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Elephants, elephants and more elephants... Took an overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai--what luxury!! During the day you sit on chairs facing each other, at night the chairs fold down(tenttrailerish style!) to make the bottom bunk, and the top bunk folds down from the wall. The guy comes and makes up the bed for you around 8-9pm. It was great.
Arrived in Chiang Mai on time, and got picked up by the Elephant Nature Park guy. He was a little bit late, but no worries. While we waited, we met a guy who’s a schoolteacher who retired to the Philippines…just in Thailand to visit his friend, who retired there… He has a son who is a fly-in photocopier repairman pilot in Dryden. How’s that for an unusual profession?
To the market where we overloaded a pickup trip with bags and bags of fruit and vegetables for les elephants. Out to the park, met the others(people stay for different numbers of days), met the elephants. There are 28 elephants, 3 babies, 3 “kids”, the rest adults. And there are 36 dogs(all spayed/neutered/up to date on shots), and a few cats thrown in, ‘cause why not!? The fruit/vegetables got washed to get the pesticides off, then loaded into these HUGE baskets, one basket per elephant. Then we fed them!! They walk up to the platform to get fed, you take the fruit(pineapples cut in two, whole papayas(they’re HUGE), watermelons(special treat) and bananas(a bunch at a time)) and vegetables(cucumbers and pumpkins(large squash size)), and hand them to the elephants. They take them with their trunks and eat them faster than you can possibly believe. If you’re a bit slow, they reach out their trunk trying to get the next thing before you’ve even picked it up!!
After feeding we got lunch ourselves. The food was amazing. So good. Then we walked down to the river, with the elephants. Literally. Like there’s an elephant, reach out my hand and I can touch it. Sometimes they come up behind you and you don’t even know they’re there (they move really quietly for such a big animal!!). Fun. Oh yeah, each elephant has a mahout, who is with the elephant to tell it where to go, look out for us, etc. In the river, the elephants get in, lie down(some of them), and you get to work with a brush and bucket—splashing the elephant and scrubbing it down. They are SO big!! Three of the elephants don’t care that much about getting clean—they just go into the current and wrestle the whole time. The babies just run around all over the place, you have to keep an eye out or they’ll run you over!! The one baby is just 3 months old. SO cute!! After the river, the elephants put the dirt back on(sunscreen), then go to the mudpit to play around for a bit. Then we went back to the main hut(for lack of a better word), and watched a documentary(National Geographic) about the center, and elephants in Thailand in general. Really informative. There’s a lot working against these big guys…(and gals). They have all been mistreated in some way, some starved, most beaten. One is a landmine victim, and lost half her back foot. Really sad stories. It’s really great to see them at the centre and know that for the rest of their lives they will live happily… Then some relaxing, back to the river for elephant bath number 2, supper, a bonfire and bed. Oh yeah, we had a tree house for a room!! Really fun. After it got dark, we couldn’t see hardly anything—it was so great to be somewhere with no traffic or streetlights. WE SAW STARS!! For the first time in I don’t know how long. Think about that next time there’s a skyful of stars above you. I know I’ll appreciate them even more after a year in Korea!!
Up the next morning to take the elephants for a walk. Haha. More like walk beside the elephants while they GO for a walk. We walked down the road, past a herd of cows(!), it was great. Down to a field near the river where we just walked around and watched the elephants. A couple of them put on a bit of a show for us, wrestling down at the river bank. We all just sat and watched them just being elephants. It was great. Then back to the main camp where we basically repeated day 1. It was really a fantastic experience. I took a whole memory card of pictures(~350), but you can’t see them, ‘cause I don’t have my cord to upload them right now!!
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TJ and Melissa says:
We went to ENP also... we loved it too!