BANGKOK, THAILAND March 15, 2008
Laem Chabang, Thailand is the largest port in Thailand. Now get this:
Laem Chabang is a township of Chonburi Province, Thailand. It covers the tambon Bang Lamung of Bang Lamung district, and the complete tambon Bueng, Sura Sak, Thung Su Khla and parts of Nong Kham of Si Racha district. It is 25 kilometes north of Pattaya and south of the city of Chon Buri. In other words our ship docked 2 hours away from Bangkok.
Thailand (formerly know as Siam) has a monarchy, which is the longest running lineage in the world. The current monarch is Rama IX. It is remarkable that during the time of colonialism and during the WWII the country maintained its independence. For example the French were given part of the country for the promise of a hands off policy. During WWII the country declared itself to be neutral and unaligned. This saved the country from the Japanese invasion and take over, but did allow it to have an encampment of Japanese soldiers in the Lumpini Park in the center of Bangkok.
The elephant has become almost a symbol of the country and even use to be displayed on the national flag. The king was upset once that the flag had been flown upside down once, with the 4 legs of the elephant pointing up in the air. He therefore changed the flag to 5 bars of red white and blue; blue in the middle with first white then red on top and bottom. This way they cannot fly it upside down.
Today we visited an elephant village in Pattaya. They demonstrated the talents of the elephants in moving and handling the teak logs once so plentiful in the Thailand forest. Now due to uneconomic forestry, the forests are all but depleted. They are currently being redeveloped but a mature teak tree takes 60 to 70 years to develop.
The master of the elephant (mahoot) spends almost full time with his elephant. The elephant has the intelligence of about a 6 year old human child. It can learn and retain simple tasks and signals from the master. There are only about 2800 in the wild remaining today.
We later stopped at a “Golden Buddha” shrine. Judy confronted a couple of fierce warrior gods protecting the entrance and I got by them to take this nice picture.
