I awoke to the sound of some mediation music being blasted through a speaker, echoing through camp, it was still dark. I was not impressed. Mediation music should never, ever be loud. Once that happened at 4:30, it was a never-ending orchestra of elephants, and roosters, and dogs. Sometime just before 7, when it was actually light out, I got out of bed. From the window of my cabin I could see elephants playing in the field.
I made my way down to the main building for breakfast after which Apple took us on a walk around the grounds to visit the various elephant families. The number one rule was when they said, "Run", you ran.
The first family! This family is made up of 4 elephants; the oldest one who came from a logging camp is very protective of the baby. The one elephant on the left, who was also rescued from a logging camp, her back right leg was severally damaged by a land mine, but she has now adapted to walk using only 3 of her legs. The last two members are the mother who is in the middle and the baby who is one of the newest additions to Elephant Nature Park, and is the son of Hope. The baby is already showing signs of being a head strong boy, he's bold, fears little, and clearly does not listen to the women in his family. But he's very cute.
Our next group of elephants seen below invoked the number one rule. As we were watching the family, all of a sudden the baby started to come towards us, and picked up speed, followed by who I assume was mom. This is when Apple gave us the instructions to run, we ran into a shelter, death by elephant trampling was not on my list of things to do in Thailand.
Next we meet the old ladies, this pair is well into their 70s. The one elephant on the far side was here, from a trekking camp, her back damaged from over use and improperly giving people rides. She didn't seem to fit into any family group. When the elephant on the left, she was completely blind. It was the first fully blind elephant they had in the park. Quickly the former trekking elephant adopted her. She makes sure the blind one can find things and helps take care of her. They never leave each others side. These two are the most gentle in the camp. You see their friendship is strong by the way they interact with one another.
Here they pull apart Banana trees to get the hearts in the centre, which is soft enough to eat and hold a lot of moisture.
This is one of the biggest elephant families in the park. Families in the wild are normally made up of bloodlines, solely females and their babies. Males once they hit puberty go off into the wild by themselves because of their aggressive nature. Here the families are made up of various rescued elephants with no relation. They simply choose to be together. This family group has two babies. Two sisters, a baby only a couple of months old, and one 5 year old Faa Mai, whose birthday it was today. She was the first elephant born in the camp. When the mother came to Elephant Nature Park, they didn't know she was pregnant. Surprise!
Above Fa Mae is the elephant in the centre of the photo, below is her sister and mother.
Elephants getting at the mango trees. They've stripped almost all of the leaves and mangos from the bottom branches. One of the Mahouts later climbed the tree to get down some more green mangoes for the elephants.
We're taken around the rest of the grounds; we saw the enclosures that are being built for the two male elephants. Our guide Apple explains that there will be a two-gate system which will be operated by the Mahouts. So that when the various girlfriends want to go visit the boys they can be let in, without fear of the boys escaping.
Both of the boys have injured other elephants, for some reason young males have a tendency to attack older female elephants. In addition both mahouts have been injured, even Lek, the founder, had a couple from ribs broken from Hope. As Apple explains that teenage to early 20s males are "Giant assholes. Same as humans." These new enclosures will insure better safety for everyone. The enclosures are more humane and less likely to break than the chains that the elephant now must wear most of the time.
We see the two boys from a distance. Naughty Boy's girlfriend comes over and they share a meal. She's very much aware of how far his chain can allow him to go and continues to flirt with that line. Apple tells us that she likes to play hard to get, but they all know she's not that proper. Several weeks ago Naughty Buy broke his chain to go and see her at night in her shelter, it was pure chaos apparently as they tried to get the elephants back to where they need to be. Young love.
At one point it was Lek's hope to be able to reintroduce the two males into the wild, but because of poachers and their exposure to human they would probably not be able to survive. This has lead to creating long term plans of how to care for these large animals.
By the time we got back we had some free time and we had to check out of our cabins. We stacked our bags in the main building. As part of the birthday celebration there were monks at ENP. We attended while the monks did their blessing. Apple explained to us in hushed tones what was proper procedure. When you sit as a part of a Buddhist ceremony, your feet must not face towards Buddha or the monks. So as you sit on the ground you must tuck your legs underneath you. A small procession started go up to the front to receive the blessing from the monks. You're not supposed to stand while you do this. You also cannot have your feet point towards them. You must shuffle on your lower legs. We all slowly shimmied our way up to the front, awkwardly. The monks wrapped a white string around my wrist three time while saying prays, broke the string from the spool and then knotted it. I then shimmed back to the back of the room, while facing forward in a long skirt, unable to stand. The Buddhist woman had this down. I struggled and looked insanely awkward. As the prayers closed Apple took us down to the main part and we had lunch, which again was amazing.
After lunch we help make Faa Mai a birthday cake. It was made of cooked squash, banana tree hearts, bamboo leaves, green beans and watermelon. All squished together and decorated for the new 5 year old.
Next came bath time. This was our elephant, she was covered in mud, and soon because of the back splash from the buckets of water, I was also covered in mud. But she got clean!
After which it was the birthday party. The family was brought to the one feeding area. Out came our cake, and other food for the celebration.
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| The Birthday Girl! |
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| Lek the founder presenting the cake. |
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| Lek |
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| Me and the elephants |
After our elephant party we changed out of elephant bathing clothes and headed to the elephant kitchen to make some food for our elephants. Several of the elephants are on special diets. We were cooking for one of the older ladies. Our recipe, Squash Sandwiches. First we steam the squash so it was soft and easy for her to chew. We then took pieces, and placed them between slices of whole wheat bread. Pretty simple. Very messy.
Once we made a bushel basket full of them, we (aka the two men) carried it out on to the grounds to our "old lady" as apple referred to her. Naughty Boy had attacked her once at the feeding platform, ripped her ear with his tusk, and she now has a scar on her neck from it. She now no longer goes to the feeding platform and avoids contact with other elephants. Her Mahout is a young man, around twenty, he new to her but you can see that although they've only been working together for a short time they are already very close. She has very poor eyesight and relies on her smell and the calls her Mahout gives her for her to navigate her way. He brings her over and she's very excited to see us, touching each of us with her trunk. From the bushel basket the Kiwi woman produces a sandwich, places it in her trunk, and it's almost immediately dropped. Because of her age and clumsy nature Apple advises us to make sure she has a good grip on it before releasing it. I take a try, I put my hand out on her trunk, she extends it out, I place the sandwich on it, make sure she wraps the end of her trunk around it. I remove my hand, and she drops it. The Mahout shrugs, the other Canadian girl gives it a try, but nothing. "Maybe she's not hungry" Apple suggests.
Off we go to find another elephant that will appreciate our cooking. Along the path I hear someone hum the tune of Oh Canada. I look over and there's a man standing in a Canada hat, I realize that I had then put on my Canada shirt, post elephant bathing. "Where ya from?" He asked.
"Toronto area."
"Where abouts?"
"Like around Peterborough."
"I know Peterborough."
"Oh, well, I'm actually from around Lakefield."
"Oh where around Lakefield?"
"Clear Lake."
"I know Clear Lake, yeah there's a summer camp there I used to go to!"
"I live a kilometre down from the camp. Where are you from?"
"Well I grew up around Orillia. You know it?"
"Yeah."
This lead to a very in depth conversation about these parts. Turned out he was Lek's husband. He had come here as a volunteer several years ago, feel in love and stayed. It always amazes me the connection that that you find when travelling. There's been countless time where I've been at a bar an event or a hostel, where people say "Have you meet mike, he's also from Canada, you probably know each other." At this point you try to explain that Canada is a large place and you probably don't. I've never had where I actually know the person, more often than not, they attended the same university a couple years apart from myself, they're from the next town over, they live a block from my dad's house, or they attended summer camp a kilometre down the road from me. We have friends in common, know the same places, and are related to an old roommate of mine. The smallness of Canada always surprises me.
We found an elephant family who was very excited to be feed the specialty sandwiches. We headed back to the main building, said our goodbyes to the park and our guide Apple, and headed out on our way back to Chiang Mai.
When I got back to my hostel my bag was still intact and not sold off by friends I had made two nights before. They had left for Pi that day, there was a note tact to my bag that gave me the name of the place they were staying if I changed my mind and wanted to join them. Unfortunately I was on a tight schedule. I had one more day in Chiang Mai before I took the overnight train back to Bangkok. My goal was to take a cooking course the next day. I booked one with the hostel from desk and got my key and headed up to my room to take a shower and de-elephant myself.
I meet two teachers from New Mexico on their honeymoon. Once I told them that I was also a teacher, but working internationally, they invited me out to dinner in order to pick my brain on how they might break into to international scene. We headed to the night bazaar. We haggled over various souvenirs, they got soaps, little Buddhas and t-shirts, I bought a pair of Thailand tourist pants. We had dinner via food stalls, and I picked up samosas and some amazing Vietnamese spring roles (its all about the sesame sauce). Then as we wondered down the market further I came across a stall that had Lacquer bowls carved from mango wood and intricately carved. I had only brought a little bit of money with me and was dishearten when I realized I couldn't afford to buy more than one. On the plus side it made transport home easier. Shortly after se headed back to our hostel, stopping at a pub first to get a spirt for us girls and beer for him. We talked more about what it was like to live abroad, and how I got into it, what makes a good international school, how to apply. We left around midnight, and walk the two short blocks to our hostel.
Once there we I went to say goodbye, at their door, my dorm room was on the top floor. Which is when she stopped me and said "Wait, you want to come in?"
"To your room?"
"Yeah, for a threesome." Which he said so casually like he was commenting on the weather.
Before I could even filter what I was thinking I blurted out "You're on your honeymoon, aren't you still supposed to be into each other?!" They laughed, I graciously declined, and climbed the steps to my dorm room wonder if I had somehow missed the signs that they were hitting on me throughout the night.
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