Elephants!!!!!!!!!!(And the trip to Thailand)

Thai food, people and culture are some of my favorites. We make thai  foods frequently and could easily consume our weight in mangos any given week. The Thai people I've met here in the good ole USA are so nice, friendly and outgoing. I also love the tradition and architecture of Thailand (and Asia). I've heard wonderful things about the land of smiles and have always wanted to make the trek to Southeast Asia. While food, people and an amazing culture are all beyond good reasons to visit a place, what really drew me us (happy honeymoon, Papi!) to Thailand was the lure of elephants. ELEPHANTS, ELEPHANTS EVERYWHERE!

First Thai word I learned -ช้าง "Chaang" (elephant). 

Most delicious beer of Thailand- Chang.

                                                                                
Most revered, honored animal of Thailand- chaang.

Animal that one can visit, ride into the jungle, and ooh and ahh over for ridiculous amounts of time- chaang. 

Elephants are pretty much everything in Thailand. Love it!

One of the highlights of our trip was visiting an elephant camp where were got to visit with, ride, and bathe elephants. From India, we headed to Chiang Mai, Thailand to start the adventure in South East Asia. We arrived in Chiang Mai and took a sweet tuk tuk to a ridiculously clean, nice and cheap hotel.


 A note, off topic, about Tuk Tuks. I love them. Love, love, love them.They are so popular all over the word. America, why can you not welcome them with open arms? Who doesn't love riding in the back of a sweet motorcycle-mobile? They are infinitely better than taxi hands down. And so much more fun. More on Tuk Tuks later.

Here's Doug keeping things classy in the back seat of the Tuk Tuk

Anywho, back on topic. From Chiang Mai (more on this jem of a town later) we got up super early, ate some mangos and packed into a bus to head about an hour and a half deeper into Northern Thailand to Baan Chang  Elephant park. On our bus were folks from the US, Canada, England and parts of Asia. It was nice to chat with some new faces and hear about their travel adventures (and misadventures). We got some excellent tips (most notably that Thai massage is quite rough. We did not head this warning and I was sore for a few days after my first foray into Thai massage.)

After a drive into the countryside, we arrived at the camp where 15 elephants were waiting for us. There were even two baby elephants too! Before we could visit the elephants, we had to change into fabulous denim on denim outfits. Then, we made friends with the elephants by feeding them bananas and sugar cane.
It's was a little scary at first because they are massive animals (and these were Asian elephants. Apparently African elephants are even bigger), but we quickly got the hang of it.

After the first feeding we learned how to mount up and ride these babies.

 We got to ride the elephants around the camp and then got to ride them into a pond. We learned that elephants have very dry skin and have a hard time cooling off. To combat these two problems, elephants need to get wet a few times a day. The water moisturizes their skin, cools them down, and gives them something to drink. Riding them into the pond and bathing them was super fun. The elephants loved the water and I loved playing in the water with them.

View from the top of an elephant!

They had very thick, coarse hair all over

Ridin dirttyy (actually. Doug was right on the butt)

When they got an itch, they scratched on the trees.

Baby elephant!!

Tom Cruise, our guide for our few days at the camp. Super fun, super fabulous.

First attempt at the dismount.. Not as easy as it looks