Just a normal day....

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Today I have mainly washed elephants and fed them fruit by hand, so just a normal day really.

WOW. It was unreal. Walking into the park being surrounded by these majestic giants felt like being in the land before time or something. It was so cool to see. We paid 2500 Baht each (25quid) to essentially be volunteers for the day at Elephant Nature Park. The idea is that there are about 30 nellys who have had a traumatic life, and now are in a dedicated sanctuary with volunteers and full time staff to help clean and feed them. When I say traumatic by the way, I dont mean a 5 minute bath instead of half an hour - I mean they have been put through physical and mental hell by their previous owners. We watched documentaries about how they are treated for training in order to be subservient creatures (who dance/play football/carry people you know what I mean), and when they are captured or bought for entertainment, they dont really look like the happy nellys we saw today. Listen to me.... Ive only been here a week and Im already campaigning for animal rights. But seriously though - it's so good spending time with them, and they are so gentle and photogenic! I ran out of camera battery, so as you can imagine - that annoyed me. ha.

As we arrived, we saw a German couple (Kai and Simone) that we met about 2/3 days ago on our arduous journey north to Chiang Mai, so seeing them was great. They went to a Thai premier league game last night - he really is football mad! A massive buffet was provided for lunch today, and it was probably the best food we've had so far.

Washing them in the river was quality. Becky was once again comedy gold. We were given little buckets to wade in the 2 foot deep river, and collect water to soak them down by throwing it. Becky threw her first load all over an Aussie girl standing next to her... I was laughing. All I could hear was her apologising. 5 minutes later she soaked the guide standing next to the elephant. So funny.

Last night we attended a 3 hour cooking course in Chiang Mai city, at a cooking school. We made three dishes each, and were in the class with 2 americans and a welsh... Outnumbered. We made Pad Thai - which is fast becoming my favourite dish out here, and also a really hot chicken and coconut milk soup. For main I learned how to make Thai Red Curry from scratch, and smashed it. It was so good. The flavours of Thai food are so unique, and so well made. Normally its so easy to chuck all your ingredients in the pan and make do, but Thais are never rushed for time. The kitchen staff are about as quick as the elephants we had today.

Tomorrow we are chilling in Chiang Mai, as we still havent had chance to get around it properly yet, and then off to Pai Wednesday. Apparantly Pai makes Totnes looks like a boring commuter town... We shall see.

Have also heard the news that the islands in the south are expecting terrible weather for the next 2 weeks. Guess where were heading. The islands. To be fair, you can volunteer at the elephant sanctuary for two weeks, so tempted to be sprayed by water. By the way, they eat like 10 bananas at a time. I couldn't get over that.

Me and the wife are heading into CM tonight, street food and Chang await.



Love to all xxxxx



Magsy.

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