Ooh, Ooh, Ooh the Funky Gibbon
STATS: Day count=128; theft count=0; rip-off count=1; tourist screw-up count=3; Chris’ photo count=1354; Emma’s photo count=51; touch-typing char/min=233; Poi skills mastered since last post: small circles, carry turn from forward & backward, split timing, hitting myself
It was great to catch up with many of you during our week back in the UK – thanks for making the effort!
The more astute amongst you may have noticed a change in the reported stats at the top of the posts. I didn’t think anyone would be interested in our current illnesses – especially as it was a pretty constant factor in our India trip and if either of us gets really ill, it will be sure to be mentioned in the post somewhere! The photo counts seemed to interest some of you and whilst Emma is adamant that it is not completely accurate due to a claim that she uses my camera sometimes, and that I tend to delete many of her pictures, I’m not sure that 15 photos of the same out-of-focus scene should really be counted individually! Only kidding…ish! The rip-off and screw-up counts are bound to increase in Vietnam and Cambodia, so I’ll leave them in, and I’m sure many of you are really interested in how my touch-typing and poi activities are progressing, so I’ve added those. Other suggestions are, of course, welcome.
Back in Thailand now – and it is as nice as we remember from the first time round. We managed to just about avoid the volcano ash to get home, and only just managed to get a flight back to Thailand just as the UK Foreign Office downgraded their advice regarding the current political protests in Bangkok from “don’t travel anywhere in Thailand” to “Don’t stay in Bangkok” – which at least makes our travel insurance valid (which it wouldn’t have been if the previous advice had held when we flew out here).
We saw nothing of the protests in Bangkok, barring a couple of banners by the roadside, but then we did just fly in, stay in a hotel near the airport, get a cab to the coach station north of the city and get a coach northbound, so it’s not surprising we didn’t happen upon riots, bombs and angry people. We are now in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by wildlife, so have no real clue what is happening in Bangkok (or the UK for that matter) other than a brief internet surf on our weekly trip into the nearest town, 40 minutes drive away, and some updates from our host, who tells us that it is getting worse in Bangkok, but “will all be over soon”.
The trip here was long – a 16hr flight, broken in Delhi, a brief hotel sleep, then a 10 hour trip in a coach, a minibus and a 4x4 to get to the highland farm, where we are staying for a month, helping out.
“Helping out” is an ambiguous term.
We have been here a week so far (as I type this, as opposed to when it gets published) and we aren’t exactly being overworked. Not that we are complaining, of course! I do think that now we can (just about) be trusted to feed the gibbons without doing something stupid like open the cage door or stick our hands or heads in, we are helping by doing a lot of the menial jobs – preparing the gibbon’s food, cleaning around the cages and giving them their food 3 times a day – which leaves the permanent staff (7 people) time to get on with other duties around the farm.
We are fairly cut off from the rest of Thailand here.
Highland Farm is about 6km from the Burmese border, and 40km from Mae Sot, the nearest town. There is one road, surrounded by farmland, and the farm is very secluded. It is home to the owner, a Thai lady who lived in the USA with her late American husband for over 20 years, and the farm manager – a lady called Nok who is the only person on the farm, and maybe the only person in Thailand, who doesn’t smile. 
This offsets the rest of the staff there who seem to laugh at everything and anything, especially us. They all seem to care a lot for the gibbons, which is nice to see. We are currently the only volunteers here (and none are expected during our stay) and so far there have been no visits to the farm either (one of our jobs would be to show people round if they visit). I wont bore you with the detail about the origin of the farm – if you are interested, read their website: www.highland-farm.org. However, if you are already bored hearing about the gibbons and the farm then you may want to skip the blog until the end of June, as it will be our life for a while!
The farm is also home to 52 gibbons, 2 Asiatic jackals (a lot like foxes), 9 macaque monkeys, lots of geese, numerous dogs and cats and many birds (which I’m not so keen on, but their cages are at least relatively large). Most of these animals (not the birds) were donated to, or rescued by, the farm as they were either being mistreated, outgrown their ‘pet’ status, or were annoying others. It is primarily a gibbon sanctuary, but Pharanee, the owner, has trouble saying no to any pitiful case that turns up on the doorstep! Hence her agreeing to our volunteering, I guess.
The gibbons vary in ages from newborn (“water-melon”, still with it’s mother, Maggie) to about 40 years of age.
They also vary in temperament from the babies/youngsters who, when they are used to you (which they are just becoming with us), will jump on you and hug you as you walk around, to those who love being stroked and talked to through their cages, to those who would happily rip your arm off as you walk past. Luckily there are more of the former two types than the latter! We soon got to know which were which. And we still have all our limbs intact. Our only injuries of note so far have been Emma walking into a beam in our room, and Emma poking herself in the eye with a broom handle. We can’t blame the gibbons for either of those.
Work on the farm is fairly busy (for others), but certainly not manic. They are awaiting a grant which will enable them to build another gibbon enclosure – once that comes through
I’m sure we will be a bit busier. Other than the feeding and cleaning of the gibbons we are pretty much left to ourselves, which is very relaxing. We are getting through our books at an alarming rate, and we are getting to know the gibbons (and vice versa) pretty quickly. That’s not to say we would be able to identify each one if they were all put into a room together, but we are getting there. They do all have their own personalities, and many of them have their own deformities (many were abused or suffered in some way prior to coming here).
Emma has grown attached to Jerry and George. Jerry (picture, left) has a deformed spine from being kicked and confined as a youngster and can’t move around his cage very fast. George (picture below) is missing his left arm (bitten by a bear) and has no real movement down his right side, so only really has one functional limb. So Emma goes for the pathetic, single males who struggle to look after themselves properly. Hmmm…
We are just entering the rainy season here, which means hot days and often wet afternoons.
Luckily ‘hot’ is not too bad, especially after India, and we are in the highlands here, so the heat is very bearable. ‘Wet’ is definitely very wet, though. Torrential rain yesterday (15th May) which brought out all the frogs. And I thought the gibbons were loud! The ‘frog chorus’ portrayed by Paul McCartney was a fallacy – they are incredibly loud and not very tuneful (though some may say the same about Paul McCartney). Especially when we are trying to watch a film in the evening. The WWII epic “Flags of our Fathers” about the USA capture of the island of Iwo Jima just doesn’t have the same atmosphere when you have 100 frogs croaking loudly outside the window! It’s raining again today, so I’ll expect more of the same this evening!
There is no access to internet here, nor do we get TV, but we have a great little ‘apartment’ on the farm, fantastic food and there are hundreds of DVDs to watch in the evenings should we wish to. Plus all the wildlife we could want (there are supposed to be snakes around too – I’ll go on the hunt for those later). The place does home-stays too if you want to get away from it all and don’t fancy the volunteering aspect. The owner runs us into town each week to access the internet and do any shopping that we need (very little, as most is provided).
19th May: A couple of events over the last couple of days. First it was bath-time for some of the younger gibbons – they didn’t seem to enjoy it and it took 6 people to bath each one! Funny to watch though, and they didn’t seem to bear a grudge after the soap and water and blow-dry!
Then something that the staff around here have been waiting for for a while – a gibbon named Annie gave birth. Over the years here they have had a number of births, so no one was really phased, though it was a bit of a commotion as the baby needed to be taken away from its mother immediately, as Annie never has any milk and the baby would die fairly quickly if left with her. They do try to leave the babies with their mothers where possible. Babies here may be few and far between from now on as one of the main grant providers to this place (an international primate charity) is, rightly in my humble opinion, against allowing babies to be born in captivity and wants the gibbons to be sterilised.
The new-born (a female) is healthy (as is the mother,
who is now back in the same cage as the father after 5 months of separation) and will require a fair bit of attention over the coming month – something which we have already been asked to help out with on baby-sitting duties! Plus, it’s tradition here to name new babies after the volunteer that is around at the time, so the new gibbon has been named Emma! My suggestion of calling it ‘Gollum’ wasn’t received with great enthusiasm for some reason!
23rd May: Emma seems to be getting attached to the baby gibbon. Scary. Luckily not too attached as the nappy changing still doesn’t invoke maternal feelings, and the baby does seem to scream its head off whenever Emma picks it up.
Took a short trip to a pretty waterfall
just a few km down the road the other day. Probably much more impressive in the middle of the wet season, it was still a really nice scenic view and walking around the woods made a nice change from the farm. Hopefully we will be able to get into town in the next couple of days, before this blog post gets even longer. We also may get a chance to see who is in power in the UK and whether there is anything left of Bangkok!
It was great to catch up with many of you during our week back in the UK – thanks for making the effort!
The more astute amongst you may have noticed a change in the reported stats at the top of the posts. I didn’t think anyone would be interested in our current illnesses – especially as it was a pretty constant factor in our India trip and if either of us gets really ill, it will be sure to be mentioned in the post somewhere! The photo counts seemed to interest some of you and whilst Emma is adamant that it is not completely accurate due to a claim that she uses my camera sometimes, and that I tend to delete many of her pictures, I’m not sure that 15 photos of the same out-of-focus scene should really be counted individually! Only kidding…ish! The rip-off and screw-up counts are bound to increase in Vietnam and Cambodia, so I’ll leave them in, and I’m sure many of you are really interested in how my touch-typing and poi activities are progressing, so I’ve added those. Other suggestions are, of course, welcome.
Back in Thailand now – and it is as nice as we remember from the first time round. We managed to just about avoid the volcano ash to get home, and only just managed to get a flight back to Thailand just as the UK Foreign Office downgraded their advice regarding the current political protests in Bangkok from “don’t travel anywhere in Thailand” to “Don’t stay in Bangkok” – which at least makes our travel insurance valid (which it wouldn’t have been if the previous advice had held when we flew out here).
We saw nothing of the protests in Bangkok, barring a couple of banners by the roadside, but then we did just fly in, stay in a hotel near the airport, get a cab to the coach station north of the city and get a coach northbound, so it’s not surprising we didn’t happen upon riots, bombs and angry people. We are now in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by wildlife, so have no real clue what is happening in Bangkok (or the UK for that matter) other than a brief internet surf on our weekly trip into the nearest town, 40 minutes drive away, and some updates from our host, who tells us that it is getting worse in Bangkok, but “will all be over soon”.
The trip here was long – a 16hr flight, broken in Delhi, a brief hotel sleep, then a 10 hour trip in a coach, a minibus and a 4x4 to get to the highland farm, where we are staying for a month, helping out.
“Helping out” is an ambiguous term.
We have been here a week so far (as I type this, as opposed to when it gets published) and we aren’t exactly being overworked. Not that we are complaining, of course! I do think that now we can (just about) be trusted to feed the gibbons without doing something stupid like open the cage door or stick our hands or heads in, we are helping by doing a lot of the menial jobs – preparing the gibbon’s food, cleaning around the cages and giving them their food 3 times a day – which leaves the permanent staff (7 people) time to get on with other duties around the farm.We are fairly cut off from the rest of Thailand here.
Highland Farm is about 6km from the Burmese border, and 40km from Mae Sot, the nearest town. There is one road, surrounded by farmland, and the farm is very secluded. It is home to the owner, a Thai lady who lived in the USA with her late American husband for over 20 years, and the farm manager – a lady called Nok who is the only person on the farm, and maybe the only person in Thailand, who doesn’t smile. 
This offsets the rest of the staff there who seem to laugh at everything and anything, especially us. They all seem to care a lot for the gibbons, which is nice to see. We are currently the only volunteers here (and none are expected during our stay) and so far there have been no visits to the farm either (one of our jobs would be to show people round if they visit). I wont bore you with the detail about the origin of the farm – if you are interested, read their website: www.highland-farm.org. However, if you are already bored hearing about the gibbons and the farm then you may want to skip the blog until the end of June, as it will be our life for a while!
The farm is also home to 52 gibbons, 2 Asiatic jackals (a lot like foxes), 9 macaque monkeys, lots of geese, numerous dogs and cats and many birds (which I’m not so keen on, but their cages are at least relatively large). Most of these animals (not the birds) were donated to, or rescued by, the farm as they were either being mistreated, outgrown their ‘pet’ status, or were annoying others. It is primarily a gibbon sanctuary, but Pharanee, the owner, has trouble saying no to any pitiful case that turns up on the doorstep! Hence her agreeing to our volunteering, I guess.
The gibbons vary in ages from newborn (“water-melon”, still with it’s mother, Maggie) to about 40 years of age.
They also vary in temperament from the babies/youngsters who, when they are used to you (which they are just becoming with us), will jump on you and hug you as you walk around, to those who love being stroked and talked to through their cages, to those who would happily rip your arm off as you walk past. Luckily there are more of the former two types than the latter! We soon got to know which were which. And we still have all our limbs intact. Our only injuries of note so far have been Emma walking into a beam in our room, and Emma poking herself in the eye with a broom handle. We can’t blame the gibbons for either of those.Work on the farm is fairly busy (for others), but certainly not manic. They are awaiting a grant which will enable them to build another gibbon enclosure – once that comes through
I’m sure we will be a bit busier. Other than the feeding and cleaning of the gibbons we are pretty much left to ourselves, which is very relaxing. We are getting through our books at an alarming rate, and we are getting to know the gibbons (and vice versa) pretty quickly. That’s not to say we would be able to identify each one if they were all put into a room together, but we are getting there. They do all have their own personalities, and many of them have their own deformities (many were abused or suffered in some way prior to coming here).
Emma has grown attached to Jerry and George. Jerry (picture, left) has a deformed spine from being kicked and confined as a youngster and can’t move around his cage very fast. George (picture below) is missing his left arm (bitten by a bear) and has no real movement down his right side, so only really has one functional limb. So Emma goes for the pathetic, single males who struggle to look after themselves properly. Hmmm…
We are just entering the rainy season here, which means hot days and often wet afternoons.
Luckily ‘hot’ is not too bad, especially after India, and we are in the highlands here, so the heat is very bearable. ‘Wet’ is definitely very wet, though. Torrential rain yesterday (15th May) which brought out all the frogs. And I thought the gibbons were loud! The ‘frog chorus’ portrayed by Paul McCartney was a fallacy – they are incredibly loud and not very tuneful (though some may say the same about Paul McCartney). Especially when we are trying to watch a film in the evening. The WWII epic “Flags of our Fathers” about the USA capture of the island of Iwo Jima just doesn’t have the same atmosphere when you have 100 frogs croaking loudly outside the window! It’s raining again today, so I’ll expect more of the same this evening!
There is no access to internet here, nor do we get TV, but we have a great little ‘apartment’ on the farm, fantastic food and there are hundreds of DVDs to watch in the evenings should we wish to. Plus all the wildlife we could want (there are supposed to be snakes around too – I’ll go on the hunt for those later). The place does home-stays too if you want to get away from it all and don’t fancy the volunteering aspect. The owner runs us into town each week to access the internet and do any shopping that we need (very little, as most is provided).
19th May: A couple of events over the last couple of days. First it was bath-time for some of the younger gibbons – they didn’t seem to enjoy it and it took 6 people to bath each one! Funny to watch though, and they didn’t seem to bear a grudge after the soap and water and blow-dry!
Then something that the staff around here have been waiting for for a while – a gibbon named Annie gave birth. Over the years here they have had a number of births, so no one was really phased, though it was a bit of a commotion as the baby needed to be taken away from its mother immediately, as Annie never has any milk and the baby would die fairly quickly if left with her. They do try to leave the babies with their mothers where possible. Babies here may be few and far between from now on as one of the main grant providers to this place (an international primate charity) is, rightly in my humble opinion, against allowing babies to be born in captivity and wants the gibbons to be sterilised.
The new-born (a female) is healthy (as is the mother,
who is now back in the same cage as the father after 5 months of separation) and will require a fair bit of attention over the coming month – something which we have already been asked to help out with on baby-sitting duties! Plus, it’s tradition here to name new babies after the volunteer that is around at the time, so the new gibbon has been named Emma! My suggestion of calling it ‘Gollum’ wasn’t received with great enthusiasm for some reason!
23rd May: Emma seems to be getting attached to the baby gibbon. Scary. Luckily not too attached as the nappy changing still doesn’t invoke maternal feelings, and the baby does seem to scream its head off whenever Emma picks it up.
Took a short trip to a pretty waterfall
just a few km down the road the other day. Probably much more impressive in the middle of the wet season, it was still a really nice scenic view and walking around the woods made a nice change from the farm. Hopefully we will be able to get into town in the next couple of days, before this blog post gets even longer. We also may get a chance to see who is in power in the UK and whether there is anything left of Bangkok!
So the charity work is not simply for gibbons, but disabled orphan gibbons - extra points!
ReplyDeleteRegarding the stats count, it would be nice to see the tally tracked and increasing for:
1) Number of holy relics desecrated - eg by accidentally knocking them over with your backpack.
2) Number of local customs and laws inadvertently flouted - this can lead to some hilarious misunderstanding in devout muslim countries.
3) Number of famous rivers weed in.
Hi Emma and Chris. Just thought I'd say that the pictures on the website are really good (I read it too).
ReplyDeleteEveryone over here seem to be waiting to see cracks in the David Cameron Nick Clegg partnership. Ready to pounce. So far they just keep saying that the country is in for an austere time.
Take care.