Green Bay Press-Gazette from Green Bay, Wisconsin • 42

I I GREEN BAY PRESS-GAZETTE GREENBAYPRESSGAZETTE.COM SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 2012 THAI TRUNK HAVEN Park offers sanctuary for elephants, rare opportunity for volunteers By Marley Seaman The Associated Press SI IE i I r- jf f. 1 i 1 i residents at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai province, Thailand, and guest volunteers It's part of guests' all-access to the elphants, many of whom were rescued. AP photos uests volunteering at the Elephant Nature Park don't have phone service or television, and Internet access is limited to a single area. But what they get instead of TV is ele-vision, all day long. They can see elephants eating, playing in the mud, bathing and even floating in a river.

They can watch large family groups and their ever-shifting relationships, which one observer compared to a soap opera. And while first impressions might suggest there is nothing subtle about a six-ton animal, by the end of a stay at the Elephant Nature Park, most guests come to realize there's a lot about elephants that's easy to miss. There's the rubbery rasp as they exhale through the trunk, the leathery skin and sharp bristly hair, the pink-orange patch between the eyes, and the freckles that run down the trunk and across the lower part of the ears. I learned all of this during a week of observing and helping out at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai province, northern Thailand. The park is home to 36 elephants, most of them rescued from handlers who had them begging for food in the streets or hauling timber, carrying tourists on treks, or doing tricks in "elephant shows." The elephant is Thailand's na-tional symbol, but 1 tame elephants are considered live- stock.

Most of the park's elephants endured brutal training and f-i i decades of (t work, and some are now dis abled. A few have been crippled by landmines. TheEle- phant Na- turePark offers sanctuary Vf and a calmer It's bath time for one of the help with the cleanup work. life, and its founders are hoping to show Thailand that there is another way to treat elephants. They believe that tourists will come to Thailand to see elephants in a more natural setting.

The elephants include family groups surrounding the park's babies, Chang Yim and Faa Mai, rambunctious bull Hope, and duos like Jokia and Mae Perm. Jokia is blind, and yNi- Mae Perm has become her "seeing-eye elephant." The ele-. phants have deep i and complex bonds, but there 1 are often con- I flicts and jeal- ousies. The ele- phants also have personality to match their size, and Kensington Palace in London, home of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, is expected to see plenty of visitors in 2012. AP Beach locations get bumped off top 10 New York; Las Vegas; Orlando, Chicago and Los Angeles topped the list of most popular travel destinations in 2011, according to booking data and online searches reviewed by the travel website Orbitz.

But what was surprising about the top 10 list was the absence of coastal vacation spots such as San Diego, Honolulu and Miami. All three beach destinations, as well as New Orleans, made the top 10 list in 2010 but were bumped off in 201 1 by Boston, Los Angeles, Denver and Atlanta. Orbitz predicts the hot travel destinations for 2012 will be London, which will host the summer Olympics; Austin, Texas, which will host the U.S. Formula 1 Grand Prix in November; and Chicago, which will host the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in April, followed by the G8 Summit in May. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services Red Sox get new digs in Florida Spring training is just over a month away for baseball fans.

Pitchers and catchers from 1 5 Major League teams are scheduled to report to 14 Florida sites by mid-February as they gear up for 236 spring training games in the state over a 33-day span that carries into early April. The newest addition to Florida's roster of spring training locations is $78 million JetBlue Park in Fort Myers. The new complex for the Boston Red Sox seats more than 1 0,000 fans with an additional 1,000 spaces designated for standing room. The park's playing field dimensions are identical to those in Fenway Park i in Boston and features a replica Green Monster in left field and manual scoreboard. The Associated Press 2012 looks to be profitable year The travel industry, as well as home improvement stores and credit card com- panies, should have a good i year in 2012, according to a new spending survey.

The top two areas for dis- cretionary spending among i Americans are home improvements and travel, according to a new survey of 2,000 Americans for Ameri- can Express. And, as expect- ed, many say they would use their credit cards to pay those costs. More than 8 in 1 0 of those who plan to travel for leisure in 2012 said they will spend the same amount of money i as or more than last year, according to the report. In fart, 17 percent had in December already booked their first trip of the year. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services Flights to Europe cost a little more It looks like the new Euro kitchen, plant trees and sugar cane, build fences and clean the elephant shelters.

Yes, that means we paid them to let us shovel elephant dung. It doesn't smell, but there are 36 elephants, so there was a lot of dung to shovel and pitchfork away. The work can be grueling; Thailand's climate is humid and temperatures reach the 80s. The days are paced well, and the rewards are remarkable. After work in the morning, the elephants crowd up to the main building and volunteers feed them bunches of bananas and sliced watermelon and mango.

After lunch, the elephants bathe at the river. At night, the fog pours in from over the mountains and shrouds the park as the volunteers relax from their hard work. But thinking about one's experiences here at the end of a long day is very different from reflecting on the typical vacation. After all, we were not just tourists. We were visitors in the land of the elephants.

It's become an animal preserve of its own, hosting around 20 head of cattle and water buffalo, a few horses, one moon bear, chickens, dozens of cats, and about 80 dogs. The dogs often make more noise than the elephants. The Elephant Nature Park offers a series of packages starting with day trips costing about $80 per person, while a week's stay as a volunteer costs under $400 per person, including food and a place to sleep. The newer rooms are spacious and the park is building new rooms quickly. There isn't all that much privacy and the accommodations are pretty Spartan there's no hot water and the staff warns that the power sometimes cuts out, taking the water down with it but the food is delicious.

Volunteers spend three or four hours a day working at the park, with about two hours of work in the morning and another one or two in the afternoon. They mash up bananas and clean fruit in the elephant IF YOU GO Elephant Nature Park: Located 37 miles from the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand; www.ele-phantnaturepark.org. Visits can range from a day trip ($80 or 2500 baht) to an overnight ($185 or 5,800 baht) to three nights, a week or two weeks ($385 a week or 12,000 baht). Discounts for children younger than 12. Stays include simple hut accommodations and meals.

Visitors can travel by train or plane from Bangkok to Chiang Mai; the park provides transportation from the city of Chiang Mai to the preserve and offers a package that covers train trav-. el from Bangkok. "I had watched a documentary which spoke about an elephant park where you could volunteer and work with the elephants," said Sim Marsh, who works at a financial planning firm in Melbourne, Australia. Marsh says volunteering at an elephant park was on her "bucket list." The park is home to more than just elephants. thousands of people.

It's very difficult and dangerous to get off a ship like that." The cruise lines disagree. "With size comes safety," said William Wright, senior vice president of marine operations for Royal Caribbean International and the first captain of Oasis of the Seas. Royal Caribbean operates seven of the largest 10 ships in the world. Wright said these mega-ships are wider, more stable, have the latest navigation systems and more watertight compartmentaliza-tion than their 1 their trunks I give them an al- most endless I riety of facial EVER-BIGGER CRUISE SHIPS RAISE LARGER CONCERNS OVER SAFETY expressions. When an accident does happen, larger ships pose a greater challenge simply because of the sheer number of passengers.

Jack Hickey, a Miami attorney who has practiced maritime law for 32 years, said while cruise ship crews get some training on operation of lifeboats, overall safety training is usually an afterthought. The sheer size of today's cruise ships only makes the lack of safety training worse, Hickey said, "because now, as opposed to 10 or 20 years ago, you are dealing with thousands and The Alps of i I 1 1 Afn: By Scott Mayerowitz The Associated Press -tie grounding and capsizing of the Costa Hi Concordia has raised questions about the safety of the ever-increasing size of cruise ships. But experts say that these new mega-ships have the latest safety and navigation technology and pose little risk to passengers despite their gargantuan bulk. The Concordia a ship more than two-and-a-half football fields long was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew Jan. 13 when it hit a reef off the Italian coast, flooded with water and listed to one side.

At least 11 people died in the accident with others still unaccounted for. The Concordia is part of a recent trend to build bigger and flashier cruise ships that can carry more passengers than ever before. The largest of these Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas and sister ship Oasis of the Seas were launched in the last three years and can carry more than 6,000 passengers. When the Titanic sank nearly a century ago, there were 2,200 people on board. ermamj is MmMa pean plan to limit airline emissions will cost U.S.

travelers to Europe a few bucks. The plan to impose strict emission limits on planes flying in and out of Europe took effect Jan. 1, and Delta, United, American airlines and US Airways have already added a $3 surcharge for flights between the U.S. and Europe. It is a move that industry analysts see as a way to offset the emission plan's financial impact on the airlines.

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services Personally escorted by Keith Halverson retired German teacher March Small group size Daily breakfast 5 dinners -Charming hotels with local flavor Only $2,739.00 p.p. Includes Airfare from Cfvcaqo i mi.