The Dog Wat

On our last day by the beach I wanted to make sure we visited the local temple, Wat Summanawas, that is known as the "Dog Wat" as it is home to many stray dogs. It's really close to where we were staying, you could walk there in about 20-30 minutes or so. I had picked up some dog food to donate a few days prior, although we could only carry so much on our motorbike and I wish we could have bought more. But it was at least something and I wanted to donate it to the Wat to help their dogs. We biked over there and were greeted by a couple of dogs with not a single person in sight. We weren't sure what to do, or if it was closed for the day, but I wanted to hand the food over to an actual person if I could so we walked a little further and found one lonely monk inside one of the buildings. We told him we had food to donate and he said to talk to the guy who takes care of the dogs and pointed us in the right direction. That's when we met Dam, the caretaker to the dogs.

We were greeted by Dam and a larger group of dogs and he immediately wanted to show us the rest of them and where he takes care of them all so we followed him and all the dogs behind the temple. Dam is not a monk but pretty much gave up his life in Bangkok to come here and take care of all these stray dogs. He said it was so sad he just had to do something. He has been taking care of them for 4 years now and at the moment has over 80 stray dogs to feed. What this guy has done and continues to do is beyond amazing. He knows all of their names, cooks up meals for them every day from donations of rice, kibble and milk and even gives them medicine when he can.

Every day he makes a sort of soup/stew to feed the dogs in a massive wok over a fire. Dog kibble is too expensive and harder to come by so he mixes it with rice, milk and water to stretch it further. Once it is ready he dishes it out to many bowls and the dogs usually wait a little bit for it to cool, although as you can see many of them went straight for it out of the wok! For the puppies he makes a softer meal out of milk and rice that is easier for them to eat and keeps it in a bucket high up in a tree so the other dogs can't get to it. He plops them up onto a high table and feeds them in smaller bowls so they have a chance. They all look so sick, it was heartbreaking.

There was one little pup that just about killed me. Tiny little black and tan coloured girl who was shaking like crazy, struggling to eat. She reminded me of those starving children in Africa you see on the tv all the time, stick thin, with ribs pointing out but with hard swollen bellies from infection. Thats what she looked and felt like. I think she may have been blind because she had problems finding the bowl and eating, but when I took some rice porridge out and put it on my fingers she practically ate my hand trying to get at the food - she was obviously very very hungry. Poor little thing. I did my best to feed her as much as I could and when Dam told us that we could name the pups because they still didn't have their own names I so badly wanted to name her. But Byrd told me I should pick another one that might actually make it and as sad as that was to hear, he was right. I doubt this little girl will live very long, I hope to God she will but it sure didn't look good. As we left she was wandering off into the woods in the wrong direction, all by her little self. It took everything in me to turn around and leave, I wanted to help her so badly.

As Dam was showing us the last of his bag of rice and the tiny bit of kibble he had left, Byrd immediately handed him every baht he had on him which was about 300 baht. Not much, but its something and at least he can buy a new bag of rice with it. I wish we had more to give but you can only do a little. Even if I feed them today or tomorrow, what about the next day, or the next week? There's no end to it. In Thailand, stray dogs are everywhere, few of them have homes, none of them are neutered or spayed and it's just one vicious ongoing cycle. Most of them just wander around begging or scavenging for food, sleep on the streets and sadly we saw more then one that had been run over, killed or seriously injured. It breaks your heart to see. I fed them every chance I got from under the table in restaurants. The bag of food we brought was eaten in seconds, it hardly made a dent at all and all the dogs went crazy for it.

Every last kibble was gone! Dam decided to feed them while we were there and started scooping out the dog soup into dishes placed far apart from each other. It's easy for these dogs to get into scraps over food especially since they are starving. He does his best to separate them but you can see the war wounds on most of the dogs from fighting, some from infection.

Some of them were doing better then others. A couple of them had skin parasites that he was treating with medicine, the mothers that were feeding their puppies looked soooo thin, like they had given everything they had to their pups. But they all seemed to be happy and so was Dam. This guy really is a miracle worker. Next time I go to Thailand I will be back here, with more kibble, more money and more time to help out. And if anyone reading this ever goes to Hua Hin, please stop by the area of Paknampran by Khao Kalok (skull mountain) on the beach road and visit Wat Summanawas. For everyone else, I wish there was a website or somewhere that you could donate to the cause or adopt these strays and give them good homes, but I did come across a similar temple in the same area that does have a site. Check out http://temple-dogs.com/index.php

In the end, I named one of the healthier looking pups "doll" and we managed to tear our hearts away and leave somehow, although I could hardly take it. I still ache for these dogs and will think of them and Dam for a long time. I hope one day I can visit again and see Doll all grown up.

Me with the little sick pup I hope makes it.... 

Me and the little pup I named "Doll".

Koh Talu

My husband is big on diving with over 500 dives under his belt. Since his equipment was stolen many years ago, the only chance he has had to go diving was when he was doing underwater lighting for film. Originally, we had several friends that were going to join us on Koh Phi Phi who all have their dive licences and they were all going to go diving together. I'm the only one that doesn't have a dive licence but I was happy to snorkel around them or hang at the beach while they enjoyed themselves. I just didn't have time to get it before I left. Unfortunately, at the last minute they all had to cancel so we changed our plans, booked in a different area altogether and had to scrap the diving.

I did insist to Byrd that I didn't mind if he went diving on his own but he said he was just as happy snorkelling with me and he never managed to find his dive licence before he left anyways. The water around the resort is pretty murky, you can't see anything at all, so we took a day trip out to Koh Talu which is about 2 hours south of Hua Hin. It's still not as clear as Koh Phi Phi but it was still much better then where we were staying and sounded like a fun way to spend a day. We got up at 5:15 am so we could make it out to Hau Hin via motorbike for 7am. We were a little frustrated that the tour company could not pick us up at our hotel, especially because we were on the way, but we just couldn't convince the operator, although I suspect language difficulties were to blame. As it was we had to bike 40 minutes to Hau Hin before the sun even came up, then backtrack on the bus to where we just were and go farther south. And of course, at the end of the day we would have to bike all the way back again. We probably should have booked it through the hotel or tried to get someone thai to speak to the operater but whats done is done...

We picked up a "Breakfast box" from reception that consisted of blt sandwiches and orange juice and headed into town in the wee hours of the morning. This time I got my GPS out and followed it the whole way - we didn't have time to get lost! We hopped on an air-conditioned minibus, picked up several other passengers and then made the 2 hour trek to Koh Talu. We ended up at a dock and hopped onto a speedboat that took us to the island. Its named "talu" which means "hole" (I believe) because of a large limestone hole at one end of the island. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it, I thought we would be coming back to it so didn't bother. But the island is much larger then I expected it to be.

I thought we would have time to get changed so we didn't put on our bathing suits. The boat ended up taking us straight to a diving platform so we did a little bit of towel-changing-magic instead. Our day started off a little bit rough thanks to a nasty Dutch woman who snapped at my husband after he kindly asked her if he'd accidentally taken her towel. He just realized all the towels looked the same and wanted to make sure he had the right one. But she immediately started screaming at him, saying "don't touch my stuff!" In the end he did have the right towel and we tried our best to ignore her, but really she was the only unkind person we encountered in all of Thailand. We grabbed a snorkel and mask and dove in!

We spent quite a bit of time snorkelling around this one area and then we moved to another, deeper spot where we swam around for another 30 minutes. It was nice not having to use a lifejacket. Both myself and my husband are very strong swimmers and we both like to dive down deeper into the water, having a personal floatation device around you makes that really difficult! After we had swam up an appetite we stopped for a nice buffet lunch and had the rest of the afternoon to wander around the island, be beach bunnies or generally do whatever we felt like. We read for awhile, I tried to get a tan but it was too damn hot and the sunscreen was burning my face worse then the sun was so I gave that up pretty quick... I don't know how all these leather looking tanned people do it! I can't stay in the sun very long before I overheat and get uncomfortable. It's just not in me. I did however want to get SOME colour on me before I came back to Canada just as pale as when I left!

We sat by shore, swam for a bit, managed to find a couple of masks and snorkels and then it was time to head back. We were both exhausted, sun beat and ready for bed. Unfortunately we also had to wait for everybody else to be dropped off at their hotels, one which was literally down the street from ours.... (that one really hurt) and then get dropped off last in Hua Hin where we had to make our way back to where we just were... an hour ago. The sun was already gone so we stayed and had dinner before getting our sore asses back on the bike and heading home. 

Road trip!

We decided to get our own wheels and tour around Hua Hin and Pranburi for a couple of days. I had wanted to see the teakwood palace that was about an hour away and we figured we would get our own moped, save the price of an excursion and enjoy the sights along the way. The teakwood palace was the home of King Rama the 6th I believe, who only lived there for a year before he sadly died. But he obviously started a trend because King Rama the 7th built a home here as well and it is the regular residence of the current King, King Rama the 9th, who lives in Hua Hin most of the time.

We got lost almost right away, of course, and ended up having to take several detours and at one point turn back. But eventually we made it to the general area of the teakwood palace. You would think it would be easy to find right? Of course not! I saw one tiny sign pointing us in the right direction otherwise there wasn't a clue around. We did happen to find a parking lot full of packs and machine guns though! Apparently the palace is also inside a military base, and here we were just wandering around on our own. We were soooo close but still couldn't find the place, even though we kept asking anyone we saw.

I did find this random tiger sculpture though! Finally we narrowed it down and figured out where it was, but we still couldn't figure out how to get in. Nobody seemed to be around. We managed to talk to a security guard who told us that the palace was "closed today, come back tomorrow." Of course! It seems that is the rule of our trip - nothing will go as planned! No way were we coming back tomorrow after several hours wasted already on the bike. I managed to convince someone to let us in to the grounds but we were only able to see the palace from the outside and see the gardens, no matter how much I asked and begged to be let in!

THIS is as close to the palace as I got... you just have to shake your head and laugh!

I was tempted to sneak in, but then remembered the machine guns... 

Thankfully there was a bit to see outside of the main grounds so we wandered around for quite a bit. There was a wooden walkway through a mangrove forest that was pretty neat, I even got to see a real life Mudskipper! Anyone remember "Muddy the Mudskipper"??? They DO exist! There was one house outside that we could at least look at, but couldn't go into. Very pretty and so was the beach. As we were heading back to see the sculpture of King Rama VI a big group of soldiers started walking our way, machine guns in hand. For a moment we wondered if we weren't really supposed to be there but realized they were doing a drill, complete with Thai, I don't even know what to call it... military chanting? You know, the old "I don't know and I don't care" type of shouting? It was kind of neat to see! Still not as cool as seeing the actual teakwood palace but close enough....

Mangrove forest/swamp.

Walkway through the mangrove forest.

Thought these pencil-like roots sticking out looked cool.

Can you spot the mudskipper??

Muddy!

Looking for more mudskippers. 

Mangrove roots. 

Mangrove roots and the river.

Interesting... 

The one house we could look at, from the outside that is... 

It certainly is impressive though! Imagine how nice the real residence is.. 

Beach outside the palace.

Military troops inside the grounds. 

I didn't want to get too close, but this was really cool to witness!

King Rama VI monument. 

Apparently he liked Rottweilers too, these reminded me of our old dog Cassie. 

Who climbed up there to place those flowers I wonder... 

Flower offerings for King Rama VI. 

Flower arrangement at the entrance to the palace. 

This helped stop me from sneaking in! I was tempted... we came all this way.

Once we saw all there was to see we headed back to Hua Hin city to have lunch and find a travel agent so we could book a snorkelling day trip for the next day. We managed to do both and went back to the resort to call it a night. Our butts were sore and we had to be up really, really early the next day to swim with the fishes.

Cooling down in our private pool. 

My husband getting "arty" on me... 

A great place to unwind at the end of the day.