Day 19 Volunteering

Our little impromptu party last night turned out not to be the best idea in the world when Liam woke up after less than five hours sleep quite rough. Once we got through the preparation of the feed though we soon sweated it out cleaning the cages. We were back to more or less normal as Tat and Ned came back from their day off, but it took a long time to clean out all the cages, over 3 hours, due to us thoroughly cleaning the ones we could not access yesterday and the fact that there is a lot less of us. We did monkeys and the two new volunteers did the leopards.

As normal the cubs took up the greater part of our day looking after them and both the tiger and the leopard cubs were calm and lovely to tourists which was nice. We are always quite wary when children pay to enter the enclosure but they were fine today. We have also started to put a portfolio together for the new cub enclosure we are planning for when they get too big to be in the small enclosures they are in now. It needs to be completed in 5 week and we currently have nothing and as much as people here talk about it no one is organised and has started apart from measuring up the land.

So today Liam went into the office when the cubs were quiet and printed off dozens of photos of tiger enclosures that he liked and then showed them Chelsea for approval. Chelsea then used her skills to put the whole thing together into a portfolio. She drew examples of the enclosure and then drew some of the details and attached photo examples so when the portfolio is handed to the boss he can see what we have in mind and can pick what he does and does not like. One of the main details is Liam’s idea of a 360 degree birdwatcher style hut that will sit in the middle where all three enclosures meet so customers can discreetly watch the cats wherever they are and the cats will act normal as they will not see anyone watching them. The hut will just have peep holes rather than windows so we can rub different scents on the hut to encourage the cats to come up close so the customers can see them up close eye to eye.

We had another English lesson tonight, and taught them different forms of transport. Once we had drilled the words we played a simple version of charades with the kids acting out the transport and the others were guessing before the obligatory version of duck, duck goose. We finished with the Hokey Cokey as the kids love it and they have even asked for the words so some can now sing along, almost entirely. It is great to see the progress the kids are making in the time we have been here it is a great feeling.

We had discussed moving on Thursday so we can have some R&R before Myanmar but we are not ready to leave the English school as we enjoy it so much. We think we may stay until the 21st and we can then go to Ayutthaya for a long weekend to relax before going back to Bangkok to catch our flight on the 26th.