Project Walter Mitty – Day 2:

Suggestion: listen to Walk by the Foo Fighters while reading this

Today I woke up in a small Thai bungalow to the sound of rosters crowing and geckos making … whatever strange noise geckos make. To me they sometimes sound like little, tiny men laughing evilly. Anyway, that noise.

I will admit that I woke up a little flat this morning. I felt alone and home sick. To add to that, rats had eaten 2 slices of the bread that I bought from Tesco yesterday. I pushed these feelings of sadness aside and put it down to tiredness. As soon as I jumped into the projects ute, off to see the gibbons, these feelings quickly faded and I got that buzz back. Seeing those gorgeous little gibbons faces at the GRP sites hit home why I was here. It hit how much I want to take it all in, learn as much as I can from every experience and put it to good use. I felt right. I felt at home.

The GRP have 3 sites that house gibbons: the rest, rehab and forest.

The rest site houses gibbons that cannot be released back into the wild for a number of reason. One of the females is missing one hand and a foot because her previous owner beat her so badly that they got infected and needed to be amputated. Another gibbon was raised in a small bird cage. She is small for being fully grown and her legs are scrawny and disfigured. Unfortunately she is also very mentally unstable like a lot of the other gibbons residing in this site. These gibbons will sadly never be out of cages. They will never be free in the forest. This is what mankind has done for greed and it makes me so angry. It’s not fair.

The second is the rehab site which is located next to the GRP visitor centre. Living here are mostly the gibbons that are being rehabilitated to eventually be reintroduced back into the forest. At this site you would find family groups, some solo bachelors waiting for the perfect mate, and some pregnant mummas.

The third is the forest where the project aims on reintroducing already bonded families. A soft release technique is used to allow the gibbons to take as long as needed to adapt to their new environment while still being monitored, assisted and fed by the project.

“Learning to walk again. I believe I’ve waited long enough. When do I begin? Now” Foo Fighters

Over the next few weeks I will be working at these sites; prepping food, feeding the gibbons, cleaning, repairing and making cages, as well as monitoring those released into the forest.

In the evening I got to learn a bit of Muay Thai for the first time. I had done a bit of Taekwondo after I quit training to be a professional ballet (funny how your path in life can change) so I was pretty keen to jump into this. One of the Thai staff members offers the Muay Thai lessons to volunteers; 3 classes a week for 4 weeks is around $40 AUD. How sweet is that? I couldn’t say no!

Being new, I of course started with the basics. Some punches, some arm swing things … I don’t know but the instructor left me to practice these while he worked with 2 of the other volunteers. He seemed to be with them for what seemed like forever. So I stopped for a bit and went to sneakily have a snack of dried mango which I’d bought from Tesco. Yum. Back into the ring. I’d definitely say that I’m competitive and a perfectionist and boy was I ready to jump in and show him what I’m made of. Chandelier by Sia was playing on the instructors Bluetooth speaker, so I put up my mitts and showed this guy what 17 years of intense ballet training does to a women. I felt pretty darn bad ass. He was laughing however …

Time for me to sign off. Chat soon

Lots of love. Be happy :)

Mon