Meeting my fellow wanderer

Since last week, we’ve had more free time on this adventure, which has been very nice.  In that time I’ve had a massage for 6 US dollars, played with an elephant, and had a python wrapped around my neck.

Still can't believe I did this, I hate snakes!

      

The days I’ve spend with the elephants have by far been the most adventurous and memorable thing for me. Besides them being my favorite animal, being in Thailand, these animals are all over the place. Elephants are a sacred and worshipped animal here in Thailand. Elephants are powerful, important, very patient, intelligent, good at remembering and familiar with people.

It was interesting. While I was doing some research on why the elephant is a sacred animal to this part of the world, I came across “dream elephants”, meaning when an elephant appears in your dream.  When this happens, it is a message that we are able to deal with any obstacle we are faced with at this time.  Dream elephants, in a sense, represent power. For example the elephant can refer to the powerful reaction in us such as horror, sex, survival, and the power of imagination to remind us of immense worry or great bliss. It is often though, that our personality interprets these powerful emotions in a negative way. For example, a person may have read a magazine piece of writing about an illness and develop a great fear they have the disease, causing much stress and actual physical illness in some degree.

I thought it was very ironic that all websites that I looked at for elephants and what they stood for, they all said power.  Was it a coincidence? I think not...

Today when I was riding my elephant I have a moment.  I spent my day at the elephant farm as a “Mahout” which means “Elephant Keeper”.   The way this works at the beginning of the day is not having us choose the elephant that we wanted to ride, but the elephant had to choose us.  The elephant that chose me was a very young girl, with a bell hanging from her neck.  I later asked why she had the bell, and our guide simply said, “She’s a wanderer. Her feet wander”.  I didn’t say anything, but inside I was going crazy.  My friends and family at home all call me a “wandering soul” and I recently got a tattoo on my foot saying, “Let your restless feet wander”.  I knew then why that elephant had chosen me. It was a time that I’ll never forget.

The Wanderers. 

Besides looking cultural, one thing I’ve given up on is trying to look decent.  Between the heat, and the long days, it’s just not in the question.  But, being a girl, I have noticed many of the perceived odd beauty ads, treatments, and products.

What is the deal with the white skin treatments? They are all over the place.  Cara, a friend from the trip, and I went on a search for some Bronzer (a make-up that gives you ‘glow’ or ‘tan’), and never did I think it could be so hard! Everything that the beauticians would give Cara would make her look like a Geisha.  It was later that I noticed the white skin treatments, while sitting at the doctor’s office waiting room.  I did a little research.  White skin, in the Asian cultures, is a standard of beauty.  The white skin is associated with wealth and high-class.  The rich people don’t have to work outside in the fields, which would make them paler than those who do, those being the “poorer people”.  I later came across the actual product of the contact lens that I have seen on many of the Asian women here.  I noticed that they were colored before, but when I saw the product on shelves, I noticed that they were formed to make the eye seem wider, being named “oversized contact lens”.   This may be because many of the Asian countries (Korea, Vietnam, Japan, etc.) have been populated by people from the West, meaning that the western groups enforced a great deal of power over what these people viewed as beautiful and imposed ideals of what beauty was.  

Attractiveness and improved self-image through enhanced appearance has proven to people over the centuries to be a means of better realizing ourselves as human beings, a means to influence other individuals and to communicate better in our lives, a means to gain power, if you will, and to acquire desirables. Although I would like to say that women chase beauty for their own pleasure, women do it because of the feeling of power they get when regarded as feeling and being beautiful.

Beauty is something that I know, and have witnessed, that can become an addiction.  I guess that comes down to what we discussed in class the other day, “can one become addicted to anything?” That raises a good discussion, but achieving ideal beauty, the perfect body, or that Barbie look, is something that people do become addicted to, or obsess over.  Whether that is going under the knife for plastic surgery, eating disorders, or white skin treatments and colored contacts, they are all forms of achieving a desirable look of what that person views as “beautiful”.

It’s been interesting to see the different forms of beauty throughout the world.  Along with some of the traditions and customs that this country carries, that to us just seem bizarre and something we’d view on national geographic, but here, or other countries, it’s a form of improved appearance.

My professor Angus reminding the students in the class to "not get adjusted".  Meaning to not get used to some of the perks in this country.  Those being the sun, the value of the baht, and the wonderful experiences.  That is going to be tough.  I have been here long enough that I am starting to get used to being here and paying sometimes less than a dollar for a full meal.  Who knows, next time I'm at chipotle back home, I might just start bargaining the price of my burrito. 

  That's the Thai life.