Elephants and Amazing Thailand

Traveling across the world alone is scary. You don't know anybody, you don't know what to expect, you're visiting another country with a different culture, and the food is weird. But what people don't think about is that everybody is thinking the same thing. Nobody knows what is going to happen during the two and a half weeks, and that is what makes it such an adventure.

This past summer, I traveled from New York City to Frankfurt to Singapore to Bangkok to Chaing Mai, with a group of 25 other girls and 1 boy. During those 45 hours of travel, I had no idea that I would meet some of my best friends in the world. Everybody was kind, loving, cared about the environment, cared about all cultures and all people, and genuinely wanted to spend every waking moment living in the present time.

My group spent one whole week living on the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, where we trained to be mahouts. We were each paired with a partner, an elephant, and a professional mahout (or elephant caretaker). My elephant's name was Boon Mee, and my mahout's name was P. Neuk. During those six days, I learned so much from a man who I did not speak one word of the same language as. P. Neuk taught me and my partner to love ourselves, everybody, and everything around us. He taught us to care for our surroundings and be happy ALL THE TIME! We woke up every morning and retrieved our elephants from the jungle and brought them to a nearby body of water where we would give them their baths. Then we would ride them back to the TECC, and spend a day in beautiful Lampang, Thailand, before repeating the bathing schedule during the evening. My time at the TECC was life changing, and I could not be more thankful for P. Neuk and Boon Mee for teaching me how to cherish every moment in life.

For the second week of the trip, my group traveled all around Thailand visiting Buddhist temples, museums, waterfalls, and much more. My favorite moment of the entire two weeks that I was away was the day that we visited a Buddhist Monastery in the mountains. I remember being told that the climb to the monastery was over 500 steps. The whole group groaned and we were all dreading the day that we had to walk up all those stairs. But when we got there and started walking, I noticed that there were signs up against all of the trees that had Buddhist quotes about suffering and sacrifice, making me think about everything differently. The steps were torturous, but reading the quotes made it worth it and so did the destination at the top. When we arrived at the monastery, I remember seeing the hundreds of Buddhas lining the inside of the main area. I remember seeing pictures of renowned monks hanging from all the walls. At the time that we were there, it was a very important Buddhist holiday and all of the Buddhists were visiting the temples and monasteries to pay their respects to Buddha and monks. On this day we got to meditate with a monk at the top of a beautiful mountain in the middle of Thailand. I will never forget how surreal it felt to be meditating with a man who devoted his entire life to following the footsteps of Buddha while sitting in a place so breathtaking and unknown, listening to him speak Thai words and feel like I knew what he was saying even though there was such a barrier between us.

Thailand changed my life, and it will change yours to. I truly cannot say that I disliked any moment of this trip, no matter how hot and humid it was. Please travel to Thailand and experience the same amount of wonder that I did this summer!