We were picked up at 5.30am and taken to the airport by an incredibly scary taxi driver. The taxi’s seatbelts didn’t work and he was travelling around 130km per hour along the roads, weaving in and out of the traffic. Both Leigh and I spent the entire journey fearing for our lives. It was a great relief when he dropped us off.
The flight to Chiang Mai was quite short and it was nice to be heading to another city. On arrival we noticed how much quieter and relaxed it seemed which was good.
We arrived at our hotel pretty tired. We had seen the Intrepid notice in reception telling us that we only had one other person in our group, a lady called Jenny and we were to meet at 5pm. We decided on a quick nap, then to take a look around, but had a call from our guide Dong, to ask if we wanted to do the Elephant trekking that day instead of the last day. As we had no real plans it seemed like a good idea so we were off again.
The trip to the Elephant sanctuary took about an hour. It is a place where they rescue Elephants and has its own Elephant hospital. I think they fund much of the work through the Elephant rides and the shows they put on. We first watched the Elephants and their riders or Mahouts take a bath in the lake.
Then we watched an Elephant show which told you how the Elephants were trained to do various things from moving logs, to playing instruments. We watched one of the biggest Elephants walk along a tree trunk with excellent balancing skills.
They did some amazing things in the show like balancing –L:
And painting! I still can’t believe we this really happened –L:
The highlight though were three Elephants that could paint. It was unbelievable but they were actually painting entirely on their own, with only a little help from their Mahout to put some paint on the brush!
Then we were allowed to reward them with Bananas and sugar cane sticks. –L:
Now we got to go for a ride on one again. Neither of us were that phased as we’d been fine in Angkor, but as soon as ours headed off we realised we had a naughty one. It marched off straight through some trees which unfortunately for us were at body and head height. We made it back to the track which was a little hair raising in places. Its a mud track up and down some quite steep hills with a fairly long drop if you fell off. Our Elephant kept veering off so we were hanging on. After a while we stopped off at the mums and babies enclosure. Mum was tied up but the baby wanted to come and say hello to our elephant. We couldn’t see what ours did but he sure did give the baby a fright. He couldn’t get away fast enough!
We then took a tour of the Elephant hospital and met a young Elephant who was the victim of a land mine. Half of its front leg was missing and they had made an artificial limb for it. We were told this was the only Elephant hospital in the area and they took in Elephants in need from all over Thailand and its neighbouring countries.
It was then back to the hotel and a quick change before going out for dinner. We went to a small local restaurant which was nice and then had a walk around the local night market. The stalls just seemed to go on endlessly so after an hour or so we headed back to the hotel as we were pretty tired and all shopped out. We needed to get a good night sleep ready for the trek the next day!
No comments:
Post a Comment