gentle giants

One of the best days of our trip was at the Elephant Nature Park located about 45 minutes outside of Chaing Mai. Started by Sangduen Chailert, nicknamed "Lek" or "small" in Thai, this sanctuary provides a home for out of work domesticated elephants. That's right. I said DOMESTICATED elephants, much like domesticated horses, cats, and dogs. They're just orders of magnitude larger. GO FIGURE. Thai used elephants for logging until 1989, when it was banned due to excessive flooding. Deforestation caused soil erosion and contributed significantly to the flood damage. All of a sudden, these elephants were out of work. Some were taken to walk the city streets and used by their owners to beg for money from tourists. They were poorly taken care of, underfed, and also taken to walk on pavement. Elephants have sensitive feet, which they would normally use to sense approaching predators in the wild. On pavement, they feel all the vibrations of cars and trucks going by. I imagine it's like feeling bass when it's blasted. Uncomfortable. SAAAD.

{Side note: bodies, like everything else, have a resonant frequency, meaning that there is a certain frequency that causes the body to oscillate at the biggest amplitude. Any frequency higher or lower will have a lesser effect. Obviously, nobody has been able to figure out what the resonant frequency is of the human body - scary weapon - but the uncomfortable feeling that bass causes gives you a taste.}

The Elephant Nature Park tries to buy these elephants as well as any abused elephants. Americans have played a huge part in helping the park in this respect. Bob Barker helped them buy a couple of elephants, and this guy from Texas, whom they affectionately call "Mr. Texas," contributed a generous donation in order to provide these elephants with enough land to live happily. They even have a river that runs through it. (eh? get it? A River Runs Through It? :)) These unemployed, abused, misfit of elephants now have the best life any elephant could have. They bask in the sun all day long and do as they please. They have tourists like us feed and bathe them in the river. They now have 37 elephants, including 2 babies.

P told me that watching elephants lowers the blood pressure. I felt every nerve in my body calm down as I spent the day with them.

scratch, scratch

These guys have it so good. I'd even scrub them and hug them if their hides weren't so tough and if I wasn't afraid that they'd just decide to sit or scratch their ears and accidentally kill me.



This elephant just started kissing people on her own. She actually creates a seal and SUCKS to make a kissing *smack* noise. I was kissed 3-4 times and ended up smelling like elephant for the rest of the day. P doesn't seem to like it (proof below), but I certainly did!

kids... always fooling around