A day with Marti and Nikki

Hey everyone! It’s Lauren. This is my first blog this vacation. I was very lazy the first week and in Borneo…. Words can not describe how miserable I was. We started the day with breakfast and meeting with Fartar, the pearl man. We gave him lots of business, I’m sure he is sick of us by now. When we returned to the hotel room, we were off to go on another adventure. We got in the taxi and traveled for about 2 hours watching the beautiful countryside. I wish I could describe it to you but I was sleeping half the time, because the driving was too stressful and frightening to watch. I woke up when I heard a loud “Boom!” of the taxi going off the road. Shortly after the boom, we arrived at the elephant park only to find out Marti, our taxi driver, took us to the wrong park. I was especially frustrated because I wanted to go to the park Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, recommended. We then began to begin another 1 hour and 30 minute trip to the elephant park we were supposed to go to at the beginning. Extra time with Marti was wonderful but I couldn’t even watch the sight of our taxi van passing cars on a small road with cars at full speed driving at us from the other direction. Thankfully, we made it to the other park right in time for the show. These elephants were amazing they could walk on wooden balance beams, do math, play basketball and soccer, hula-hoop, sit down on the beams, spray us with water and even paint a picture. Needless to say they were very well trained. The park director told us it takes over a year of training. The elephants were adorable especially the baby elephants. We were able to feed the babies pineapple and the full grown elephants small sticks. When dad fed the baby elephants he stuck his whole hand down their throat. It was a lot of fun feeding the adult elephants because they were friendly and would take the stick with their trunk and feed it to themselves. Mom and Dad were on the elephant in front of Christa and I during the elephant ride. Our guide was excited we were from the USA she said she would take us the USA on our elephant, Nikki. Yes, elephants can swim! Nikki was 21 and Mom and Dad’s elephant was 23. Dad asked a lot of questions during the ride, but my favorite was “So how do you treat a Holy Cow?” Their guide responded by telling him feed it, care for it, just don’t kill it. At the end of our ride we took pictures <which I’m sure will be posted soon> and went in the water. I can see why Steve Irwin said it was the best elephant park he had ever been to. When on our way back to the hotel, we ate at an English restaurant which was completely deserted. The meal was very good, except mom’s wine. We established that on my shirt which had a map on it we went form my left boob to my right boob. After our meal we started back to the hotel but it was very difficult because we had to stop every other minute for suicidal dogs. These villages had a lot of dogs and all of them were from the same 2 breads just imbreaded many times. They laid in the road as if they had a death wish. As we were riding along a town road we saw these women carrying huge baskets of offerings on their heads to the temples. It was a Hindu holiday. It was amazing the art work they put into their offerings. We finally got back to the hotel where Dad and I got a wonderful massage from Kenni and Mom and Christa went to get ice cream. An ending to an eventful day. Tomorrow we will go to scuba all day and hopefully if we live there will be a blog written by mom (which should be interesting)

How do you treat a holy cow?