Sep 2008

From Khao Lak we headed South in a monsoon to a small Muslim village on the island of Phuket, right by the entrance to the National Park and the forest. We settled into very basic accomodation with lots of animals everywhere and met our fellow volunteers. The Gibbon Rehab Project takes gibbons who have been taken from their mothers shot out of the upper canopy as babies, and sold as pets or tourist attractions, though it usually takes 4 or 5 dead mothers and babies to get an alive one. Some of the gibbons at the project have been abused, and one sweeet one was abused so badly she had 2 limbs amputated. The project aims to rehabiliate the gibbons, and they go through a spell in quarantine checking for diseased, and then into the rehab site where they are cared for but dont interact with humans, and they learn to swing, drink with their hands, and sing with other gibbons. If they can sing they can hopefully 'bond' with a mate, and eventually have a baby, and be released into the rainforest as a family. Its a long but very rewarding process. On our first day we woke up at dawn and trekked 2 hours uphill into the rainforest, getting very sweaty along the way, and it rained intermitttently. Eventually we came to the area where the most recently released family live, and we posted a kilo of fruit, which they continue to get one year after release, up into the canopy. After a while we felt a pattering of raindrops falling as the leaves moved high above and looking up we saw the male adult gibbon swinging from tree to tree and over to the food, followed by the 2 children and the MOther. It was amazing to see them in their natural environment again, havbing been made totally extinct in the rainforest by hunters. It gave us the motivation we needed for the next week, which involved early starts, feeding and cleaning, health checks and givving tourists information at the tour desk and shop. We went out with the Thai staff and fellow volunteers, and made curries and fried rice from ingredients from the local market, and visited Phuket town too. It was a wonderful experience and we were really sad to leave. I can recommend it to anyone wishing to do this type of volunteer work.
http://www.gibbonproject.org/content/content.htm

We headed back to Bangkok for a day before our flight, and had some more crazy tuk tuk driving, Wats, good food and the fun of staying on the Khao San road, replete with touts for Ping Pong shows, deep fried locusts and very cheap and strong cocktails! From there we flew to Dubai, where it was about 38 degrees and incredibly humid, basically impossible to be outside for more than 10 minutes. The building going on there, the 7 star hotel, the Palm Island (not yet finshied and 2 more AND the World being built) are just incredible feats. We did a wondeful trip into the desert one evening, went dune bashing which was exciting and pretty scary, the drivers were mentalists! They tehn took us to a wonderful camp in the desert dunes, with little lanterns, and 3 camels who we rode on! There we smoked some shisha, got Henna tattoos, and had a HUGE wonderful meal of BBQed meat, houmous and chapattis, rice, veggies, curried lentils, etc, and watched the stars come out, pure magic

Yesterday we flew home and now Paul is back in Herts and Anna in sunny Devon, and we cant wait to catch up with friends and family asap. Thanks for following this blog and our adventure! Love A&P XXX

HI ALL and pinch and a punch first of the month! WOW September already, crazy. Anyways, after more fun on beautiful Koh Panang, including a day of tantric Yoga for Anna and a pirate party on the beach watching lightning storms on the horizon, sipping buckets of thai whisky and coke, and dancing on the white sands to some crazy trance music, we decided it was time to do something meaningful and give something back to this beautiful country and its warm welcoming people. We emailed both the Phuket Gibbon rehabiliation project and the Tsunami volunteer centre and the latter got back to us to we headed to Khao Lak, on the west coast, which was particularly badly hit by the Tsunami. Its been rebuilt well, and theres a lot of building still happening, but its still eerie looking out to sea and imagining the waves coming. Nearly 10,000 people were killed in this area, including 75% of the english speaking population of Thais, so there is a real lack of english speaking people in this area, which relies mainly on tourism. What the project does is offer free english lessons in schools, community centres and even a local bar.

OK continuing the blog on 4th september now! We have had 3 days teaching, in 2 different schools, a community centre (Paul taught a ladyboy who sat ever so close to him!) a local bar, and we have gone into shops and an optician teaching people too. The locals are very sweet and friendly, with brilliant senses of humour too. Today we had a very spicy lunch which the Thai teachers found hilarious watching me struggle and gulp water, and we witnessed a hilarious start to the day. Basically they all line up in the playground, the teachers pick 3 children to go up on the stage, then cheesy Thai pop music blares out and they all dance! We were enjoying watching this and giggling when we got called out to go up to the front and dance with them! Absolutely sweat-inducing, but very funny The children are great to teach, though very excitable and naughty. After a week here we'll be heading to Phuket 2 hours south to help out at the Gibbon Project, which is in desperate need of volunteers. We'll be living in the jungle and working a lot, as they help to gradually rehabiliate the gibbons into the wild, a process which can take years. Shooters and poachers want to get the baby gibbons for shows in bars to attract tourists, but it usually takes killing 4 mothers out of the trees before they get an alive baby. Then when they hit sexual maturity at 6 years old, they get aggressive, and are dumped somewhere, unable to look after themeselves Anyways, thats where were going next, should be very rewarding. The political situation in Thailand is causing problems too with flights and buses, as the Thais try to make the prime minister resign. But noone should worry we're safe and sound

Love to All,
A&P XXX