Sukhothai, Thailand
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Up the next day after 3 hours sleep and onto the elephant centre in Lampang. Which was amazing. They put on a show of curtsying, working (shifting logs) instrument playing, painting elephants. Then we got to feed them before an elephant ride . When we turned up though before the show Pui had told us how two of the babies would get all excited as she always gives them sweeties. Sure enough they trumpeted and sprinted over to her for their sugar fix. An elephant never forgets... his sweeties.
The elephants were amazing - we also took a half hour ride on them through a river and over a short hillside path - there is a 3 day course that you can do to train as a mamoot (sp?) i.e the person that rides the elephant just behind his head and guides him. That is now on my list of things to do as looks awesome. There were some people on the course there who seemed to be having a great time. We then have a short drive down to Sukothai to the Sukothai heritage hotel. A welcome night in a luxury hotel. Very nice dinner and some beer and some entertaining stories from Floyd along with some Aussie film recommendations.
We were lucky to have found a really fun group to travel with and hope to meet up with some of them again in the future.
