April 23
Today we are planning to get up close and personal with some
elephants. We have breakfast at our new
favorite spot and then meet up at the Thom’s Elephant Camp office to head off
to who knows where. Our pick up truck
arrives and we pile into the back. We
race down the road and it’s nice to feel the wind in our hair. Who knew that Pai was so large. We wind around turns through the countryside
and arrive at a hut beside the road and there they are…..Elephants…waiting just
for us. We get to feed them bananas
behind our back so they can become accustomed to us. Shortly, we are instructed to get on….hmm. The elephant bends his front foot and we are
told to place our left foot on it and hoist ourselves up by holding onto the
elephant’s ear. The kids are so agile,
but when it comes time for me to get up, easier said than done. I can barely get up and end up straddling the
elephant on my stomach….so elegant!
Finally, I hoist my body into a sitting position and Hudson opts to ride
with me. That means that Annie, Sam and
Paulie are all on the same elephant together.
We amble along the road and it takes a while to get used to the rhythm
of the elephant. It is both amazing and
scary to be on top of these amazing beasts.
Their skin is really rough and the hair is prickly on our legs. We go a ways and then turn down toward the
Pai River where we will go for a swim with the elephants. We are a bit worried about going down the
steep slope of the bank of the river but we proceed anyhow. It is amazing then we finally reach the water
and start to somewhat float. Then, all
of a sudden, the elephant fills his trunk with water and sprays us. The water feels great and the elephant must
enjoy it as well because she keeps doing it over and over again. Then the elephant starts to rock and roll and
thrusts us off into the water. The
elephant now has a turn to get wet and sinks below the surface with its entire
body. We climb back on a couple of times
and get tossed off. Paulie has the good
sense to get off of his elephant before the water bath and is available to be
the photographer for our play date.
Annie and Sam get tossed into the water a few times too and then we get
back on ….this time in the water. Once
re-situated, we begin the trek home but this time it is “off road”. We go along the side of the river and the
elephants are able to eat the grass, small shrubs, large shrubs and pull leaves
off the tops of trees. This must be their
reward to doing all the work to lug us tourists around. We get back to the “farm” and then we
dismount….this time there is a tall structure that has a ladder where we can
descend. We are then invited to take in
the thermal pools before our lunch is served.
We enjoying lounging in the mineral waters and then head down for a
light lunch. After lunch, we are off on
our rafting adventure. We are joined by
two travelers that we ran into yesterday at the waterfall. We arrive at the river and two gentlemen need to uncover the bamboo rafts and assemble
some rudimentary benches. There are
three rafts and we are divided somewhat evenly among them. The kids want to be put to wor,k so they
displace the worker dudes and end up paddling us downstream. The Pai River is very low as this is the tail
end of the dry season, so the result is we are lucky to be floating downstream in
a depth of about 3 inches of water. Along
the way we see water buffalos cooling themselves in the river and random
elephants bathing as well. We see
fishermen and a group of men building a huge retaining wall all by hand. Amazing how hard these people work for such
little compensation. Bamboo must be very buoyant, because we have little
trouble. We arrive at an egress on the
banks about an hour later and pile back into an open bed truck to be returned
to our starting point. When we get back
to the hotel, we all shower to cool off and the kids go into town with Paulie
for a snack and I stay at the hotel for some much needed alone time. We all reconvene around 4:30 and then go into
town in search of a few last souvenirs and some dinner. We head straight for the crazy tea guy and
enjoy a sampling of Jasmine mint tea and then some lemon tea which he mixes
expertly and adds just the right amount of sugar to make it both sweet and
sour. Over ice and into the cute bamboo
cups we purchased….that will be 10Baht for a refill thank you very much. Delicious and refreshing and cheap…can’t beat
that combination. We continue toward the
nightly food stands and find our new favorite Samosa makers. No holding back tonight as we start off
straight away with an order of 10 (he throws in a lucky one for us). We inhale them and then go along our way to
find a sit-down restaurant. After a few
more last minute purchases, we happen upon a restaurant and sit down for a nice
meal before returning home for the night.
We are off tomorrow to return to Chiang Mai and will need to get a good
night’s rest.
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