7th Jan Daily Postings

Day 4, we had a talk from a professor in CMU. We definitely learnt a lot more about the general situation in Chiang Mai from her. The trafficking situation for Chiang Mai’s border with Burma  got us thinking about Burma being another source of ivory trafficking.

She also mentioned about South Korean refugees, Chinese tourists and westerner retirees. There’s definitely a trend of improvement happening in Chiang Mai from her statements. What seemed common with Singapore though was their use of foreign labour, theirs from Myanmar and ours from Indonesia etc. Would every developing country, on their path to being developed, reduce the pool of people available for manual labour thereby needing to bring in foreign labour? Then how would every country in ASEAN, being equally developed be sustainable. I’m guessing there will always be inequality in the quality of life. My guess is that people can be content by having the people in the immediate surroundings of you be in the same situation as you, making it more bearable or even good in their eyes.

After lunch was sightseeing of sakura trees at Khun Chang Kian village and a view of Chiang Mai from afar.

An interesting fact relearnt is not to judge using just one perspectives as we may have a lack of accurate information. From the Jungle Sanctuary Manager, the practice of using hooks to guide the elephants, or chains on the elephants is apparently a humane and necessary way to deal with elephants. At first glance it may appear inhumane, but actually the elephants have quite a thick skin so there is little discomfort. The chains are also normal chains. Of course while the tools to control elephants, stress from giving rides and drawing takes a toll on elephants causing them to live to around 60-70 years old instead of the 100 years old if it only eats and sleeps.

From our current state of research findings we found that Chiang Mai’s treatment of elephants are definitely sustainable but no concrete details on the ivory trade as of yet. At the moment, we’re still on shaky ground for our research on the ivory trade but tomorrow we’ll be meeting the Veterinarian Professor at CMU.

A personal observation is that the prices in Burger King and Macs are  worlds apart from the traditional street food. A 20 Baht egg rotee compared to a 100 Baht Mcspicy, which would you choose? What we consider common place may be a luxury somewhere else. We should definitely be grateful about what we have.