June 22 Elephant Trek

Ryan: At eight o’clock this morning the Kuffner family hopped into a chubby minivan along with four girls from Toronto (who were at Teacher’s College in Australia), five girls from London, England (who were taking a “gap-year” after finishing high school to travel through Asia) and a Thai guide and driver. We headed off to the elephant camp.

We got there forty minutes later after a stomach lurching side to side and up and down type of drive. We were to watch an elephant show then for elephant rides along the Ping river for two kilometers through lush green forest.

Joe: Before embarking on our elephant trek, we watched a 20-elephant show and learned of the history of these elephants (they were working in the teak forest industry –along with their trainers - that has recently been closed due to teak forested now being protected by the King). The show consisted of demonstrations of how they had worked in the forests, pulling and stacking logs, carrying their tools and chains and following their trainers commands as well as those of the lead elephant. However, the show also included other less noble elephant acts including the elephants demonstrating their dexterity painting scenes on canvas (available later for purchase in the gift shop), kicking soccer balls and throwing basketballs as well as trumpeting and “hamming it up” for the crowd.

Later, we went for the trek aboard the elephants. 2 riders per elephant plus the driver. The driver sat on the elephant’s neck and seemed to steer the elephant by nudging the back of its ears. The boxes in which we sat were comfortable enough although the walk had quite a bit of lateral motion (quite unlike riding a camel or a horse). It was similar to a camel ride, though, in the way each forward step had a slight tilt that became exaggerated when going up hill or down hill. I sat with Ryan while Deb sat with Brendan on another elephant. I could tell that Ryan was getting motion sickness but he toughed it out. The elephant took us through jungle, across the river that we would later raft, up and down rugged terrain. It was thoroughly enjoyable and seemed to be not much of a burden for the elephant (who were also being treated with bunches of bananas and cut sugar cane every few hundred metres). Our drivers were very pleasant and one of them spoke excellent English. This allowed us to have many of our questions answered as well as get our pictures taken and to have our elephants move closer together whenever necessary to pass the camera etc.

Ryan: After that, we met up with the oxen and all four of us fitted in two rows of a crate on wheels. The oxen brought us to another camp where we had a buffet lunch. I had noodles, fried chicken and steamed rice.

After the delicious meal, we went on a 45-minute bamboo river-raft ride (Dad called it brown-water rafting, as the water here is totally brown). We wore life jackets even though the water was no more than 3-feet deep! We also wore rice-patty style cone-hats that made us look quite Asian.. We saw a couple of turtles and some bamboo trees and bonsai trees. The guide said the raft ride would be as smooth as Thai silk. She was right.

After that we got back in the van, to the sound of blasting music. The driver had all the latest music and that lightened our already good mood! Brendan entertained us with some karaoke. We drove to a tiger rehabilitation center where the British group did the fifteen minute activities inside the pen with the tigers. We waited patiently and then went to see the orchids and butterflies. The orchids were sensational but the butterfly farm was a bit of a disappointment. I made an assumption that for every 1 butterfly (fifty in total), there were 8 million fruit flies buzzing around the cut pineapples left out for the butterflies. We then made our way to the Central Airport Plaza to do some shopping (mom bought us three more books) and by eight o’clock we were back in the hotel to watch the US Open.