Day 4: Elephant Trekking

On Wednesday we went elephant trekking at a place in town. This was a much more laid back excursion than the last one. We were actually the only people on this one, which makes sense since it was so local. We got dropped off at the park, where there were some elephants munching under some trees in front.

Our guide explained that we would ride a trail to a waterfall, take a swim if we wanted, then ride back. He asked us if we wanted to ride the easy way or the exciting way, and naturally we chose the latter. I thought by "way" he meant "method," i.e. bareback, but no, he was referring to a choice of trails. We still rode the elephant while sitting on a metal-framed bench with vinyl upholstery. Whatever.

Elephant:


Elephants:


Same elephants? Or different? You decide.


We didn't drive the elephant ourselves, of course. We had a driver. He sat atop the elephant's neck, and stuck his feet in these little nooks at the back of the jaw.



Trail:


The ride was pretty slow, but it got a little nervewracking when we went downhill, because we just had a rope across the front of the bench holding us in, and we (or I, anyway) would slide down almost off it when the elephant's ass was higher than his head. I had to hold on tight.

After ten or fifteen minutes we reached a platform, where we dismounted (we had to mount on a platform, too). Then we walked for a few minutes on a trail that led to a really bouncy bridge and down to a waterfall.



We swam in the waterfall for maybe twenty minutes. It was cool. You could go behind those rocks on the right and get a wicked back massage, but for fear of losing my contacts, I didn't want to go in. Booo-urns.


Pretty much the only pictures of us together that we got the whole trip was when a guide took the picture for us, which wasn't often, since there were usually so many more people on the excursion.


After we got back from the waterfall, we were offered the chance to feed our elephant a tub of bananas for 20 baht (about 65 cents). Here are a couple videos of me doing that:

That wasn't the end of our day, but it's getting late, so it will be the end of this entry. I'll finish the rest of the day later.

Tomorrow is Independence Day here, so I get a three day weekend. I'm going backpacking again with Kent this weekend, so I'll report on how that goes, as well. We're going to Gyeryongsan National Park, up in the middle northwest of the country. It has a chicken head ridge.

Time Out for a Storm

I wanted to just pause from the Thailand stuff for a moment to mention this storm that hit last night. It was just a thunderstorm, but it was perhaps the worst one I've ever witnesses in person. It lasted for hours and hours. I stood out in it for a bit and it only took about five minutes for me to be soaked through. The lightning was so bright that it lit up my room even through closed blinds. I took some video of it for you. It can hardly convey the actual experience, but you can let your imagination help out.

I wouldn't have thought that the storm could do any real damage, unless lightning hit something, but one of my students said a college student drowned last night because she was swept away by one of the rivers the rain formed. I'm a little skeptical of that story, and I wasn't able to find anything about it in a cursory google search, so maybe he got some false information. Or he's a LIAR.

In any case, today the day started off with a bright sun and almost no puddles. You'd never know.