Asian Tales: Baan Talae Nork - Wildlife Animal Rescue Foundation Thailand

The Team: Sandy (Chinese name 'Sunle' - pronounced Sun Lorh), Joanna, Tash, Melanie, Dr Tao and Dom (Ingrid is AWOL on this one - pity)

Hello there

Turtle conservation, with no turtles, can still be fun :) As long as you're surrounded by a great bunch of fun people.

Not only did Sunle teach us Tai Chi on the beach but we also picked up some useful Chinese swearwords. Oh boy did we laugh on that beach!

I'm afraid I'm going to have to be fast with this posting; a) the German tourists are becoming scary as I was on here for ages filing my pics and b) it's been so long since my last post ...so much has happened, so much to say!!

Our typical evening/night of work at WARF was as follows in the picture story below:

First of all, transportation of humans in this country usually takes place: on Mopeds with attached side cages in which up to 5 (or more likely 20 Thais) can be accommodated, or in the back of a pick-up truck is another favourite, on a local bus and if you're really lucky, in a car (so far I've only had the car treatment when hanging out with Maureen !! :) The pic above is the team heading off at 5pm or 6pm to the beach.

Channel Crossing

The upgrade :)

We usually crossed the channel (leading to the mangroves behind the beach) at low tide but sadly we had an incident when poor old Sanle got hurt. We were walking back one morning when Sandy screamed 'Something Bite me!' - 'I'm Blind' (well we understood I'm blind but he had said he was bleeding. So poor chap was rescued by a cute fisherman on a motorcycle and we were subsequently upgraded to being taken across the channels by way of Longboat driven by no other than smiley Bundi himself (the guy in the pic of the pick up truck above)

You've got to imagine this huge beach that goes on for hundreds of kilometres at least 50 of which are totally void of any development whatsoever. It's beautiful out there, just stunning and so quiet. We used to sit there and watch the stars - we'd see a thousand (a little exaggeration) shooting stars. It was bliss.

En route to camp - Tash and Ingrid (my 'flat mate' at the project)

Sunset Fun

Once we got to our usual camp area we'd set up the tents (basically mosquito nets with a roof) we'd have a swim and then dinner on the beach. On our last night weird things happened. We were eating away when 3 hawks began to circle us, we laughed them off and told them we weren't dead yet, then we were attacked by a swarm of flying ants and when we moved closer to the shoreline a load of big craps circled us and kept encrouching. It was wierd. Sunle was at the base and not on the beach because of the injury he got in the morning and we thought of him. We always heard him call out from his tent: ' I smell danger, there are animals all around me' :))) So was this the kind of treatment he got every night? We don't know, hehehe, oh boy we missed him so and still do. He was so funny.

Another thing that happened on that last night was - for some reason - out in the wilderness at the back of the mangroves miles away from the village and at the foot of a mountain & deep in the forest, there was this constant glow of light. Well on the last night, we stayed up till 2am (Melanie and I had our scheduled 2hr walk then) It was after the ghost stories and the stories about the time when the beach patrol was shut down so that the military could patrol the beach looking for Burmese boat people (!!!!) the glow of light disappeared for 5 mins and then reappeared. Joanna noticed it. The next morning we were told it must be a shrimp farm but I've seen loads of them here and I tell you, none of them had lights. What could it be? Maybe a Marijuana farm? hehe oh Boy! (I wouldn't be surprised due to the next blog I'm going to post!!)

Anyway, we (Joanna & I) left the WARF project last Thursday 8th(?). We decided we were going to travel together and the theme: Island Hopping. Hey, there were no turtles and after that night on the beach, well, we were all a little jumpy. So we said our Good Byes, which was sad, and headed off for Kura Buri which is where you need to go if you are heading to the Ko Surin islands.

Mornings on the beach: