Fieldwork and Documentation

Post-Trip Reflections

“It’s about daring to be different; stumbling but learning to pick yourself up.” – It appears I sounded a little ambitious, I admit, when I penned this down in my pre-trip projections. I may not have achieved anything extraordinary in this trip, but it’s certainly been made extraordinary with the people met and lessons learned….

Day 5

On our last day in Chiang Mai, we had the privilege of interviewing two CMU professors, who specialised in tourism and veterinary science respectively. They provided completely different perspectives from what we had expected, and this provided really great insight into our project. For example, we learned that the use of the bull hook is…

Day 4

Ah Day 4 – it was a day full of problems, but one which turned out to be one of the most memorable days. We had originally planned to head to Mae Sa Elephant Camp after the lecture at CMU. However, we had not done our pre-trip research sufficiently and discovered on the day that…

Day 3

Today, we visited Doi Suthep in the morning which was a beautiful Buddhist temple. I had accompanied my grandparents to Buddhist temples in Singapore before, but none could compare to the grandeur of Doi Suthep. It was interesting to see how both locals and tourists of many different walks of life were gathered in such…

6th Jan/ Day 3

Today was a bit more relaxed for the sustainability group, as we hadn’t any fieldwork scheduled for the day. However, we had a lot of fun, and managed to conduct a couple of impromptu surveys and interviews. All in all, a good day well spent. We began by heading to Doi Suthep, a major tourist…

Day 2

On our second day in ENP, we began conducting more surveys with locals and tourists at the park. As we were in the process of doing so, we found that our surveys in particular were inadequate in addressing our objective of finding out their opinions on elephant tourism. More specifically, we wanted to find out…

Day 2: Elephant Adventures Continued!

Day 2: In the morning, we woke up with chattering teeth and frozen feet. We’d forgotten to close the windows, and the cold mountain air had managed to seep in while we slept. The room was frighteningly cold! After breakfast, we split up into our sub-groups and began to carry out our interviews and surveys…

Day 1!!

Our first day was spent at the Elephant Nature Park (ENP) where we walked around the park and saw many elephants, feeding them along the way. We learned about the background of the elephants and the conditions in which they are living in now in the park. In particular, we learned about how the elephants…

Mohn, you’re home!

Focus Group Discussion in Chiang Mai University. Difficulty. Hard. The day started off with an enlightening talk with two assistant medical professors from the University of Chiang Mai. It irks me to blog this, but it seems like the situation in Chiang Mai seemed to be bleak from what I can gather from the doctors….

Day 1: Elephant Nature Park! ???

Day 1: On our first official day in Chiang Mai, we got up early for a bus journey to the Elephant Nature Park, an elephant rescue centre where old and injured elephants are nursed back to health and cared for in a natural environment. Having read numerous rave reviews about the park while conducting research…