Addressing the elephant in the room… Phuket, Thailand

Apologies all for the sporadic posting of my blogs. The Internet in Bali (where I find myself currently) is rather temperamental and I’ve also been busy perfecting the art of doing nothing, which apparently includes not doing any writing either! The following post about my two weeks in Phuket makes me smile as it really captures the spirit of my travels; spontaneous, hilarious, random and memorable. I hope you enjoy it x

Day 176-177 Fly from Laos to Thailand

Back to Thailand again but this time I was going south to the island of Phuket. I arrived at the airport late at night and got myself a taxi. I was knackered and couldn’t wait to fall into my bed. I’d booked myself a rather basic bamboo hut near to the elephant sanctuary but all I needed was somewhere to rest up for 48 hours before the volunteer programme began. We pulled up outside my accommodation, on a quiet street at around 10pm. I grabbed my bags, waved the nice taxi driver off with a tired smile and headed towards the lights of the reception area and the bamboo huts…it was completely abandoned. Despite the lights there was literally nothing there! The reception desk was bare, the huts were padlocked and the only sign of life was some skinny cats. The surrounding street was pitch black and deserted. I looked at my phone and realised I had no data. SHIIIIIT!

I obviously had another one of my “Well this is how it ends!” moments but soon realised that there was a much higher likelihood of starring in a bad horror movie if I stayed there so I pulled myself together, put my backpack on and set off walking down the road. Fortunately after a few minutes I emerged onto a well lit street and found a tiny little shop in someone’s garage. The lady didn’t speak much English but when I said “TAXI?!” she disappeared and came back with her husband who turned out to be the taxi driver! You couldn’t make it up! I asked him to take me to the nearest hotel which turned out to be a rather posh yacht club on the marina, which I could scarcely afford but gratefully booked in to without a second thought.  That night, curled up in my beautiful double bed, I slept like a baby having decided that the universe clearly wanted better for me than a bamboo hut!  

Day 178-184 Phuket Elephant Sanctuary Volunteer Programme My week at Phuket Elephant Sanctuary was incredibly special. There are very few ethical sanctuaries in Thailand. Most places still offer riding and bathing rather than allowing the elephants to live naturally. PES, along with Elephant Nature Park in Chiangmai, offer these beautiful, intelligent creatures, who have mostly spent their lives in logging or tourist camps, the opportunity to retire in peace and live in as natural an environment as possible. *

I don’t know who ate more during the week, us or the elephants! I had come very much prepared for some hard graft but the pace at the sanctuary is like the slow graceful lope of their gentle giants. Every day started with a very extensive and leisurely breakfast and a nap followed by some elephant stall cleaning. Being the resident horsewoman I volunteered for poo picking duties and felt very at home. Afterward we would do some food prep, chopping up pineapples and watermelons and making huge rice balls for the golden oldies with no teeth. We would then go and feed various girls (all of the elephants at the sanctuary are female) who would be waiting patiently with their dedicated mahouts. They are all so gentle and sweet; looking in to their eyes you can almost feel the quiet gratitude emanating from them. 

After a massive lunch and another nap overlooking the lake the afternoons tended to involve us getting filthy dirty and having lots of fun! The first day we scrubbed the elephant swimming pool and ended up stripping off and swimming in it. The next day an elephant poo’d in it so that was a one off. We hacked through the jungle with machetes and collected trucks full of banana leaves, scrubbed the ginormous water drinkers in the elephants stalls, painted fences and groomed the blind baby wild boar Som Pon. The best bit of the afternoon however was watching the girls swimming in the lake. The look of pure joy as they dive under the water and wallow in the mud by the bank in indescribable. I felt incredibly privileged to see it all up close and to be able to support such a wonderful project. 

Have a look at Phuket Elephant Sanctuary on Instagram to see amazing images of the girls and what they do there. 

My week at PES was made all the more fun because I got to share the experience with Ashleigh, a super fabulous and very funny Aussie girl who I clicked with straight away. I’m not sure whether it was the guilt of eating so much or the inspiration of seeing Ash’s six pack everyday but somehow during the week she persuaded me that it would be a good idea to sign up for a week at a Muay Thai and MMA camp! Asleigh had spent the last month at Tiger and loved it. Granted she is a super fit MMA fighter and I am a slightly tubby traveller who finds it hard to say no to dessert but … WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

Day 185-191 Tiger Muay Thai and Mixed Martial Arts From the minute I arrived on’The Street’ (a street dedicated to fitness and all things protein where Tiger is situated) I was terrified. I didn’t even have any workout gear! Fortunately all of the large sizes were on sale in the sportswear shop… obviously. 

On day 1 I decided to give it my all. I got up for 6.30am yoga which I thought would be a gentler warm up but it turned out to be a super hardcore, sweaty vinyasa class. GOD HELP ME! I went straight over to Ambush which turned out to be hell on earth in the form of a circuit class including a million burpees and other horrific exercises. At one point I nearly vomitted and everyone kept looking at my gold fashion trainers. I genuinely questioned my own sanity for having paid for this torture. Afterwards I found a cafe and had bacon, eggs, protein pancakes, juice, water… I slept for the rest of the afternoon and then dragged myself back to evening yoga and finally fell into bed wondering how the hell I would survive a week of this. 

But survive I did. I didn’t get up for morning yoga again and I had to self-medicate with copious amounts of ibuprofen but gradually as the days went on I began to get a rather surprising sense of enjoyment from sweating it out and feeling the burn of muscles that clearly hadn’t been used in a while. I did several hours of Muay Thai boxing everyday, relishing the mindless repetition of the drills and the release of tension as I practised my kicks, punches, elbows and uppercuts. I tried different types of classes and finally found my niche in the strength and conditioning class. I only had one Bridget Jones moment when I was doing HIIT training on the rowing machine and managed to row myself off the machine! I was lying in a heap on the floor with my feet still attached, wondering how the hell to get up, when I caught the rather disgusted look of the very good looking trainer. I could have died. 

As I prepared to fly off to Bali at the end of the week I reflected on the shift that had occurred within me. I have played at losing weight and getting fitter over the last few years but never with much enthusiasm. It’s always been the elephant in the room that I have been too embarrassed or weak to address but somehow by running headfirst through my comfort zone and out the other side I felt able to look back with a totally different perspective. Having eaten predominantly vegetarian and raw foods, less carbs and drunk more water I suddenly felt more energised and a lot healthier. My body felt stronger and so did my mind. I’m not saying that I came away from there forever devoted to a keto diet and exercising for five hours a day but it did show me that change can happen very quickly and what you put into and do with your body has such a dramatic effect on your physical and mental state. My body will never be a temple but it is a gift and I need to look after it better. 

*If you do ever get the opportunity to go to an elephant sanctuary, or any wild animal sanctuary for that matter, please do your homework and make sure that they are an ethical operation. Put your well earned money in the hands of the good guys x