Elephants

Today Ashley and I went to visit the elephants at the Thai Elephant Home. It was amazing getting to spend an entire day with elephants! We rode up a mountain and gave the elephants a bath in the mud and then went back down and washed/played with them in the river. Also, we had the most delicious fried rice for lunch. It was cooked over a fire in a banana leaf. It is a little sad because the elephants are not kept in the most humane conditions. Specifically, the elephants are kept on 5 foot long chains when they are not on treks and they strain and strain to move around to visit each other. The trainers also use sharp hooks to control them at times. However, it is clear that the trainers love the animals as they dedicate their entire lives to them.

It should also be noted that this park does not make the elephants carry more than one person per elephant. Other parks will put three people and one heavy bench on the elephants and make them work for seven or eight hours per day.

While this was an amazing once in a lifetime experience, I left with a great sense that these animals are NOT meant to be kept in captivity (they are also super smart and clearly have similar emotions to humans).

Ashley got to ride a very horny young man. He kept trying to mount the girl that was in front of him while they were playing in the river. I think that elephant sex looks very dangerous as they weigh in between two and three tons.

I was on a giant female who was 44 years old. Her name was Boonsi. She was super scared of cars and noise in general she would cower any time a vehicle was in the area and refused to let her back to a car. This resulted in me having to ride up one hill going backwards/sideways.

Tomorrow we are going to try to visit Chinnaworn. We have not been able to reach him by phone and we don't have his email so he doesn't know we are coming. Hopefully Karina will be able to get us in touch with him tonight...