An elephant kiss 'aint as sweet as it sounds...

---

Surprise! What's going on, I'm actually writing my blog in real time. Don't worry, it won't last!
This morning I met the new elephant. It's our first boy (and oh did they enjoy showing me that it was a boy!), 5 years old and called Dola (this name thing could get confusing, that's 2 Dola's, 3 Noi's, 2 Tha's...) and very cute. Today his mahout had brought him up to meet the other elephants and it was really sweet watching them entwine trunks and get to know each other, although he did almost get crushed between Wassana and Dok-koon a few times, and Kam-moon didn't seem to like him. Maybe she's jealous as Tha, her mahout, has been riding Dola around for the last couple of days. Or it could just be that she's pregnant and hormonal? It's really good that his mahout is letting him interact with the other elephants in the group. They are naturally sociable (except maybe Kam-moon?) and I always feel sorry for Sang-Dow as Daa always moves her away whenever she gets near another of the elephants. I can't help thinking that she wouldn't be so bored and prone to her tantrums if she was allowed a bit of fun. The funniest sight of today has to be Tha running after Dola up the hill. At first we just heard the elephant grumbling and trumpeting and wondered what the heck was going on....then we saw the elephant running towards us (and even at only 5 years old it's still pretty big when it's running towards you...and then we saw Tha sprinting behind! He wanted to be with the other elephants! His mahout kept getting Dola to give me kisses with his trunk, one got me right on my ear and elephant kisses are very sucky. The only thing that I didn't like was that Dola seems to have been trained to be a performing elephant. He was being made to stand on his hind legs, balance on his forelegs and play the mouth organ, the training for which won't have been pleasant. Unfortunately as long as tourists continue to respond to this the mahouts will continue to get their elephants to do it. Hopefully now that Dola is at the camp we can try and discourage it.
I decided not to accompany Zoe around this morning. With Ao and Gof I felt it would be a case of too many cooks..... It was her first time riding though so I gave her a few tips on that, only to be contradicted by Ao. Strange how she came back riding exactly as I'd told her.....
As I wasn't going I decided to sit and read for a while, but A (who comes from somewhere around the market but I'm not sure exactly what he does) wanted to read my English/Thai dictionary and kept asking me how to pronounce words. He seems to have taken a bit of a shine to me! Because I didn't get my usual walks I had to get my aerobic kicks today from sweeping and scooping elephant dung - this made everyone else very happy.
We had more rain today and I can't find my raincoat, I think I left it hanging up somewhere after the last time it had rained. When I tried asking if anyone had seen it, referring to my dictionary for 'raincoat' they all looked blank. Then realisation hit and they said "penguin coat!" Hmm...maybe I don't want to find it.

---