A few months back I was trying to find a guy. Nobody seemed to have a phone number for him and the contact email on his website was apparently not being answered. So far, pretty normal for Thailand. So I did what one does here: I went out to look for him.
The guy supposedly ran an elephant sanctuary in Northern Thailand. I was looking for a subject to shoot a short documentary on... partly for the experience and partly to have the piece in my portfolio. If it was a legitimate non-profit I was going to do it for free. So I hopped on a bike -- a zippy little old 2-stroke Yamaha DT100 -- and rode out to look for him.
fun little bike
passed a nice temple along the way
and a cool geyser. the water was really hot
also this beautiful snake
When we arrived the place was very nice. No elephants though, and the guy I was looking for wasn't there. His brother-in-law was though, so my friend and I got talking to him. He offered us beers which we gladly accepted. Then he asked us if we wanted to shoot the musket that was leaning up nearby. Obviously the answer was yes. He poured some gunpowder down the barrel, then what was either gravel or rock salt. After that he stuffed some fluffed up cotton in and tamped it all down with the ramrod.
yes, the ramrod. that waterbottle in the background was the target.
He had a strip of powder charges like what you had in a capgun when you were a kid, and he pulled back the hammer and put one underneath it. Then he set my up at a small table and pointed at a water bottle 10 meters away to use as a target.
After one trigger pull and a dud of a cap, he put in a new charge and I fired. I hit the bottle but not quite square on.
Dude showing us how it's done
I grazed the target, so of course she nailed it dead on
It's things like this that make me really love Thailand -- you have the freedom to go just about anywhere you want in the country, and once you get there there will probably be really friendly people there ready to ply you with food and drinks, and there will always be some really random thing like a musket you can shoot. What a country!
Thanks for reading.