Things Just Happen - Fixing Flats, Meeting a Monk and a Gaur Part 2

[Double click on any picture to enlarge it]


In addition to passing Wat Umong everyday on the way to work, I also pass a sign about Wildlife Conservation, but the road goes uphill. And it's hot. But one morning about a ten days ago, I rode up and discovered . . .well I'm not quite sure what. There's an office.



There's a huge bird cage full of bulbuls, and even when they're in a cage I can't get a good picture. I'd been thinking about cages and how awful it is to put birds in cages. This all arose from watching the birds off our balcony and how much space they use.









There were also some caged deer. I got to them from the backside so there were lots of fences between us.











And there was a free family of white crested laughing thrushes. I'm guessing this was the pair we'd seen at the garden restaurant behind Wat Ramphoeng a while back - it's less than a quarter mile away as the thrush flies. (It's on the tree trunk, lower left. Like always you can double click to enlarge the pictures.)




So as we walked around the lake after the monk chat and I saw a paved road that looked like it went out, I began to wonder if it went to the wildlife conservation area. It did. And now it was around five pm, cloudy, cool, and we saw the thrushes again. J moved very quickly when she saw a snake go by (I never saw it) and so we went past the picnic area to the nature trail.

It's the end of the dry season, so most things are very dry. But there was a small damned up lake and a kingfisher flew across. There were lots of birds, I got some on camera in just brief glimpses, not very good. And these red flowers.



Then we ran into this monk with a wheel barrow of old leaves and cow dung. He asked us what we were doing here - in curiosity, not challenging us - and we had a long discussion about birds, living things, where I work, Buddhism (this was where my Thai vocabulary began to fail me, but he did say that all living things love life more than anything else and there was a sign near by that said the same thing.) Which made it all the more curious when he spoke about an Alaskan friend - in the Air Force - who comes to Thailand frequently and is an avid fisher and hunter who likes antique guns. Then he told us there was a wild woowa. (I think cow must be the only animal we have in English for which there is no generic name for both the male and female - well I guess there's peacock too, and if I think about it I might think of more.) He said the monks can walk up to it and feed it and it licks their arms. Did we want to see it?





Well of course. So he walked us over to see if it was there. It was. It was this huge wild bull. Later I thought of the word gaur, googled it, and sure enough, that's what it was. It was staring straight at me in the distance as I tried to keep up with the monk. Joan stopped earlier. And it clearly wasn't comfortable with me either, so I stopped as the monk went on.


There were some small deer that appeared to be caged down there, but the bull was free and later ran off through the wildlife area. I have to say I was amazed to see a huge animal like that loose right here on the edge of Thailand's second biggest city. But from this area, it really looks like it's forest all the way up the mountain side of Doi (Mt) Suthep. And clearly this gaur has found friends among the monks who do feed it. I know we wouldn't have seen it had the monk not taken us over there (though we weren't far away) and that the gaur would have run off if we'd gotten close. As I think about it, it looked at us the way a moose does - trying to figure out who we were and whether we were a problem. We weren't wearing orange monk's robes.

The ultimateungulate has this description:

Body Length: 250-330 cm / 8.3-11 ft.
Shoulder Height: 170-220 cm / 5.6-7.2 ft.
Tail Length: 70-100 cm / 28-40 in.
Weight: 700-1000 kg / 1540-2200 lb.

The dark brown coat is short and dense, while the lower legs are white to tan in colour. There is a dewlap under the chin which extends between the front legs. There is a shoulder hump which is especially pronounced in adult males. The horns are found in both sexes, and grow from the sides of the head, curving upwards. Yellow at the base and turning black at the tips, they grow to a length of 80 cm / 32 inches. A bulging grey-tan ridge connects the horns on the forehead.

Ecology and Behavior

Where gaurs have not been disturbed, they are basically diurnal, being most active in the morning and late afternoon and resting during the hottest time of the day. However, where populations have been molested by human populations, the gaur has become largely nocturnal, rarely seen in the open after 8:00 in the morning. During the dry season, herds congregate and remain in small areas, dispersing into the hills with the arrival of the monsoon. While gaurs are dependent on water for drinking, they do not seem to bathe or wallow. When alarmed, gaurs crash into the jungle at a surprising speed. Gaurs live in herds led by a single adult male. During the peak of the breeding season, unattached males wander widely in search of receptive females. No serious fighting has been recorded between males, with size being the major factor in determining dominance. Males make a mating call of clear, resonant tones which may carry for more than 1.6 kilometers. Gaurs have also been known to make a whistling snort as an alarm call, and a low, cow-like moo. The average population density is about 0.6 animals per square kilometer, with herds having home ranges of around 80 square kilometers.

Family group: Small mixed herds of 2-40 individuals. Adult males may be solitary.
Diet: Grasses, shoots and fruit.
Main Predators: Tiger, leopard.

Distribution

Tropical woodlands in India, Indochina, and the Malay Peninsula.

Countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia (Peninsular Malaysia), Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Viet Nam (IUCN, 2002).

I'm used to eucalyptus trees from growing up in Southern California, but I've never seen bark like this. It's a piece of art. The monk showed us a birds nest just on the other side of trunk.
He also said the cicadas sounded different before and after the rain, better before. Now I know where they got the sound they put in table saws. It's from the cicadas, but amplified a bit.

(click on the black arrow in the yellow square) Chiang Mai Forest Cicadas uploaded by AKRaven



As I said it is the dry season. Though the Thai New Year is coming up next week and the rains should be coming before long. The Songkran festival is when people soak each other with water and Chiang Mai is supposed to have the wildest Songkran festival. The moat around the old town has been filled with water and there were even people swimming in it Saturday when we came back from Mae Sai.





He said that a hummingbird like bird feeds on these tiny pink flowers. We see a bird like that from our balcony.







We walked back through the Wat grounds which has words of wisdom posted here and there on trees. Then we walked back to pick up my tire from the bike shop and headed home.


We've seen the signs for the Heinrich Böll Foundation when we first got here, but never actually found the place. Since the sign is right near the tire repair place, we decided to try to find it. We ended up at this compound at the end of a small back street. (Sorry it was getting dark, but I still think a little blur is better than the artificial light of a flash. This is what it really looked like.) And as I looked to see if the tiny street went further, I realized that it ended in part of the Wat Padaeng temple grounds just a short ways from our building. The dogs didn't like us cutting through their property, but they stayed up on the hill and did their barking from there.

When we got home and put the tire back on the bike, I discovered that the rear tire was now flat, so we took the bike back to the bike shop where he pulled out two thorns and put on two patches. At 20 Baht a patch, I was now almost $2 down because of thorns. It would be another 20 Baht when I discovered the rear tire flat again Monday (yesterday) morning and he found another thorn he'd missed in the bad evening light. But he had a good sense of humor and when I told him I hoped we wouldn't meet again soon, he said I could come by just to chat.

Fire Break Ceremony Chiang Dao 4 - Embroidery

These are some of the women who were at the ceremony and their beautiful hand made clothes.

This woman said it took three days to embroider this one.

Fire Break Ceremony Chiang Dao 3 - Bamboo

These villagers could do anything with bamboo, and they did. The posters were posted on bamboo bulletin boards, and the stage where the speakers would sit was bamboo.

Upper left is a prayer stand of bamboo. Below was the bamboo ribbon for the ribbon cutting to the fire break. Pieces of the ribbon, after it was cut, were then tacked onto trees. If I weren't careful I might make some comment about talismen - but that would be me making assumptions I have absoutely no basis for. I don't know if the bamboo posted on the tree along the firebreak is anything more than decoration.

And who needs red Costco cups when there's bamboo? Complete with bamboo cup rack. In back are bamboo water holders to fill the cups with. And you don't even have to take them to the recycle center. You can just toss them when you're done.

And what celebration would be complete without bamboo serving dishes and serving spoons?

So, what is this one?

Did you get it? It's a fully adjustable microphone stand. There's a smaller piece of bamboo inside a bigger piece, you can raise and lower the mic and put little pegs in the holes to keep it in place.

Fire Break Construction Ceremony Chiang Dao

The sign says, roughly,

Celebration/Ceremony to Open the Fire Break - Mae Ba Sao and Mae Khong Sai

People and the Forest Can Live in Sustainable Harmony

Communities of Mae Ba Sao and Mae Khong Sai Subdistrict: Mueng Khong District: Chiang Dao Province: Chiang Mai

March 23, 2551

(they use the Buddhist calendar)

The ceremony was just up the road on the left where the fire break begins. I'll jump ahead here to show the ending where everyone ceremonially swept the dry bamboo leaves off the trail.

I was a little confused about the purpose of the ceremony and the efficacy of the fire break, so at lunch today I ask those sorts of questions. Essentially, the villages maintain a six meter wide fire break for 30 kilometers. The part you see at the end here was merely ceremonial. The intent of the ceremony was to show government officials who came that the hill tribe people can live in harmony with the forest. All the posters (I'll show some in later posts) talk about things like sustainable farming and global warming. I'll also do a post on bamboo here - showing a number of the things that the villagers made of bamboo for yesterday. Bamboo grows in abundance up there and is totally recyclable.

Infomekong has the following on Karen farming:

There are two main types of farming: slash and burn and paddy. Slash and burn farming involves clearing an area of trees and then burning the underbrush. The burning process adds minerals to the soil, which helps crops to be grown. Unfortunately, the negative aspects outweigh the positives. This process strips the soil of essential nutrients and leads to more erosion, therefore, only allowing crops to be grown for a few years. As a result, the Karen have begun to utilize the process of paddy farming more often than slash and burn. Instead of installing an irrigation system, a paddy farm is flooded by a close river in order to water the crop.

Note: Infomekong is an evangelical site. I have personal problems when people of one religion try to convert other people to their religion. I find it curious how they can write on their site,

...the Thai government started oppressing the Karen community by trying to convert them to become more Thai-like

without any irony. How is conversion to Christianity a better cultural diversion than conversion to Thai culture? I'm not at all defending what the Thai government has done. It is not unlike what has been imposed on Alaska Natives by both church and government schools. At its worst you get results like those Tony Hopfinger reported in his Newsweek story of sexual abuse of students by priests that I linked and which came out last week in an expanded version in the Anchorage Press. But I think the information - aside from where it veers into missionary work - is useful. But be warned.

Hilltribe.org writes:
;
Traditionally the Karen live at lower elevations than the other hilltribes and although they still practice slash and burn, unlike many hilltribes they live in permanent villages and have been aggressive in developing environmentally sustainable terraced rice fields. These factors have allowed the Karen to become much more integrated members of Thai society. The Karens living at lower elevations almost universally have Thai citizenship which has allowed them to buy land and to have access to free secondary education, luxuries other hilltribes do not yet have.

Much of the Karen population in Thailand and Burma is Christian and has been for multiple generations. Christian Karens are very strong in their beliefs.

The people in these two villages are all Thai citizens, and as later posts will make obvious, they are Buddhists. A key issue for these villages is that they live inside forest land that is government land. One of the programs of the organization I'm working with is to help the villagers get title to the land they live on. Inviting the government officials to take part is an attempt to have them see that these villagers are not going to destroy the forest.

Fire Break Construction Ceremony Chiang Dao 1

We were up for the sunrise again - our ride was going to pick us up at 8am. (The first picture is the sun through the trees, not a fire.)




And of course I was going to look for birds. You can see why it's so hard to get good photos. You can hear them, but often you can't see them unless the move. Can you find the one in this tree? They don't usually sit in such a prominent place.
All I knew is that some other NGO people from Chiang Dao were going to pick us up. It turned out we were picked up by tv cameramen who drove up from Bangkok to cover the event. So it will get coverage beyond this blog. It should, now I have to double check with Ped (I've been spelling it Pet here, because that's how it's pronounced in English, but Ped said it was with a D not a T. But in Thai a final D is pronounced like T. So should I spell it the way he does or the way my English speaking readers are more likely to read it correctly?) to see if he was joking when he said I was the media coverage. He had to have known about these cameramen, or is there another NGO involved who arranged that? I have no idea.

Here's a minute or so of the hour ride to the village.

Chiang Dao Big Tree

Coming back from the cave we saw a big tree. Not just any big tree, but one that reminded me of the big tree behind my house in Kamphaengphet long ago. So I looked through the pictures I digitized and found one that had that old tree in it. I've posted this picture before when I wrote about Kwai, but I wonder how many people noticed the tree in the background. This time, forget the kwai and the two people and notice the tree.







To show you how big this tree is, J agreed to stand at the bottom - where the yellow arrow is pointing. And then we discovered there were quite a few of these trees in the area, but we didn't see any quite as big as this one. But here's another that was pretty big.

Chiang Dao Cave and Temple

The temple was built right alongside the cave. This is the entrance to the cave. There are two men standing in front of the sign. But in Thai it said, "Entrance Fee 10 Baht." While the Thais often use Western numbers, they do have their own numbers, so ten looks like: ๑๐. Below that, in English, it says, "20 Baht Fee for Electric Bill." So the foreigners have no idea they are paying double what the Thais are paying. Basically, I have no problem with that. Most foreigners in Thailand have incomes considerably higher than Thais and they do need money for upkeep and Thais shouldn't be prevented from going to places like this because of the high entrance fee.

There's a small shrine just inside the cave. Then, if you want to go further, you have to hire a guide for 100 Baht (about $3). Our guide had a kerosene lantern and a delightful sense of humor.

The spots on the ceiling are bats. They were a lot easier to catch on camera than the ones outside our window. Later we saw what we decided was a bat flyway near where we were staying. We saw groups of bats fly by for the five minutes we watched there.

There came a point where the guide pointed to a small opening and asked if we thought we could go through. It was maybe two feet (2/3 meter) high. The other option was to return the way we came. She assured us it was only 1 meter long. The picture is after the hard part. No problem. But then a couple of rooms later, there was another tunnel that was five meters long, but by then there was no turning back.

Here's the fishpond in the temple grounds next to the entrance to the cave (in the background).

Yang Tone Farm Stay Chiang Dao 3

It's now Sunday evening. I've just gone through what in the old days would have been rolls and rolls of film and video. I've got a dozen posts here. Yesterday seems like a week ago. And these will all end up in reverse order on the blog to confuse things further.

Anyhoo, since it was only yesterday that I was gushing about Yang Tone Farm Stay, I'll finish that and move into Day 2 when we moved to the Chiang Dao Nest #2.

Here's the dining room where magic was performed back there in the kitchen.

Here's the cottage we stayed in.


Our front porch. There really were no mosquitoes, here or the dining room.


I'm in the bedroom shooting the sink in the bathroom.


The shower. Even though everything is made of traditional materials and much in traditional ways, the bathroom uses them in non-traditional ways.


We even had a guard frog who showed up in different interesting spots in the bathroom.

It was a hard decision to make to move on to our second night's housing. But we had reservations, it was closer to the cave and temple, and our Sunday morning ride was expecting to pick us up at Chiang Dao Nest #2 which was right on the road to the village we were going to Sunday.

Yang Tone Farm Stay Chiang Dao 2

This place is incredible, the food is amazing, I can't recommend it highly enough. And we got here by accident, the place we'd found on line was full and sent us here. They have a fancy website that their son created. But he doesn't check the email regularly. Call and leave your name. They speak some English, but slowly. Be patient. It's worth it.

Sweets after breakfast - which is whatever you want. I had a great bowl of Jok - a common Thai breakfast of boiled rice with various things in it. Well, it's not quite boiled rice. J had sunny side up egg and toast with jams made from fruit at the farm - mangoes, starfruit, langan.
This is the host Sriboon, the absolutely sweetest woman you will ever meet. And a great cook. And when she saw me taking lots of pictures she showed me special orchids to shoot. A magazine article about this place says her philosophy is giving people a chance to rest and get in touch with nature. Helping a guest find peace is more important than making money. Everything was just perfect, if you like nature, quiet, birds, and authentic Thai style (with modern plumbing.)
This is her husband Suwit. His English is quite good. He studied in the Philippines. Their son went to the University of Nebraska and works at the royal botanical gardens near Chiang Mai. I'm sure he learned a lot here at the farm. Suwit drove us over to the Nest this afternoon.

Papayas just outside our room

Joan says this is a heliconia and google images confirms it.

We aren't sure what this bird is. The book has several different birds that had parts that were right, but not the whole bird. There were a group of these. It had a black head and bib like a roufous treepie. It had a long grey tail with black stripes like long tailed sibia, and it had a red beak like a red billed malkoha. The green billed malkoha has a similar silhouette in the book, and is in this part of Thailand, but has green beak. Also, there are a couple of swallows. I've given up on identifying swallows because the colors are so hard to see when they are flying high above.

Mango orchard.

Big leafless tree, waiting for the rain.