6th Jan Daily Postings

We have gotten many interviews done of tourists and informed parties like Juelle. Not much concrete evidence gotten of where the source of ivory sold in black markets comes from though. Hopefully the professors we’re meeting can shed some light on the ivory trade situation.

Day 3, we went to the Doi Suthep temple. Apparently there’s always something to learn if you open your eyes big enough. I realised that almost every giant-sized Buddha has a pair of elephant tusks positioned beside them. The Thai-Buddhist religion certainly cultivates the value of elephant tusks, instead of buffalo or goat horns, which probably is another reason why elephant tusks have such great value as symbols of power.

Incidentally on the way back to the hotel in the bus I had a conversation with Prof Patrick on how he researches on deviants, which are not criminals or gangsters by the way as I originally thought. I’m glad I had a chance to hear what a professor thought on these subjects which proved really interesting.

Regarding deviancy, there are things like Cheng’s hair colour. We view that his hair color is not suitable internally even if we don’t say it for a scholar. Hence there’s no system in place but our perspectives colouring these actions as deviant actions. The Prof’s example he gave of deviancy was that in suntec city there was a cosplay convention. Normally cosplayers wear all sorts of costumes. Coincidentally one cosplayer walked past one church-goer showing what she thought was an indecent amount of boob felt outraged and called the police. Personally this shows to me some people are still too rigid in their thoughts. I’m also guilty of having such bias tendencies but we’re all human. If someone’s actions doesn’t harm those he’s surrounding physically or mentally, why not accept it?

Later on in the day we went to a quiet local noodles stall and then the Grand Canyon. It’s too bad we didn’t bring our swimming costumes so that we all could go for a dip in the water. In the end only Cheng and I could “play” with the water.

Our guide pro is really an amazing guy. He knows 90% of his entire faculty and is a great tourguide. He brought us to CMU and got his more than 30 students to fill our survey just in a few minutes and had a previously Singaporean Thai student get interviewed by us. From that student, we get the feel from her that the people in Chiang Mai really take care of their elephants.

We even got a viewing of the students practising for their cheer competition. Even from one cheer, we can see the difference between our cultures. Its quite different from our viewpoint of a cheer but lets be open about it and enjoy it. Here’s a video of the CMU students cheering.

All in all, a well-spent day with this bunch of people.  I feel that it’s really the interactions with other people during this trip that makes the largest difference in the feelings you get during the trip.