stephs travels: could you wait one moment? i have to move my cow.

i was lucky enough to get off work for joey and sam's last day in thailand. after some debate about how we should spend it, we decided to go to the monkey training school. im so happy to have experienced this with joey and sam, they were able to get a sense of true thai style and hospitality. the school is situated just outside surat, a 10 minute tuk-tuk ride. i had never been there before and was honestly quite skeptical. the school is a place where monkeys are trained to pick coconuts from the tops of palm trees. apparently this is only done in the south of thailand. sonjai is the woman who runs, owns, and operates the school and her father was the founder. my roommate gave me the number and i called ahead asking if it would be okay for us to come that afternoon. sonjai explained that she couldn't come to pick us up because she was the only one at home (her husband works near bangkok) but to call her when we get a tuk-tuk so she could explain to the driver where to go. this is just a small taste of the hospitality among thai people. when we arrive, sonjai greets us at the driveway and welcomes us in. she has about 10 monkeys that she owns and they are all in various stages of training. they start training the monkeys at about 6 months old and when they are about 5 years old they can start working. the monkeys work until they are 15 years old and live to be about 20-25. sonjai trains the monkeys using positive reinforcement and takes care of them extremely well. she showed monkeys in various stages of training, starting with a monkey barely trained up to a fully trained monkey who picked coconuts for us to drink from. the experience was unreal. as sonjai was finishing up showing us everything, some of her family stopped by. one of the family members was a curious 6 year old boy named sam who only wanted to speak to us in english. he quickly became my little sidekick, following me around and trying to 'cheers' me with his water glass. very cute. we sat around talking with the family and when it came time to go, the uncle insisted on driving us back home. we thanked sonjai and promised her i would come back soon. we piled into the truck cab (6 adults and 2 little kids) and made our way back to my house. they asked us all kinds of questions, the uncle talking loudly (the loudest ive ever heard a thai person speak) on his cell phone, and they kept trying to get us to eat whatever food they had with them. we laughed uncontrollably at the situation, thinking how nothing like that would never happen in the states. the little boys asked if they could see my house, how could i say no? when we got back home, they came in and promptly made themselves at home. we thanked them and said goodbye, smiling to ourselves... it was a great day.