I think I was originally inspired by youtube videos of rope-free climbers hanging onto cave ceilings above stunningly beautiful water. Or it could have been the poster in Hoosier Heights with some climber beasting it between two stalactites in Vietnam -- either way I was hooked on the dream from the start.

There was a certain pleasure of being able to lean on Jackie for the logistics of the trip, as she'd already made the trip once. (Very rarely do I have the opportunity of having someone show me around.)

The long-tail boat dropped us off right along the small beach of Ton Sai. It was a pirates cove with only a handful of bars poking out onto the beach from the jungle. An enormous cliff face on the south side of the beach was crawling with climbers as they beasted through the steep overhung routes.

Further down the beach the wall became more vertical. Silver bolts sunk into the stunning rock glimmered. Slowly my eyes followed the bolts up and up connecting the dots imagining what "line" to take from clip to clip.

Krabi's famous beach climbing

Stellar climbing, right on the beach, is only minutes away from a cold beer at one of the chill bars

The dirt road, also known as the main drag, was really just a wide hiking path that snaked into the heavy -green foliage of the jungle. After a short trek several unobtrusive buildings came into view, all were well below the forest's canopy. The place felt a little deserted, not what we had expected from high season, but then again it was midday and no doubt most climbers were either on a wall or nursing a hangover.

The "main drag" at night

Bits of rubbish swept off into the jungle, the wooden buildings and rasta style of the place made the entire "town" feel post-apocalyptic. You could imagine that this was a small settlement strapped together by the last survivors.

We booked a small bamboo hut on stilts a little ways up the hill for a good price. The floor boards had gaps big enough for mice to stroll through, not to mention mosquitoes, so we were both thankful for the ample amount of mosquito netting hanging over the bed.

After dinner we booked a DWS trip.

An eleven o'clock departure time left us with a lazy morning, plenty of time for Jackie to clip her nails long-beautiful nails and for us to have coconut shakes on the beach front.

Jackie show's off her beautiful nails before going rock climbing.

When the time came around a load of us scrampled into a long-tail boat with our guide and headed out towards one of the many towering island-skyscrapers dotting the landscape. Jackie and I were both a little nervous about the prospects for the day.

The rock around Ton Sai is breath taking. I should have studied geology, or at least finished my minor in it. My curiosity about the rock formations that decorated the rock walls like prehistoric ornamental hung  by the Titans was insatiable.

I had already been told that the majority of the rock cliffs were limestone, perhaps an ancient coral reef raised out of the ocean over time, but there were so many aspects of the rock formations that didn't seem to fit the simple picture of limestone cave formation. In all honest the walls exposed to the sea really did seem like cross section of enormous cave cathedrals. So there were plenty of stalactites, and flow stone formations, but there were also veins of red that seemed to have cut through the rock and flows of stone that seemed to have burst through the cliff walls leaving smooth tunnels behind them. It looked like a wild assortment of calcite deposits and lava flows.

It was almost painful to pick up the rocks and look at the formation and to know that if I had been able to stick it out through my petrology class I would be able to give names and shape to the history that was written in the rocks. As it was I had to be satisfied with my grossly misinformed hypothesis and was forced to simply remain awestruck by the majestic nature of it all.

Not even the tip of the mineral iceberg, when it comes to rock formations.

The DWSing trip unfortunately seemed to be skewed towards the cliff jumping opportunities rather than more serious rock climbing ones. None the less Jackie and I both got to confront some fears.

The next day we rented a kayak and embarked on our own DWS trip. Good climbing areas were usually marked by ropes that were tied off on a rock formation and hung in the water.

We paddled up to one overhung route at a time. Tenatively I was stand up in the kayak and reach up to the rock or rope. One, two three and I was up. Jackie paddled the kayak out of danger and got out the camera. Even with dry hands I didn't have the strength to make more then a couple bouldering moves before pealing off and splashing out.

It was a thrill, left me aching, and made it clear that if I was serious about climbing a trip to these tough walls a couple times a month (at the very best) just wasn't going to be enough.

Well, shoot is almost looks like I'm a climber as I move away from a series of stalactites around the arete about 8 meters above the water. 

                                                 Going up  . . . . . . . . . . . . one move later . . . . . . . . . . . . . coming down.                                     

The rocks edges were sharper then I realized. I didn't know how many places I was bleeding from until I climbed back in the boat.

Jackie peaking out from behind an enormous stalactite.

Jackie laying out at Freedom Bar.  Jackie flashes the ace of spades while shuffling.

Waiting for coconut shakes at Freedom Bar.

That's Ton Sai for you.

For those closely following the time line this was all before Christmas and New Year's Eve!