Its been a few days I know but I have had trouble accessing my blog!
Had an amazing time at the elephant park. The elephants have such an amazing life and really are looked after.
Started off by feeding them watermelons,bananas and all sorts and throughout the day you feed them and learn their stories.
Most of the elephants have come from either elephant riding centre's or from logging backgrounds. A couple have stood on landmines and have missing parts of their legs, couple have old broken bones.
The one that stood out the most was a female who had been blinded by its mahout for not wanting to work. She is completely blind but as soon as she arrived another female took her under her wing and they are now inseparable. They are best buds. At one point of the trip there was a really loud explosion and after that the elephants were making so much racket. I went to see what was happening and the mahout told me that the blind elephant had got spooked by the noise and that her best friend had charged to comfort her straight away. So lovely and it really brought a tear to my eye.
We helped bath the elephants and they loved it..was so much fun and we got pretty soaked!
They have such a hard life and live so long -a few of them were 80 years old!
Also at the sanctuary were 30 rescue dogs, cats, buffalo and a brown bear! It really was an amazing place where its all about caring for the animals.Loved it.
The founder and some of the staff had even travelled down to the flooded parts of Bangkok to feed the dogs that are stranded and the monkeys. As yu can probably tell I was in my element. I had really cool aussie couple in my group and another aussie who lives in Singapore so it was a really good laugh.
The all veggie buffet was delicious- eggplant curries, spicy salads, noodles... the room I stayed in was so gorgeous too and I had a great night sleep apart from the loudest geckho on my roof and howling dogs :)
Almost forgot...tubing!
I am still laughing about it now. So, so funny!!
Our group all got togo tubing in the afternoon of our last day and a guide who was on his second week took us. I was first in and off we went but our guide knocked into some travellers on a raft and ended up getting stuck..this meant we all went down the river all alone with no guide as he couldnt catch us up. It was so funny and we got soaked but we started to reaise something might be up when farmers were staring and thais were shouting out "see you in Bangkok" We had basically missed the stop point by quite a fair bit as we suddenly saw a guide charging across a field shouting for us to stop. It was hilarious and still makes me giggle now. The poor guide was so worried he would lose us!!!
Well still so much to catch up on so will leave at at this for now...cocktail tuc tucs and drinking with the locals to follow!
xxxx
