After a 20 minute ride we were at our destination:
We were part of a group of about 20 people, and were taken up into the mountains to the elephant trainer's village. Our first activity was riding on the elephants into the jungle:
It was really cool. Each elephant had a handler who rode on top of the elephants head. It was quite amazing how these huge animals moved. I had the fortunate luck to have Gracie and Daniel riding with me:
Notice there is not a seat belt,and the space between the handle and the seat was big enough for me to slide out! Needless to say, whenever we were going downhill, I had to hold on to Daniel. After about 10 minutes, we came to this great view of Chalong Bay:
This was the view we had of the driver on the elephants head:
Then it was back into the jungle and up the mountain to another view spot. At which point the guides tried take pictures of us from his vantage point:
Our picture turned out OK, but Kim and the boys did not. However, while trying to take their picture their guide put his hat on Kevin's head. Kevin proceeded to drop it. The guide then jumped off of the elephant. Kim was worried that she was going to have to jump down and take control. Here is the driverless elephant:
After the ride was over, all of the elephants lined up:
For 100 Baht (about 3 dollars) we bought a basket of fruit to feed the elephants:
While we were feeding, our tour guide Aon (Pronounced like Ann), told us all about how the elephants were trained, and that each elephant is paired with one trainer from birth. This trainer lives with the elephant and is the only person who "drives" that particular elephant. She said that, if the trainer dies, it is extremely difficult to get the elephant to trust a new trainer. She also told all kinds of statistics like there used to be over 100,000 elephants in Thailand but now there are only 35,000 or so, and that elephants eat about 250 kilograms of food per day. Lots of interesting information.Our next stop was to see 3 "baby" elephants, 2, 5 and 6 years old. They were in training. They could do all kinds of tricks, painting or putting a golf ball using objects held in their trunks, or picking up things like hats or soccer balls:
(Kim's driver needed that trick earlier!)
One of the elephants would even give you a kiss:
Daniel actually volunteered to do this too, here's a video with no sound:
(Patrick's new camera takes video but has no microphone!)
Afterwards we were able to feed the babies as well:
And get our picture taken with them:
Next it was off to a Thai cooking demonstration. We learned how to make Thai curry. All of the ingredients were grown by the people who lived here with the elephants:
It was possibly the best tasting food we ate in Thailand!
Next we learned about coconuts,first how to break them open, and how to get the coconut milk, and even got to taste it fresh:
We also were able to taste fresh coconut as well. Then we learned how to make coconut oil, and what to do with the residue after you strain the oil. It becomes a paste that is used to make candies, and was really good.
Lastly we were able to learn about how monkeys are trained to pick coconuts. This is Junior:
He is trained to twist the coconuts around and around until they fall off of the tree. He showed this with the coconut in the trainers hand, as well as climbing up into a tree and showing us for real. And he was quite friendly too:
Next we learned about Water Buffalo:
There are 1.2 million water buffalo in Thailand. (So for those of you who know the VeggieTales song, in Thailand everyone does have a water buffalo!) They are raised either for meat, or to work:
Our last activity was to learn how they make rubber. This entire area was covered in rubber trees. We had a demonstration on how to get the rubber sap from the tree:
Apparently, each tree must be scraped once per day, at around 3 AM while the sap is high in the tree. Notice the lamp that the woman has on her head. It is a lit candle, not an electric flashlight!
Then we were shown how the rubber sap is taken, boiled for several hours, and then rolled flat into a rubber sheet. Aon told us that it takes about 30 trees to make one sheet of this size:
After that demonstration, we had lunch and our tour was over. It was a really amazing morning, full of lots of new experiences and memories that we will cherish for the rest of our lives!
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