Chiang Mai, Thailand
Sunday, February 5, 2012
So we got up at around 6 in order to have time to chill before our pickup. We went down and had breakfast in the hotel which was great. We had omelette, tumeric potatoes, pork frankfurts, fried rice, vegetables stir fried, fruit, tea, coffee. We also had croissant, apple and cinnamon muffin, chocolate croissant, little danish, jam donut. All the pastries were super fresh. The tea hot. In fact this breakfast was really delicious. After breakfast we came back to relax before our Elephant park and that's when I realised that my guts were rotten. Not sure what I have eaten considering Rols and I have had the same food; however, I was determined to make it out today and took some medication and off we went were the driver came to pick us up. We headed a bit out of
Chiang Mai to the Baan Chang Elephant Park where we would become Mahouts for the day. Mahouts being those that care for elephants and can command them for movement. We started the day by getting into out Mahout outfits which looked extremely sexy on both of us (not)
. We then sat with our guide Tom for a while whilst he explained where the elephants had come from and what they did to look after them. The elephants eat up to 250 kilos of food a day and sleep 3-4 hours a day. At the sanctuary they have two babies two and they are really cute. After Tom gave us some info we all headed over and fed the elephants Sugar cane and bananas. After this Tom explained how the Mahouts ride bare back for the elephants and to do a ride today we would do the same. We learnt how to get on and then learnt a few commands "non long" means come down. "kuaw" go left or right, "how" means stop and "pai" means go. If you say "pai, pai,pai" many times I think this made the elephant go faster. So we had a practice getting off and on the elephants and did a quick ride and then took a break for lunch. Lunch was rice, sweet and sour chicken, fried chicken and noodle and vegetable soup. The lunch was actually quite nice but with my guts the way they were it wasn't too good. After lunch we got to lie in the Park's cane hammocks. Aah time to rest the body and get a little sunshine too. After this we all gathered again and Tom explained a little more about the Elephants history's (some logging, begging, tusk poached saved ones) and then off we went for a little ride. Well Rols and I shared an elephant and it was huge! We did the first leg (the most difficult) with me as the rider and Roland passenger which was lucky as being a passenger is a lot harder although when our elephant was grabbing some bamboo shoots from a high branch I had to hold on for my dear life
. Halfway we swapped and Rols was rider and I was passenger. After the ride our legs were a little stiff but we made it. After this we had to treat our elephant to a nice bath in the dam they have at the Park. We got in the muddy dam and on permission from the Mahout we started washing and scrubbing down our elephant. It was so amazing to be so close to this huge animal. Going around it I knocked its leg a couple of times as they are just so big. We scrubbed our elephant down and it lazily moved around and then lay on its side with just its trunk out of the water. After this we showered and headed back to the hotel. We got back took some more medication and rested for a little before heading to our club drinks for the evening. The club room is a mixture of new money, old money and 'no money' as we like to call ourselves!
This evenings hors d'oeuvres were bruschetta and a lovely mix of prawns, lime, herbs, onion and tomato. It was so delicious we must of had 8 each! There was also a little chicken and prawn dish (ok), hedgehog slice (sooo yummy I had 3) and some lattices of some kind of vegetable cooked till crispy. We also had a couple of wines and a beer. After getting our moneys worth we headed out to pick up our laundry which we got washed on arrival to
Chiang Mai at $4 for all our washing I am seriously considering retiring in Thailand. On our way back to the hotel we also did some shopping and managed to pick ourselves up some nice little gifts. We both had on our bartering shoes so we got some really good deals. We shared a whopper meal for dinner and headed back to our hotel for the night.
