Elephants!

I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, but that… was… AWESOME!

Scott and I just spent a day doing some of the coolest things I could ever imagine doing. We rode ELEPHANTS through the RAIN FOREST, and then, if that wasn’t enough, we went and played with TIGERS!!!! Yes, we rode elephants and played with tigers! Who actually gets to do that kind of stuff???

If you can’t tell, I am still pretty amazed that we got to do the things we did on Monday. I am a total animal lover (and so is Scott) and getting to interact with the animals the way we did was absolute heaven!

We flew into Chiang Mai Sunday evening and spent that night at the Sunday Walking Market, which is a staple in Chiang Mai. It’s a big market full of crafts that people have made, or more commonly, random stuff that tourists like to buy. Sometimes you get lucky and those two things coincide. We walked through, had a great dinner, and then we went back to our great hotel, the Chedi, and got a good night of sleep for our big day!

Monday morning, the nice elephant tour man, named Paul (pretty sure that’s not his Thai name, haha) picked us up at 8 to head out to the rain forest. We were the first pick up so we had another 30 minutes of driving around the city and grabbing the other people before we actually headed into the rainforest. 

Paul informed us that there were 8 people total, and as you can tell from the picture, we were a little concerned about where everyone was going to fit, haha. Luckily, the group we had was really fun, and really nice and everyone spoke English, which was great for us! We had a couple from France, the Netherlands, London and Italy, and us (and then a Chinese couple joined last minute and got to sit in the cab of the truck, lucky!) After a stop for bananas for the elephants, a couple of tries at different ATMs, we were finally off to the rain forest! Fast forward an hour and forty five minutes later… we made it! But only for a pit stop… We had to make a quick stop to pick up our meals, and get changed into some sweet clothes they provided and then we had another 10 minute bumpy drive the rest of the way to the camp.

FINALLY…… we made it to the elephants!

The second we drove up we were surrounded by elephants. And, when I say surrounded by elephants, I literally mean that our car was surrounded by elephants. First of all, they were excited for the bananas on top of the car and were trying to get them, and they were also sticking their trunks inside the back of our truck and through the windows which was hilarious (and a little bit frightening since we hadn’t been acquainted yet!). Scott and I were both SOO excited at this point! Speaking for myself (since I know I genuinely felt this way), I absolutely felt like a little kid on Christmas morning (and I’m pretty sure Scott did, too!)! After the initial excitement we were finally able to get out of the truck, and we each took a load of bananas up (Scott was nice enough to take two so I could just carry our backpack) and we walked another 5 minutes up to the camp. All the while trying to dodge the elephants that were walking in between all of us on the same path (again, a little frightening since we had no idea what was going on yet). When we got there we put or stuff away and Paul sat us down for our introduction. He spent time telling us about the camp and how well they treated their elephants. He said they were very well fed, well rested yet still exercised enough, and that they have even rescued a few elephants from some bad situations. He showed us the two elephants that had been rescued and only been at the camp for about a month and they were definitely skinnier than the rest. They were trying to feed and take care of these two to get them back up to a good weight. He also explained to us that the “mahouts”, the men that trained and took care of the elephants, lived at the camp (very, very humble living quarters aka a hut in the woods). These mahouts were refugees from Myanmar and Burma border where there is a war going on between the border tribes and the government. He said they did not feel safe where they were living and that the camp/company that runs the camp took them in and gave them jobs. He also explained that they had no schooling and therefore could not get any work in the city and this was basically the only way they could make a living. Anyway, I thought it was really neat that they took these guys in and gave them a job, a place to live and food.

Back to the elephants… Paul gave us a run down of the basic commands that all of the elephants knew- to tell them to put out a leg (so you could step on it to climb up)- “Soon”, to turn left- “say”, to turn right- “qwa”, to stop- “how”, to go forward- “pie”, to go backwards- “toy”, and to go down so you could easily climb on or off- “manlong”. We practiced those over and over and then Scott was the lucky one who got to show off his skills first! We each got a turn to get on and practice the commands (which “Lucky Boy” the most well trained elephant there) didn’t even listen to because he already knew the routine, haha. He literally like a machine went through the routine of – leg up so the human can climb on your back, turn left for a complete circle and stop so Paul can take a picture, turn right, back up, go forward, stop, go down and let them climb off. It was actually pretty cute that he just did it all! 

After getting to practice for a while, we got ready for our first ride of the day. I think Paul liked us, so he kept giving Scott and I the good elephants, or stopping to take pictures, etc. SO, he gave us the mom and baby elephant!!!!! (Obviously there was no riding of the baby elephant, she was only 10 months old – but the size of a horse, haha). I have dubbed them “Big Momma” and “Dumbo” (thank you Courtney for making me watch that awful movie, haha). So, Scott and I climbed onto Big Momma for the first ride. She was awesome! And, the entire ride we had Dumbo weaving in and out of her legs and riding along beside us, which was SO cool! Not only am I a sucker for animals, but I am a SERIOUS sucker for baby animals J Big Momma was an awesome mom, so patient to let Dumbo go in and out of her legs, cross in front of her path and stop, fall behind, etc. Dumbo was totally like a normal little kid wandering around, super cute. Anyway, the first trip was awesome and if it wasn’t cool enough that we were riding elephants basically on our own, we were riding through the RAIN FOREST!!! It was absolutely beautiful and so hard to believe we were really getting to do it!

We made a big loop back to camp and hopped off to get ready for lunch. When we got off of Big Momma, our mahout tossed me two bunches of bananas, and before I could even tear them apart to hand some to Scott (and savor actually getting to feed the elephants), Big Momma and Dumbo were grabbing them all from me! It was a little scary at first because they both basically pounced on me, and then each of them wrapped their trunks around a bunch and arm wrestled them away from me! Pretty hilarious. We ended up finding some more so that Scott could feed them also and then headed over to lunch.

 We didn’t know exactly what we were making at first, but they laid out a tray of food and one of the ladies came over to teach us how to make/eat what they had laid out. Come to find out, we made our own fresh spring rolls!! And they were really good! Then, they brought us each some noodles wrapped in banana leaves. That was also one of the best things I had ever tasted! While we were all kind of finishing up lunch, Dumbo decided she was interested in what we had at the table. She literally came over and started sticking her trunk in all of our food grabbing stuff she did like and tossing aside the things she didn’t want. Because we all just loved having the baby around, we kind of laughed and let her do what she wanted. And, none of the mahouts or Paul seemed to be worried about it so we had a ton of fun feeding, petting, and taking pictures with her.

After lunch, we put our camera away because next up was our trek to the waterfall! There was another group there so Scott and I didn’t get to ride Big Momma and have Dumbo tag along, but we did get another one of the biggest elephants so that was fun! I got to ride in front this time (it was two people to one elephant and Scott got the front the first ride), which I have to admit is WAY more comfortable. Anyway, we enjoyed another really, really beautiful trek through the rain forest. It was so, so fun to actually be riding an elephant :) When we made it up to the waterfall, they had the elephant get us down into the pool of water at the bottom as all of the other elephants came in and unloaded their passengers. Then, we got to bathe them! You can tell they absolutely love it because the water is so cool and it’s pretty warm out there. So, it was fun to scoop buckets of water on them and then get to brush them and just kind of play around. They mahouts would have them spray us with water and things like, too. Paul had been telling us about a surprise at the waterfall all day long and it was revealed at last! We got to basically have a photo shoot with Lucky Boy. So, we each got a turn to lay down on his back, stand up on him, get a picture by his mouth by his tusks and then my favorite picture of the day… I stood in between Scott and Lucky Boy and got a kiss from each of them! Lucky Boy put the end of his trunk up on my cheek like a kiss and then he actually made a little suction on my cheek like a kiss!!! It was SO cute!!! We played for a little bit longer and just enjoyed the elephants and atmosphere and then it was time to head back to camp. We had another amazing ride through the rain forest… I really can’t describe how cool the scenery was! And then we had some more feeding and picture taking with the elephants. Then, sadly, we had to say goodbye L I was SO bummed it was time to go. The only thing that helped make it easier was knowing that we were headed to go play with the tigers!!! 

Also, before we made it back to the Tiger Kingdom, Paul had been promising to take us to a “really cool place” (that’s what he kept saying). And, it actually was a really cool place J It was along the river and basically you could go in and buy snacks, drinks, etc. and then there were 3 levels of places to sit. We went down to the very bottom where we were about 3 feet up from the water. We all sat together and chatted, and watched the river rafters go by. And, finally, our real trip to the Tiger Kingdom began!

Here's a link to more pictures!