Some of you may remember that a census taker knocked on my door and interrogated me a while back. Today I saw on Tiny Island’s blog that some of the census results are out.
The big data is that the current population is just over 5 million people. Apparently only 3.8 million are actually Singaporean born.
I find it interesting that foreigners make up so much of the population. In part, I often feel so alien here that it seems strange that my fellow immigrants are so populous. I especially found the comments on the Straits Time article from the locals to be very interesting, because you don’t hear much rhetoric about immigration, as opposed to back home.
I find it fascinating to see people argue about Singaporean identity. As there is no such thing as an “ethnic” Singaporean, I find it interesting to see what elements define “Singaporean.” With Americans, I feel like our culture largely defines us (music, tv, movies, food). In Singapore, so much of the pop culture is also imported, as is the food, that I struggle daily to define “Singaporean” even though I’m an outsider.
I was also surprised by how little other data was put out. I was asked about work industry, religion, age, all sorts of things and population and origin seems to be the extent of the publication. I’ve recently really begun to pick up on how many Christian churches are here, which I find surprising as so little of the population is actually Christian. One of the biggest Christian populations are the Filipinna Maids…my helper shared with me that it’s easier to get work documents and be hired as a foreign domestic helper if you claim to be Baptist or Catholic (with an edge for the Baptists) and that plenty of women she’s known have joined that church purely for that purpose. I was also curious to see what the birth rate was for Singapore as there seems to be a growing concern about that, and a push and incentives by the government for families to have more kids (my understanding is the the current population is a bit like an inverted pyramid).
When talking to my friends or even just inside my own head, there tends to be a focus on things I miss about the US. Recently I was thoroughly irritated to find out that “Eat Pray Love” with Julia Roberts won’t be released in Singapore until October, although it released in the US a few weeks ago. Ravi and I could talk for hours about the food we miss from home. I often think about how much I miss our car and the simplicity of deciding to go somewhere, loading us up in the car and leaving on my own terms, driving and playing my favorite tunes while the road lulled E to sleep.
What I don’t often think to talk about are things I don’t miss about living in Boston, or the US in general. So in the first of what I’m sure will be a series of evolving posts, I present to you three things I don’t miss about life in the US.
1-Safety concerns. While I’ve never subscribed to the “constant vigilance/ worst scenario” mentality that the US media is trying to shove down our throats, I have always practiced urban smartness–I try to keep to well-lit areas, don’t go into parks (esp Central Park/ The Boston Common etc) after dark, and am generally aware of my surroundings and my belongings. While Singapore doesn’t have a zero crime rate, it’s still far lower than what I’m used to. You don’t hear a daily litany of crimes, murders, etc. I don’t feel like I need to have the same level of concern here, and, as I said in my post about the Botanic Gardens-that is a public park that is safe well past sunset.
2-Stroller unfriendly subways/light rail. While busses here are certainly hit or miss, the MRT is a thing of wonder that is 100% stroller friendly. As a mom without a car, my life in Boston, New York, London, San Francisco or Chicago would be far more complicated in terms of getting around via public transit than it is here. I also love that Singapore is constantly expanding service. There are many new stations and a new line scheduled to open over the next year or two and then they’ll start yet another line.
3-The religion wars–although we hail from (relatively) progressive Massachusetts, it’s impossible at home to escape the current religious/societal culture war. Here you hear the occasional thing about it, but unless I read American papers, I don’t hear about all the hate crime (the recent Masjid arson in TN, for example). I genuinely wonder if the US will either splinter under the strain in my lifetime or, if the Tea Party brand of hatred and idiocy spreads-another civil war will break out. Perhaps this marks me as a pessimist. But while SG is largely secular, there is far more religious tolerance and far more laws enforcing tolerance than in the US.
EDITED TO ADD–A friend just posted a link to shirts at the Glenn Beck Rally…I think that falls solidly under #3 and gave me more reasons not to be homesick.
However, let’s be real here…at heart, I am an American through and through. I miss the US deeply and can’t wait to visit home in November. But rather than let myself wallow in sadness, it’s good to remind myself the US isn’t all widely available peanut butter cups, gay pride parades, and Fall TV starting in a few weeks.
I don’t listen to radio much over here…with iTunes and a large digital music collection and without a car, there really isn’t much reason/opportunity for me to. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hear pop music in Singapore…a few stores here, some of the cab drivers, and the fast food restaurants keep their audio tuned to local stations. Which generally means I still hear mostly American pop music I already know.
But from the moment I got here, there was a local song that was constantly assaulting me until I finally gave in and learned to love it, in a kitschy sort of way.
I present to you the music video for that earworm of a song (for the older generation…earworm–song that gets stuck in your head) “Nobody” by the Wonder Girls. They are a Korean pop girl group, and song is played in both Korean and English around here. The video also demonstrates (far better than I could explain) what Asian humor can often look like (the actual song starts around 2:30, but it’s worth a full watch). And yes, the song is available on American iTunes, so you may have already heard it.
For long and complicated reasons, Ravi and I decided to move Elanor into her “big girl” bed. To prep for that, B and I had to move all the excess crap out of E’s room today. Things were going fine until…
THE GIANT FUCKING COCKROACH
I was moving a plastic bin of clothes when I happened to glance at the curtains and saw a giant black thing…which I then registered for what it was…GIANT FUCKING COCKROACH.
I scream like a little girl.
I shriek for E to get a container as I can’t even begin to imagine killing this thing. I have no plan other than containment. B runs in with a giant plastic takeout container. I try to knock the roach off the curtain, and it’s wings start flutter and I don’t know if it made a sound or I’m just imposing every bad horror movie I ever saw on the damn thing, but I know I freaked out.
Somehow, B and I get the GIANT FUCKING COCKROACH under the plastic without it escaping. B tries to move the container along the ground, maybe with the same goal of…I don’t know…releasing into the wild or something (like it wouldn’t just run back into our house or something), but keeps shrieking as do I.
I flee to the living room and call our pest control people (which is what we pay them for-to call any time we see a roach 24/7 so they can deal with “the situation”-not to be confused the Jersey Shore cast member…although maybe I think the same solution might work well for types of “situations”).
“Can I help you?”
“Giant cockroach in my baby’s room” I repeat it about 3 times before she says she’s send someone RIGHT OVER and confirms my address.
Meanwhile I hear Ebeth saying “I have to kill you” and I hear something smacking the ground a ton of times as she shrieks with each hit. I think she killed it with edge of the broom or something…frankly I don’t want to know as I want to burn whatever it was. She walks past me with paper towels and goes to the outside hallway (where our refuse chute is) with the bundle where she disposes of it.
Not ten minutes later the pest guy shows up. He looks around and confirms that this is probably a bug that came up through the pipes. Yesterday was our monthly condo spray (imagine giant billowing clouds of poison surrounding the outside of the building for 20 minutes), and the roaches were fleeing, and some probably came up through the pipes. Lucky us. He put out some gel (up in the window corners where E wouldn’t be able to get near them–I can’t get near it without a stepladder) and put out some sticky traps up high as well. He also taped over our floor grates in the bathroom and kitchen (they’re there if you literally spray your bathroom/kitchen floor clean with water, which we don’t) as they’re easy access points.
According to them there are no signs of infestation and we are to keep on keepin’ on.
Still…I realize it’s a city and it’s a tropical climate so they’re part of life here…but seriously…I can handle small roaches. Ones as big as my fucking fist? NO. No like, no want…NO GIANT FUCKING COCKROACH.
I’m almost scared to go to sleep…I just know I’m gonna have nightmares about that horrible thing.
After our trip back from Phuket, I got sick (of course I did–one of the many truths about moving to a new part of the world is that for the first year or so, you’re always getting sick) so I missed out on the visit to the Botanic Gardens with my in-laws. However, they had nice things to say about it, so this past Friday I took Elanor and B with me around sunset to do some photography and to take a nice walk.
I was totally blown away. Perhaps it’s because there are tons of “parks” in Singapore that bear no resemblance to my traditional notion of what a park should look like. Back home, a park is always a green space, usually with a playground for kids, and very open. In Singapore, the bike path along the river is a park. It’s nice, and it’s certainly a lovely walk, but it just didn’t jibe with my notion of “park.”
The Botanic Gardens is a very large open park on the same scale as Hyde Park in London or Central Park in New York. Once you’re inside you completely forget you’re in the middle of a major world city. I didn’t even see a tenth of it, but everywhere I looked there was large open green space, families having picnics, kids running, flowers in bloom…you name it.
Because it’s Singapore, it was clean and safe…even after dark fell, I felt totally safe standing there talking with a mom I’d met when our kids took a liking to each other, while Elanor and her son ran around. In Boston, with the exception of the one very well lit path to the parking garage, you don’t really go into the Common at night, and you sure as hell don’t wander around Central Park after dark if you value your safety. Which is kind of the surreal part–in Singapore, a place like the Botanic Garden can be open and totally safe until midnight.
We didn’t make it (although my in-laws did) to the National Orchid Garden, which is the only part of the park (to my knowledge) that has an entry fee, but it’s on my list of priorities to visit with my camera soon.
Perhaps my favorite thing about visiting there was the chance to really breathe. Singapore is a hectic city, and living centrally as we do, it’s skyscraper after skyscraper. Most days I’m grateful for the fact that we got a break on our rent because of the construction next door, but every morning I awake the sound of construction outside my window. It’s rare to have a quiet moment in the city where you can stop and see the sky (especially if you’re basking in the neon glow of Orchard Road), or even more rare, the moon. So it was with great pleasure that I stopped, took a deep breath, and spent a few moments looking up at the moon.
Of course, after we were done with our moment in the oasis, we hightailed it back to Orchard Road–because what’s the point of having a quiet place if you can’t then hit Borders and a 24 hour McDonalds?
I have a few more tales of Thailand, but Ravi and I received the following email over the weekend from Ravi’s dad and I thought it would be a shame if I didn’t share it with everyone.
We are back and safe…
The trip back was uneventful.
Flights were on time, luggage arrived ok.
Nothing happened, other than the expected.
At NYC I saw an Indian girl (must have been 25ish), software programmer type. She had some issues getting a cart at JFK. Then again she was right ahead of me getting a cart at Logan. She looked puzzled as she was trying to put coins in the machine and there was no place to put them. She was to pay $3 for the cart.
I helped her, saying you need dollar bills. She asked for change for a twenty. I did not have. Then she offered me coins for my three dollar bills. I agreed.She gave me three coins, I said what is this? They were dollar coins. She explained and I accepted them.
I was walking away as I saw she again had problems. One of the dollar bill was getting rejected. So I straightened out the bill and it was fine.
I smiled and told her I had a similar problem 40 years ago so I understand…She was from Hydrabad, South India, she thanked me.
So 40 years later US airports are still not hospitable to foreigners. She would have been fine if she had an international credit card.
Forty years ago, I had thought that I needed a dime to make a collect call (so said the phone), and I had two nickles ……..
While the carts in Singapore, Phuket and Tokyo airports were free.
This is more of a “mom blog” post, but whatever…it’s a major moment that happened in Phuket.
The first time I brought Ella into a pool was on a vacation. It was February 2009, we were at Wicked Faire (an awesome Ren Faire meets all flavors of geek culture–go if you’re in NJ around February each year), and Elanor was 3 months old. It didn’t go well. Within seconds, she was screaming, shivering, and wanted out. You can see how much fun she though this was in the picture below.
When Elanor was 6 months old, we did a “swim class” via Isis Parenting, which was held at a JCC (Jewish Community Center) in Newton. At that age, it’s not so much a “swim class” as it is Mommy (or whoever) and Me in the water. The idea was to get them more comfortable with water. I wouldn’t say she was thrilled to be there, but she usually seemed to not hate (if not outright love) the swim classes.
After swim class was over, however, we didn’t get into water as much as I hoped we would. We went to a local pool (but the “local” pool was still a 30 minute drive) over the fall/winter, but there were so many things going on that she probably didn’t make it into the water more than twice a month and often less that that. By her first birthday she wasn’t really “swimming” at all. None of the times we went swimming lasted for more than 20 minutes.
When we visited Singapore for our “look-see” visit, we made it to the pool a couple of times, and she seemed to be thrilled by the addition of a floating toy to sit in to the world of “swimming.”
When we made the call to move here, it was a priority to get an apartment with a swimming pool (which, as it turns out, is like saying you want an apartment with air conditioning here…it’s pretty much standard in the apartments ex-pats are eligible to rent). We get Ella into the pool usually 3-5 times a week, and she will even wave her arms in front of her to indicate that she wants to go swimming. Her bathing suit collection has gone from 1 to six (more at the moment since she kind of in between sizes at the moment and I can put her in either 6-12 or 12-18 month suits, making her quite the bathing suit fashionista), and it has become a fun part of our days.
However, she’s been very attached to the float she rides in. We started putting arm floaties on her about a month ago, and I tried to encourage her to spend some time in the water with me using only the arm floats. As recently as the week before we went to Thailand, Elanor was highly resistant to this idea. She could float with her head above water using them, she could even move herself from about 1-2 feet away from the side of the pool to the edge with them, but she would protest unhappily. I’d still do it every day for a few minutes, but I didn’t think we were anywhere near swimming without the sitting floatie.
The thing about toddlers is sometimes they change overnight. You wake up one day and they point to your eye and say “eye” for the first time. The stand up and let go of the coffee table and take a few shaking steps.
Or on vacation in Thailand, they decide that sitting floaties are for babies and arm floaties are where it’s at. The first time we put her in the pool with just the arm floaties, she had a “click” moment where everything fell into place and she didn’t cry and didn’t protest. In fact, she protested when we tried to put her back in the green ride-on floatie. The temperature of the water was no different than home. That people were clapping for her was the norm (B and I always made a big deal out of her arm floaties and how awesome it was when she swam using just them). I couldn’t figure it out.
What’s interesting is that our physical therapist felt like Elanor might have walked a few weeks earlier had we not gone to the UK when we did. She started walking within days of our return…but because in the UK she was just in a stroller for large chunks of every day, E didn’t spend as much time working up the courage or having the chance to try walking. So in that case vacation slowed down a milestone.
I have no idea if vacation sparked or just coincided with this milestone for E. Would it have just happened anyways? Was she more distracted because Ravi and her grandparents were there too, and got that much more praise? Or was it seeing bigger kids swimming without needing to sit in or on floaties that sparked a competitive urge? I’ve heard plenty of stories of kids who potty train after seeing bigger kids (siblings, cousins) go to the bathroom. I really just don’t know.
But that’s the thing with kids…as Ravi’s friend Dawn once said, “They’re like video games-once you think you understand them, they level up.”
Here’s my not-so-baby girl leveling up on me…(she’s 21 months old for those who have understandably lost track)
Since we’ve been back in Singapore, the trend has not changed. In fact, the green floatie has been shunned entirely. It may be time to just deflate it and put it aside with the other baby stuff I’m holding onto for the day we’re ready to do this whole “baby” thing again.
I wonder how old she’ll be when the arm floaties leave? Here in Singapore, you can start swim lessons quite young, and when we’re thinking about classes in January, we may seriously consider adding swimming to the rotation.
Ravi and I debated at some length what, if any, adventures we wanted to seek out beyond the resort. One of the recent seasons of “The Amazing Race” had an episode in Phuket, and I’d been impressed by the part of their adventure that required them to get a picture taken with a tiger at the Phuket Zoo. We also had a copy of the Lonely Planet’s mini-book on Phuket, which recommended the aquarium. However, we were told the aquarium wasn’t impressive, and it was quite far away, leading us to eliminate it from the list of possibilities. We had decided to the do the zoo until I started reading reviews of it…that the pens were small, the animals malnourished and mistreated, the tiger drugged off its ass in order to safely take those pictures the tourists (and The Amazing Race) so treasure. While Ravi and I are fans of zoos, we elected to take a pass on the Phuket Zoo.
I turned my gaze to the Fodor’s book on Southeast Asia. In its very small section on Phuket they talked about Elephant Trekking, which is a major component of the tourism industry (one of the resorts going so far as to have its own pet baby elephant to draw tourism dollars). Interestingly enough, elephants are not native to Thailand at all. However, they’ve been used as work partners for hundreds of years, and some websites claims there are still some wild elephants in the extreme north of Thailand (although most sources say there aren’t any). With industrialization and urbanization, the elephant, which is even considered a symbol of Thailand (and used to be on the flag and the money), has lost its place in society. And thus has been relegated to a tool of tourism…according to several sources, about only 2500 elephants still remain in Thailand today, almost all in captivity, many taken from their mothers as babies (the mother is usually killed to be able to take the baby).
So with that knowledge the question was whether or not we could do elephant trekking ethically. The Fodor’s guide recommended Siam Safari, which has been recognized for their humane treatment of elephants and efforts to preserve Thai nature and culture. They seemed like a good way to ethically do the trekking, and they offered a longer day trip-for about $70 USD, we could have a six hour adventure that included a ride in 4×4′s, elephant trekking, learning about Thai farming and cooking, and a sunset cruise. I decided to go, and Ravi eventually decided to come with me.
Incidentally, the day we did our trip with Siam Safari was Thailand’s Mother’s Day, a national holiday to celebrate the Queen’s birthday (pictures of her were everywhere), and in honor of which all bars were supposed to be closed.
We were picked up in a jeep where the back had been converted for seating, like the tuk-tuks on the road. Unlike the tuk-tuks, the jeeps at least had doors that closed to keep everyone in and safe.
We were driven about 15 minutes to a base camp where we were divided into the groups that were just elephant trekking and those of us doing the longer tour (the color of our stickers helped). I also took the chance to use a western toilet as I live in fear of squat toilets. We were driven up the same mountain that the Big Buddha sits atop, which had a really steep grade. On our way there, we drove past several other Elephant Trekking tours…including one where the elephants were being housed in a garage that was half fallen in on itself, standing it what was clearly filthy straw, making me feel sick and sad.
We were dropped off at a different camp with no elephants in sight. There was a cow type animal (a water buffalo) and a sign for the “monkey show” along with a notice not to touch the monkey. A monkey was tied off to a fence, waiting for us and the show to begin.
We learned about the various stages of training monkeys to work with humans to harvest coconuts and saw them demonstrate the various stages of the learning process.
He was rewarded with fruit when his demo was over.
We learned a little about Thai farming, and how they used to use Water Buffalo to help pull the plows. Today, there are technologically cheaper and easier ways to farm. But at Siam Safari, you can sit on one and take a photo or get pulled in a Water Buffalo tuk-tuk.
The guide discussed the importance of coconuts to the Thai people. He talked about their various uses, and we saw a demonstration of how they make coconut oil (they were selling a small bottle of coconut oil for about $2USD), Thai Curry with coconuts, and a type of coconut pancake that they serve with sugar. Each of these stations required a bit of a hike through some of the forest they own and preserve.
After boiling the coconuts for hours, the brown stuff below remains, and they use it on top of ice cream. It was pretty yummy. The little boy is a mahout’s son (mahout-elephant driver) and will grow up to be a mahout as well. He was pretty adorable.
A big part of the forest that they’re preserving is planted with rubber trees. We saw how they get the rubber sap and how the sap is turned into what you and I would recognize as rubber. The process is long, and the best time to harvest trees is around 2-3 am, so not only is it difficult work, but it requires working during hours none of us would be happy to work. The payoff for a small piece of rubber is also quite small, and it’s difficult to see why they would bother maintaining the trees other than as part of cultural heritage and tourism (which is essentially their mission).
in the second part, you can hear the guide say that tourism makes more money than rubber
Walking through the forest, especially for a city girl like me was fun, right up until I saw one of these guys (the image is the third spider I saw and the only one not above me in a tree, making me terrified to take a picture from fear it would fall on me). In case you’re wondering, it’s bigger than my hand. Each leg is longer than my middle finger. EEEK.
We moved onto the baby elephant show. The elephants can’t stark trekking until they’re about 8-10, if I recall correctly, so when they’re babies, they do the baby elephant show to get used to humans other than the mahouts and to start learning commands. I realize it’s pure pandering to the tourist who just looooooooove baby elephants…but what can I say…it works. I do just loooooooooooooove baby elephants. They did a few standard tricks, and then we got to feed them a basket of fruit for just under $2 (which I imagine helps subsidize the cost of feeding baby elephants).
You can certainly argue the ethics of all of this–but in my opinion if it’s going to happen regardless, then it’s best to support the people who are doing it humanely. If you remove the elephants from the equation, you have an ethnic group without work or training to do anything else (the Karen people, from Burma or Myanmar if you prefer/upper Thailand), and an animal who suddenly has no value other than its tusks and various body parts without enough forest to support its life in the wild. It’s an ethical dilemma without easy answers.
From there, we moved onto the elephant trekking. We had to walk to where the grown-up elephants and mahouts were waiting for us, and we walked past the Karen’s living area. The Siam Safari attraction isn’t just an attraction…the Karen live there working the rubber trees and tending the elephants 24/7. It felt distinctly strange to walk past people’s homes (which were on platforms about 8 feet from the ground). Especially since at first I thought they were just another part of the tourist show. I wonder how many other people realized they weren’t?
I figured it out when I saw these…
and
The elephant trekking lasted for about a half hour and basically consisted of trekking down to a point where you had an unobstructed view of Chalong Bay (where we would have our sunset cruise) and a view of the Big Buddha’s head at the top of the mountain. The trek was very clearly cut out of the road, worn down (and muddy at times) from repeated elephant treks throughout each day. Rather than sitting directly on the elephant (and I have no idea why I imagined that), there was a sturdy seat atop a bundle of padding, both to (I imagine) reduce the feeling of a metal contraption on the elephant and to reduce the motion for the rider (although it was still a bit roller coaster-ish at times, especially when the elephant headed down an incline).
The mahouts *do* actually sit directly on the elephant, where the head meets the neck, with their feet resting behind the ears, as you can see. I couldn’t quite understand our mahout’s name as he had very limited English (enough to point to the Big Buddha and identify it, and the same for Chalong Bay), and most of our “communication” was via hand signals and smiles. I was really happy to see that he was gentle with his elephant, letting her stop to eat or to look at something she found interesting (only females are used during trekking-males are too unpredictable and have the potential to do damage with tusks-it is my understanding that they have a few males for breeding, but Siam Safari generally donates males to zoos, who also will take good care of them and use them for breeding). We were told that the mahouts are paired with the elephants from a young age and they tend to work exclusively with the elephant, making a close relationship. An elephant will work in trekking for about 25-35 years and then will be retired to the elephant preserve near Chang Mai run by the government. When the elephant dies, they are brought back to Siam Safari and buried in a graveyard.
Understanding tourist impulses quite well, we all stopped and the mahouts took pictures of each of the teams with Chalong Bay in the background (it was hazy, so the view is a bit hard to see) using the tourists cameras. At one point, someone from Siam Safari also took a moment to take a picture of each of the teams and we were offered copies of the photos back at base camp for about $6 USD, which of course we bought.
Chalong Bay and the Big Buddha’s head are obviously the biggest scenic moments, but it was also cool to see preserved rainforest…
After our ride, we got to feed our elephant (a much bigger basket of fruit for not much more money).
And we got to learn more about our elephant
We stopped long enough to get souvenirs and soda, and a bathroom break before heading back to base camp at the bottom of the hill. There, a few more people left (I guess they weren’t doing the dinner cruise) and we had the chance to purchase our picture on Tong Yib. We bought a reusable Siam Safari bag, and a seated Thai Buddha (which looks different from the standard Buddha). The Buddha was the same thing I could buy at any tourist place in Phuket (or Thailand, if I’m being real), but I made the conscious choice to give my money to Siam Safari. Over the course of the day, I tried to keep a critical eye and I have nothing but respect for how Siam Safari does their programs, treats their animals and tries to raise awareness while dealing with tourist who are just there for a good time.
After about 15 minutes at base camp we were driven down to the docks of Chalong Bay and transferred from our jeeps to a trolley that drove us the (not too long) length of the pier to where our ship was docked. I took a moment to enjoy the view and play with my camera. The yellow boat isn’t ours…but I thought it made for a cool opportunity to use the color accent feature. In fact, I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t have a picture of the boat we were on.
We had full roaming of the deck and it was a big enough boat that no one felt cramped. Ravi and camped out near the bow of the boat, and enjoyed watching the islands and water pass by as we floated out into the Bay.
One of the things I saw was a shack, which I was told was a “Sea Gypsy” home. They, like many groups in Thailand are suffering due to the country’s development and further industrialization. It’s hard to make a living as a fisherman when there are boats that can do five or ten times your catch in a day, and drive down the market price per kilogram of the fish you do catch.
Cruising around, it was easy to see why Thai islands often feature in Hollywood movies. There’s even an island (not where we were) that’s just become known as “James Bond Island” because part of “The Man With The Golden Gun” was filmed there. “The Beach” with Leo DiCaprio was also filmed in Thailand. But the beaches look so deserted, and so wild that it’s easy to see their appeal (and with the strength of the dollar, I’m sure there are plenty of other incentives as well).
We were fed on board (although the food was a bit cold, no big deal) and everyone had a free glass of wine, beer or soda (we generally elect for soda) and we watched the sun start to set over the bay. I took far too many pictures, but here are a few of the ones I like best.
But the shot I’m most proud of is the following. You need to click on it to make it larger, but if you do, you’ll see the Big Buddha atop its hill just to the left of the red anchor.
It was a lovely and relaxing way to end the day. Sadly we didn’t stay out on the water until dark, when the sunset colors are best, re-docking as the sun was still just a bit above the horizon. We got to get into luxury vans as opposed to the jeeps, and were sent home tired and relaxed.
It’s hard to sum up a day like this. On one hand, it’s exactly the kind of thing that appeals to tourists–a brief glimpse of local culture, some education (but not too much), some guilt for us liberals followed by a massage of our ego (but *we’re* helping those who are doing it ethically), feeding elephants and a sunset cruise. Plenty of photo ops, but no real face to face time with the distasteful parts of the local culture that might make us unhappy or unlikely to give them more money. On the other, it’s really obvious how the people of Thailand are suffering as they “benefit” from modernization. iPhones, internet gaming, facebook references, and McDonalds are popping up everywhere…and tourists are bringing big bucks to a part of the country that was practically untouched and unvisited 50 years ago, except those who were interested in tin mining or rubber plantations…but those who live here are sometimes caught in many worlds, none of them representing economic advancement and respect of their way of life both. Supporting companies like Siam Safari seems like a good way to find balance (supporting tourism, ethical treatment of animals and learning about a different way of life) but it still does seem a bit disrespectful to treat a way of life like a zoo or museum exhibit.
