Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The surrogate grandmother
We may not have found smoking monkeys but this would be a pretty close second best. An old-fashioned animal show, a delight to the insensible; a dancing elephant, performing monkeys and snarling crocodiles; all we missed were the cycling parrots and charmed snakes, but what a reason to return. The Namuang Safari Park has it all, and worth every Baht, including the cost of the blown motorcycle tyre getting there. It would be years since such spectacles were considered unacceptable in New Zealand, a monkey strutting across the stage in orange and blue silks with bright yellow electric guitar doing the Chuck Berry duck walk, a gorgeous, pouting female singer in lime green frock and Grace Jones haircut, face rouged and lips made up (no animals were used in the manufacture of these products), a knife fighting one and then his twirling of the flaming baton. Another jumped through a hoop in which knives were embedded, but we were assured, we know not why, the knives were of soft plastic. Excellent stuff, these were not your snarling, feral creatures and the show would not have been complete without the dressed baby especially for surrogate grandmothers to pose with. The only disappointment, the park guides would not agree to even a posed photo with a dressed monkey smoking. Killjoys.
If the monkeys were fun, then the crocodiles could have been deadly. After paying good money to dangle a chicken carcass and watch their snapping, menacing reaction, we could only be impressed with the four Thais who hopped into a cage with about twenty of the things, big ones too, and performed a range of daredevil feats such as putting their heads inside the crocs’ mouths and then, interestingly, putting a 100 Baht note right down the throat of what appeared as a very nasty one and then retrieving the same note. This is true, arms stretched right down the gullet and, it these are not mechanical reptilian lookalikes, it must be that they hypnotise them because from the quick and unpleasant reactions we saw to their being handled, they certainly weren’t tranquilised.
These acts had followed an elephant that did handstands, walked on its hind legs, played soccer and then the harmonica and had a repertoire with the hula hoop. Impressive, but if there could be a surrogate grandmother to a baby monkey, so too could there be an old papa to a tiger cub and the photos were duly taken. Each at a cost of course.
A week in Koh Samui is drawing to an end all too fast. A jeep hire took us on a circumnavigation of the 247 square kilometer island, to a butterfly farm where probably the plant foliage was more impressive than the butterflies, along the south coast where it seems few tourist venture and then up the west and across the north where the rich and people like our Jade hang out (she’s a regular). Here are the flash restaurants with western prices, the big golden Buddha at Wat Prah Yai , between 12 and 17 metres high depending on which authority you believe, Wat Leam Suwanaram with its fat white Buddha statue and several others and beautiful temples (this was brilliantly impressive but there is almost no information about it), a gold and white temple tucked away in a remote part of the south and then Buddha’s Secret Garden. This garden with a stunning collection of stone sculptures, is so secret that it’s almost impossible to find in the hills and, when you do get there, it has a different name altogether. Such is Thailand.
There were things, disappointingly, we didn’t find. The buffalo-fighting and Buddha’s Footprints which, although we searched the area, were not to be found. A subsequent reading of another guide book told us that the sight is not marked and not really where we were looking. The national marine park was closed for a month's detox and our proposed substitute long-tail boat trip from Bang Thong Krut snorkeling on a southern reef and swimming and sunbathing on a remote island, abandoned because of rough weather. We didn’t go to the full moon party on Koh Phangan, mostly because up to 10,000 young people, mainly Australians, go there and party all night long. A nearby resort has a disclaimer on its website apologizing in advance for any disruption caused by the monthly ocassion, saying that it has no control over events organized by others.
Bt chance we came upon the festival of Loy Krathong, a time when Thai people pay respects to the Goddess of Water by floating candles and joss-sticks on little flower-covered floats in the waterways. We sat and watched for hours as locals came to the local lake and set off lanterns (these hot air lanterns about 4 foot high in which the air is heated by small paraffin lamps) and launch their Krathongs. These are the delights that those behind the walls of resort hotels often miss and they are the worse for it. But, while performing monkeys may not cut the mustard with accepted Kiwi practices, then neither would the sign held by the young woman from whom Kaelene brought a trinket. It explained that she, the woman that is, was completely dumb (as in the sense of not being able to speak) and would be grateful of our support.

No comments: