So I had a pretty good nights sleep last night, partly because I slept without the pillow! Scott didn't have too much of a good sleep though I don't think because I pinched the blanket; that's karma for taking over the bed the night before!
I was up bright as a button at 5.45am before the alarm... That still annoys me even though I dot have to get up for anything! If I wake up before the alarm even if it's 2-3 minutes I still try to go back to sleep! Haha.
It was fresh this morning, not freezing but there was a chill. Lots of mist still lingering around the hills that I could see out the back window of the bungalow.
We settled the bill last night so it was easier this morning to just get up and leave; meeting at the greenhouse restaurant, much to our disappointment they had run out if pancakes so it's was bread and jam for me and Scott had an omelette. I'm obsessed with the mixed fruit shakes, I must get a shake maker when I get back!
There were a lot more people going on the trip than I thought there would be, overall I think around 15 of us. Some just for the day trekking and others for one day or two night stay. We all jumped into the minivans after filling our deceleration forms out, Gemma the Canadian lady that is the co-founder speaks Khmer! It's fascinating seeing westerners speak the Asian lingo because it's such a tonal language with high pitch and low pitch noises.

We went around 12km outside of Sen Monorom to a village called 'Patong' here is where the elephant valley project is based. They have rented out 500 hectares or more of land I think, that is now a protected area, this is where they hold their elephants. The project does a lot more for the communities than we thought.
When they first began the project in 2005 Jack Highwood who eventually found out his names means 'devil' in Khmer was running around the town going to villager's homes and trying to help them and their elephants, the welfare and health of them because after the Khmer Rouge there was no knowledge left to pass on through generations because the people with high academic knowledge were killed therefore there was a high mortality rate with children and elderly when they caught malaria and cholera etc. and obviously animals would get sick and not be able to survive.
Eventually they got money together and voluntary veterinary doctors and general doctors to come help with the welfare of the working elephants and people.
Word spread around that there was this crazy devil man running around town trying to help these elephants who had been abused, over worked and injured.
After the wars many elephants died and there are currently only 400 wild elephants in Cambodia and 85 in captivity but there population of elephants in captivity are ageing because it can be so difficult to breed elephants and obviously nobody was thinking about breeding elephants in the wars, all that they had on their mind was survival. So in about 30 years time when the captive elephants are too old for work or die there could be a problem with poaching the wild elephants.
The project helped to protect the farm lands, build hospital and pharmacies, build schools and houses. They also provide health insurance to the local people, they have a lot of people working in their protected forest and jungle such as Cook's tour guides and cleaners at the base camp, rangers who are able to confiscate guns and chainsaws from poachers and people try to cut down the expensive wood and cause deforestation, they have guards and sort of forest pice who can handcuff the guys and fine people.
Every elephant that is in the project are either on long term compensation plan or they have bought and love here now.
The project have short term plans for the elephant where they go for a couple of months to rest and the owner does get paid a little so that they have incentive to send their elephant here and rest and get better.
The long term program is the same just obviously for a lot longer, 9months+
They have 9 female elephants there, a male 'bob' died of heart attack and stroke last year and the female 'onion' that was his bunny boiler and obsessed with him went into mourning and eventually died 6 weeks ago in the same place he died. She died of a broken heart! :(
All of them here were used in tourism, logging or carrying concrete blocks. The one elephant who's back is in incredible condition compared to the others was used only for poaching deer, her owner would ride her and shoot deer from her. You can see that they haven't been looked after at all their entire life's, sometimes no fault to the owner because they don't know how to treat them. Their spines are prominent and they look as though they're pregnant but it's just where their ribs have been compressed down and now stick out, they have eating problems because their abdomens are crushed too.
Their are a few of them that haven't seen other elephants for about 40 years so are not all mentally there. They don't know how to throw mud on themselves when they first arrive they just slap it on the forehead and that's it. It's sad, but they try to ease the elephants together and keep them within groups depending on if their personalities bond together, each elephant has their own mahout who have similar personalities to their elephant so that they bounce off one another. Their mahouts ride them bare back to the watering hole in the mornings and give them a good scrub to get the mud off of them and then they just sit in the background and follow then around the jungle all day, so the elephants are left to their own devices. At night though, (this I found a little cruel at first but when you think about it and they talk more about it you understand more why they do it).
The elephants are taken to a different part of the jungle every day and on weekends they get taken into the deep jungle.
The mahouts chain the elephants around one foot loosely so that no marks are made, however unlike the 3-5m chains you see in tourist places the chains here are 25metres long so that the elephants are still able to wander about and some are even clever enough no to knock a tree over with their trunks and set themselves free. They chain them because they don't want to put them in elephant huts because that's not how they sleep in the wild and putting electric fences up would probably just get torn down straight away by wild elephants and the elephants here so this way they can make sure they're safe and don't get lost in the jungle because they aren't wild animals, they've lost all instinct of being wild and fending for themselves so they're still learning how to be an elephant again.
They still in the nights manage to find their way into local farmer's crops and demolish banana trees and rice fields so they cost the project a lot of money in compensation! Haha.
Chris, our tour guide told us a fun fact, that an elephant's foot doesn't conduct electricity so when a heard comes to an electric fence one way of getting through it is two elephants stand about 20-30 metres apart and at the same time use their feet to stand on the wire so it collapses to the floor, the rest of the heard walk over it and then the remaining two elephants scoot they way around it and let it fling back up, well granted that it's not going fling back up to it's original position but they will find a way of getting through whether it's that way or it means them breaking trees down with their trunks and barging into it with trees trunks! Haha. Such clever animals.
We were walking amongst them all day, the morning we seen four elephants and then the afternoon we went to another part of the forest and seen another two.
In the morning we seen one of the elephants who I have forgotten the name of find her natural instincts and knock down a full grown tree! She wrapped her trunk around it and was away with it to loosen the roots and then she leaned against it with her chest and head and sort of bounced on it, and then she curled her trunk up under Neath her mouth and pushed it to the floor. It was so funny, she grazed on all the leaves then, of course the others wanted to join in so they all had a go at knocking a tree down, there were two more successful trees knocked down.
In the afternoon we met another two elephants, one was blind in the right eye because when the owners used to control them they would use the spike into their right eye and eventually makes them blind. It's so sad because all you need to do to control an elephant is sit on it's head and control behind it's ears or tug their ears if your stood next to them, and praise them if they do something good. They're like training a dog I suppose just on a bigger scale!
We watched them get bathed and then fed bananas and the banana trees, we were sat on the floor about 1 metre away, they didn't bother us at all because they were used to having people around where as a wild elephant there would be no chance.
These two are apparently the mischievous ones who free themselves from the chains and destroy most of the farmers land! Haha.
The noises that all of the elephants were making were incredible! There were so many trumpets, squeaks and rumbles coming from them. Monday morning gossip!

We arrived at base camp for lunch, it's lovely here! They have a big hut built into the hill with upstairs lounge area, kitchen and dining room that over look the forest! Downstairs there are hammocks and a meeting area where there are white boards of what there is to do volunteering etc. down amongst the banana trees there are mini bungalows everywhere with dorms with maximum capacity of 3-4 people.
The beds are so comfortable and the pillow is SOFT! We have mosquito nets which we are advised to use in the middle of the jungle at night time!
Food is cooked by the staff who are locals but have a staff headquarters behind the main base camp; food is lovely, there is a vegetarian dish and non vegetarian dish you can have with a variety of fruit for afters.
Home cooked Khmer food is delicious!
The cooks bang a dong when food is ready and everyone comes climbing up the stairs to queue!
It's so relaxing here with the birds and gibbons chirping in the trees, not that you can see the gibbons unfortunately they are too good at hiding!

Cold showers were surprisingly welcoming after a long boiling hot day, and the air wasn't too cold either considering we are high up on the mountains and in the jungle!
Dinner tonight was amok in a banana leaf which was gorgeous! It's a coconut milk curry - delicious!

Electricity is only on between 6-9pm so everyone rushes to Harte the cameras, luckily there are about 10 extension leads! Obviously bed time is an early one, even though we were all shattered! Scott was wide awake though I think so he watched two and a half men which he downloaded into his phone, only problem was he kept bursting out with loud laughter everyone and then which would keep us awake!

I just aswell say, because Scott will only do the honours for me publicly on social network.
I mistook a bright beautiful orange ball of fire for the moon this evening. I was like aw yeah guys, 'look at that beautiful moon... Uhh I mean sun!' Haha whoops, the sun is frying my brain!! That's surely not a good thing.