Elephantasia

Thursday Morning,

Elephants, Elephants, Elephants! Me and two other people from the guesthouse pile into a jeep-ni and drive about an hour and a half to the Elephant camp/ conservation. The place was beautiful and seeing an elephant in the flesh is amazing.
Before we did anything with the elephants everyone put on some denim clothes. It makes sense because you get super messy and wet.

After we got a brief run down of history and the camps mission statement and other stuff I ignored as I stared at these marvelous creatures we got to go up and feed one.

This is Aura the Elephant! She came from the circus so they're trying to break some of the habits she picked up there hence the chain around her neck. She's 8 years old knows plenty of tricks. Obviously you need to speak Thai to her in order to get anything done and this is where I learned all my Thai for the trip. But she could dance, and give you kisses which is like having an industrial vacuum cleaner suck on your face. SOOOOO COOOOOL! Fact: Elephants eat approximately 1800 kg of food a week. The average human consumes 986 kg in a year.  

The other elephants were giving rides to a group that came before us so we went up to some bleachers to learn commands and how to get up and down the elephant. Then Aura and her friends came to visit us and test what we learned. As a young man I was called upon to go first with another guy. These elephants were probably 10 feet tall where Aura was about 8 feet tall. The two ways to climb an elephant are standing on its front foot and having it lift you up so you can hoist yourself up; or have them lower there head and climb over there face. I didn't want this giant to get a toe in his eye so I hopped on his foot and lifted myself up. They can also bend down and you can climb on as a last resort. Surprisingly the rider sits on their neck, not the back. This is so you have a better control of the elephant when directing it. 

Directing an elephant is pretty easy. They give you a stick to poke the elephant which reinforces verbal instruction. You also have to kick their ears for turns and forward motion. The weirdest one is "Toi," which means reverse, and its like backing up without a rear-view and the elephants aren't exactly that good at it either. Everything else was pretty smooth on flat terrain. The only thing I would have liked to know is what the pain conversion is so I know I'm not hurting them. Although I have a feeling the stick they give you would be like getting poked with a dowel.  

Once the other group had left they brought in a few more elephants so people could get paired up and start riding through the elephant course. The two I got a back story on were both much grander looking: one was pregnant 27 year-old (don't worry, she was in the first of her eight trimesters) and a 43 year-old elephant which I got to ride. Once I found this out I tried to spend as much time as possible with this elephant so it would be comfortable with me. I gave it all my sugar cane and even put one directly in its mouth! The entire time I was just thinking how big this thing is and that I'm just a speck in the grand scheme of things. As we started the trail it started to rain in sheets making this ride a little more thrilling with every muddy and slippery step. They're really slow moving though, and constantly hungry. Each elephants trainer walked beside them and tried to stop them from walking off the path to eat the greenery. Some were not successful and it made me laugh. 

Half way through the hike the elephants went into a bathing pit and we got to wash elephants with buckets of water and play with a baby elephant. We also were given some sort of natural shampoo to shampoo our elephant's hair. When I approached the 43 year-old, she just sucked the shampoo stick right out of my hand and ate it. I got worried until the guide said, "Now that you've cleaned them you can feed it to them." Then we got out of the pool and went around one more time and jumped off under the roof where they served lunch and offered the pictures they took with the company camera. If it wasn't raining I would have been reluctant to go into the bathing pit because its just like a public pool except elephants aren't ashamed to drop deuces in a public place. That's why the water's a nice poo-brown.  

Since it rained the guide didn't take any pictures with anyone's cameras during while we were riding so I took a bunch during our warm lunch and before we got on the jeep-ni back to the guesthouse. Here are some other pictures:

They also had pigs and ducks roaming around too

The baby elephant.

Just a size comparison.

It was so much fun and just a once in a lifetime thing. I recommend if you're not petrified of large animals this is a half day event you need to go on.