Lampang is the second biggest city in the north of Thailand and is only 70km south of Chiangmai along the superhighway (it is 2 lanes and that is a big deal around here) back to Bangkok. Despite it being the second biggest city we were still able to walk around the main centre in the space of 30 minutes. Much to our amazement, for a country that is still developing, just about every other shop was a jewellers and about a third of the rest were junk shops. The key reason for coming to this town is to visit the Elephant conservation centre which does really important work across the whole of Thailand to care for elephants and educate their owners on how best to look after them. The current statistics show around 1900 wild elephants that live in the jungles and about 2900 that are privately owned and "cared" for. Of course the numbers used to be much higher but with the development of technolgy and its use in the logging industry, the need for elephants as a working animal has pretty much died out. Unfortunatley, this has meant that a lot died from neglect as their owners could no longer afford to keep them. The centre is now trying to overcome a lot of these problems by providing medical care free of charge to any elephant that needs it. The centre itself was really well put together, with one of the key aims being to educate people who take the time to visit. A big part of this was the logging demonstration given by about 12 different elephants ranging in size from 12 feet tall (who's the daddy!) to 4 feet tall. When used in the jungle they were trained to break trees down with their trunks and tusks and then carry them and pile them all very neatly ready for transport. They did this with so much ease, it really was impressive. The demonstration focused on how th elephants pull the logs, stack them and lift them with their trunks and tusks. Amazingly the elephants are trained to work in confined spaces as you might find in the jungle and they can walk across sinlge logs and even turn a full circle perced on a sinlge log. Some of the biggest elephants can grow to an impressive 3000-5000kg and eat a massive 150kg of food each day and top themselves up with a wopping 100litres of water (they have been trained to go to the tap and turn it on to get a drink for themselves!). They can live up to the age of 70 and in the wild they basically die from starvation. Throughout their lives they have 6 sets of molar teeth which grow one set at a time and when they wear out, a new set grows. When they have worn all six sets out they are not able to eat any more and die a slow death from hunger. They roam in matriarchal heards, headed by the oldest female and when the males reach adulthood they are ousted from the heard to live a solitary life, until it comes to the time for mating (great idea says Chris). As well as seeing the elephants in action we were able to take a ride on one through the jungle area where the elephants live and mahouts live. Ours was called Paton and was 26 years old. Unfortunatley, we think the heat had gotten to him a bit as he kept stopping to pull up big bushes of bamboo for an extra feed. We did get a bit worried at one point when our Mahout (driver) got down to take a few photos of us - Paton decided to go walkabout with us still on its back. Thankfully, he was soon back under control, climbing up hills in the jungle and wading through rivers. It was really enjoyable if a perhaps an odd experience - being perched on a small wooden bench twelve feet up in the air whilst this huge animal lurches from side to side up a steep incline, does not fill you with confidence! The next stop was the elephant hospital. For both of us this was by far the best bit of the trip but also the most sad. They currently have 15 animals staying at the hospital, some of whom who have been there for 4 or more years. They are hospitalised for a whole range of reasons (skin diseases, neglect etc) but the worst we saw were two adult females that had had part of a foot blown off by a landmine on the Thai / Burmese border which is quite close by. We were amazed that the mines had not caused more damage than it had, but they were clearly still healing though we were reassured that they would return to the wild eventually. Because they are used to people we were able to get up close and personal with these enormous beasts that could easily have done some serious damage with just one swipe of their trunks. They were quite comfortable with us standing right next to them and stroking their trunks and heads and as trite as it may sound when you looked into their eyes you really felt connected to them. They really are magnificent animals. Because the numbers are dropping rapidly the centre is also doing a lot of work to support breeding programs in the wild and in captivity. Whilst there we were able to see two baby elephants that wereno more than a year old and still suckling their mothers. They were held in a pen with their mothers but were able to move around freely. They were quite happily amusing themselves by kicking a brightly coloured ball around, throwing water over themselves to keep cool or investigating any pocket for food, on anyone that got close enough. This will certainley go down as one of the key events of the whole trip. Having been so close to them we can not understand how anyone could hurt them, deliberatley or otherwise. But we will come back to this place for a future holiday and a 10 day Mahout training course where you get to learn how to train and look after the elephants yourself, including riding around the jungle on their heads as the mahouts do - Tarzan watch out! Until then we are back to Chiangmai overnight before setting off on the overnight sleeper train to Bangkok and then directly onto Ko Tao, a small island on the east coast of peninsula Thailand, where we are promised some of the best diving in the world.