Chiang Mai, February 15, 2018

Maybe we saved the best for last. Come to think of it though, it all has been good. But last night . . . what a treat! We put on one of our few outfits of nice clothes and went out for dinner and entertainment. We were blown away! The place is called Khan Toke Dinner - Khan Toke is germane to the people of northern Thailand. The venue is a former social gathering place; it made me think of a large, outdoor, elevated and decorated plaza. It is said that years ago, a local politician used to invite guests to meet him here to enjoy a special dinner with him. The food is typical northern Thai and is served in little bowls like tapas placed on a large round wooden tray. We sat on the tile floor on silk covered cushions. As we ate, musicians were playing Thai music. Some little girls took advantage of the empty floor and danced their own sweet little finger dance. I could not keep my eyes off these little princesses. Then the show began. There was music, singing and dancing. We were in the first row of diners so the beautiful dancers were literally at our feet. It was totally mesmerizing. Toward the end of the show one of the finger dancers came up to me and invited me to dance with her. I thought, oh well, this will be fun, plus no one knows me here. So I gave it my best to mimic her hand, finger and body movements. Soon, all the dancers invited people from the audience to dance; the performance pavilion was filled with a long thread of people dancing with the beautiful dancers under the dark, starry sky.

This morning we left early to drive up into the mountains. It was a nice change of scenery. The countryside looked very much like what I thought Thailand might be like before we arrived. Before our trip here, I imagined mountains, fields and running streams here. Finally we saw that today, and it was breath-taking. We arrived at Patara Elephant Farm in the hills outside Chiang Mai. This place is involved with rescue, recovery, reproduction and reintroduction of elephants back into the wild. Most of the adult elephants are rescues; one came from a Thai circus and one from the streets of Bangkok where people rode her for a fee on paved streets or they bought baskets of bananas to feed her. Most of the babies were born here. We received basic elephant training on how to approach the elephant and how to give it simple commands. We were given information about elephant farm management, their breeding program, pregnancy tests and simple health tests.

We simply observed the elephants for the first bit. The babies, oh the babies!!! They were so cute; we just wanted to take one home!!!

We were in a group of about 8 people. We each were given an elephant. Mine was a youngster, Tara, was only six years old. Stan's elephant was a 29-year old big mamma, Maugua. She has a youngster, Jabo, but he wasn't old enough to have a rider yet.

We became introduced to our elephants by feeding them each a basket of bananas. Bohn is the word elephants know that means open-wide. They opened their mouths and we stuffed in a banana, one after another. We learned to call them by name and to reassure them by patting them and saying something like, "dee - dee." We were given reed "brooms" and after giving a command to our elephant to lie down, we beat the dirt off their backs to clean them and then hosed them down all over with water. They liked that.

After energetic and sufficient hand scrubbing, we had an outdoor lunch of sticky rice in banana leaf packets, deep fried chicken legs, pork on skewers, fruit of every kind and sweet things like fried banana, donut (not like ours) and little sticky rice gooey sweet things.

After lunch we gathered the left over fruit to give to our elephants as treats and proceeded to learn several ways of how to get on the elephant's neck, how to sit and give basic spoken commands like, bye (meaning go) and how (meaning stop). After everyone learned how to mount their elephant, we went for an hour-long ride. Oh gosh! The path the elephants followed is through the woods on a rough, rough hilly dirt path. They stepped over limbs and waddled down gullies while we sat on their necks. Sometimes one might want to veer off the path to get a bite of bamboo or other growing things to eat but the trainers were usually nearby to keep them on track.

Well, since I was the smallest person in the group, I got the smallest and youngest elephant. I thought that was ok. To ride an elephant, you sit on its neck; knees are forward and tuck your feet behind the elephant's ears. Ok. But Tara was hard to ride. Her head was not yet big enough for me to have a natural saddle-like spot on the neck behind her head. It was like I was just perched up there. There was a rope behind each of us to hold on to with one hand. That helped plus I was reassured in that each elephants' trainer walked beside us every step of the way, speaking commands and gently urging them forward. All went pretty well but I can't say I was in love with elephant riding; it's much harder than it looks. We finally approached the end of the trail and I guess Tara was sick of carrying me around. She crowded in on the big elephant we were following, and leaned into the big elephant's side real hard. She pressed my leg into the other elephant and walked forward, merely dragging me off her back. I landed on my feet and was not hurt at all, but there I stood sandwiched between the two elephants. I was a little unnerved; I thought I must have done something wrong to cause her to do that - don't know where Tara's trainer was during this episode but he didn't even see it happen. What I later learned is that because Tara is so young, she did not yet have the training and experience that the older elephants had. Hmmmmm.

At the end of the trail was a lovely spring-fed pool of water. Elephants love water! Each trainer helped their rider off the elephant and then led the animal into the water. I guess since my elephant was smaller and younger, my trainer led us both to the water and we went in. All the people got into the water with the elephants too and began playing with them and taking pictures. All of a sudden, Tara, (the ****) started going round and round like a bucking-bull or bronco. The trainer could not get her to stop. Round and round she swung; then she threw her head down. Face first I went in to the shallow water. I came up soaking wet with sand and probably dissolved elephant poop all over my face and in my hair. I cannot believe I did not get stepped on! But I have to tell you, I did not waste a moment getting up! I literally jumped up like lightning! My trainer kept asking if I was alright??? Of course, he would! I wanted to punch him. I wanted to punch something! I marched myself out of that pool. After a few minutes, my trainer said, she's settled down now; do you want to get back on? What?????

I did get back in the water to help bathe the elephants and I did participate in the group pictures. But my pride was seriously hurt.

We are off to Phuket tomorrow for R&R. Sadly it's the last destination on this trip. While we are not ready for all the adventure and our introduction to new sights, sounds, experiences and wonderful people to end, I must say I am eager to see my family and to start seeds in little cups of soil for spring planting. This place inspires me.