Tag Archive: elephant


North Thailand Trek – Day 1

Filed Under: Thailand
Feb.11, 2010

We woke up around 8:00 to give copies of our passport to the guide to take to the tourist police (so they knew who was where) then later around 9:00 were picked up to bring our bags to storage. We left around 10 so the guide could pick up the ingredients for our dinner at a market. Our tour consisted of 4 Danish girls: Louise, Lada, Sophie, Melaina; 2 Austrian girls: Agnes, Juliet; 2 Australians: Sam, Lisa; 1 U.K. guy: Tej and us 3 Canadians.

The first stop was the elephant park. We had some food first and then got up on the elephants. We were short one elephant sort, so myself and Tej ended up riding on the neck of the elephant where the guide usually goes. Amy and Jen were in the seat behind me… at least at the beginning. The seat started tilted to one side, Amy’s side, and it just kept going more and more. Eventually it was me jumping off the elephant to try and hold up the seat while Amy and Jen hung on up top. Eventually we got them back up onto the neck of the elephant and were able to reattach the the seat to the elephant and continue the tour. The rest of the trip on the elephant consisted of him sucking up saliva and spraying it on us as we walked through the jungle.

We then got to the first day of hiking. It was pretty hard the first day. Really steep, really hot, and really dry. For the most part the group stayed pretty close together, but for the end, the steepest part Tej and I decided to go off ahead a bit instead of waiting for everyone as we had been and as happens when two guys are off showing that neither of us are all that tired, we ended up hiking up a lot fast than either of us really wanted to.

Eventually we met up with the guides brother who took us to the village. By the way, the guide’s nickname is Oaf — pronounced “Off.” Anyways, we get up there, a really neat bamboo building with nice mosquito nets. Amy and I got a massage from the tribe, it was really nice after the day of hiking. I had 3 people working on me at once… fan-tastic!

Dinner was curry by candle light, followed by fruit. We played cards with Tej and Louise and Lada for a while and had a pretty early night (even after trying to stay up “late” aka like 9:00)

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Cooking, Trekking, Swimming, Elephants and the Irish.

Filed Under: Thailand
Feb.10, 2010

Jen and I hurried off in the morning to find a place to switch to while Amy was getting ready in the prison erm… “guest house” shower. We tried a place we had asked yesterday (900 baht.. no thanks) but today they had a room for 560. That’s 10 more than what we were paying Sarah for 2 rooms, but it fit all of us, two HUGE beds, two bathrooms, and A POOL! I ran back to get Amy before checkout time and when we got back it turned out that while one person said the room was 560, the one taking the money from Jen said 500… right on!

We had some breakfast at the restaurant downstairs and met an Irish girl… she had a bit of insight on what to look for in treks, but not much more than we already knew ourselves. She invited me to go horse back riding with her while Amy and Jen were cooking, but again around 1000 baht, massages wins over bumpy rides in the hot sun.

We set off from there with plans to meet up at 7:00 to eat up Amy and Jens 9 dishes of hard work. The three of us decided we needed to book a trek as time was just passing by and so after what seemed like ages we finally found an actual tour company instead of a reseller and went with them as we got a really good feeling (which was not what we expected after hearing all the horror stories of failed, not fun, not enough food, over touristic treks.)

Amy and Jen went off for their class, I read a book and picked up the laundry etc while I waited for them. We met up with Christina (the Irish girl) and her friend Leigh-Anne who had a bit of bad luck and was back in Chiang Mai after losing her bike off of a bus. The food was amazing. Probably my favorite spring rolls and pad thai yet, and the sticky rice with mango and deep fried ice cream were a great dessert.

We headed to get a drink and while we had THOUGHT the ladyboy bar-girl keeping all the old guys excited was going to be entertainment enough, we were just blown away when a dancing elephant showed up at the front of the bar. It was a young looking thing and while our logical side said “what a horrible life, cruising the streets with it’s owner, dancing for food” it was really hard not to enjoy the surrealistic experience. The elephant looked well taken care of as well which made it easier.

We went back to the new room and packed for tomorrows trek.

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Ninja Monkey Attack

Filed Under: Pictures, Thailand
Feb.08, 2010

We woke up in Ayutthaya and headed for the train station. We got our stuff packed and went for the train station. We looked into what it would cost to take a sleeper train from Lop Buri (about 20 bucks for second class) and we got tickets for the train to Lop Buri as well. We skirted around the offer of the “Express train” (what we could only assume was the “tourist train” as it cost over 10 times as much as the “ordinary” train and only got us there maybe 20 minutes faster.

On arrival in Lop Buri we realized we were even further from tourist safe Bangkok. Under full assault from bike powered (single gear) tuk-tuk drivers, we finally gave in to paying a little more than what we wanted as long as they took us to the monkeys. First stop was a temple which looked just like every other temple we have seen, and it cost a butt-load to get in, so we skipped it. Then we were taken to some Buddha shrine-like thing which was one of maybe thousands we have seen. At this point we realized that the price we already wern’t happy with might be an hourly rate, so we just kept saying monkeys to them until they got the point to cut the tour short and bring us to the area with all the monkeys.

Now, granted, we had seen the odd monkey on the side of the road, on a sign, a fence, a pay phone, what have you… we had the impression that there would be a lot more around. Finally we were brought to an old wat just CRAWLING with monkeys. We left our tour guides at the street and went in. There were bags of sunflower seeds for sale for 10 baht (30 cents) so we thought it must be safe, plus everyone else was doing it. Not knowing exactly what to do (do we throw it like feeding ducks?) some guy made sign-like language motions showing me to put it in my hand and have the monkeys take it.

Amy was pretty nervous, but after seeing this one monkey politely take the seeds from my hand with his little monkey fingers one by one, she asked for the bag to try herself. This is when it happened. We were lucky enough Jen had started a video and sort of caught the act on camera, but it doesn’t truly do the situation justice.

We found that inside you could more safely feed the monkeys as you were essentially in a cage, and they were on the outside looking in. Their only option was to nicely take the seeds one by one through the bars. It was quite odd being on the inside of the cage with the monkeys on the outside.

After we got rid of the tuk-tuks and set off to waste some time until the night train. We discovered that the monkeys were maybe a 5 minute walk from the train station, keep that in mind for future trips to Lop Buri… Then as we spend a lot of our time, we had some food, indulged in some ice cream, hit an internet cafe to get some accommodation for Chiang Mai, and then spend the rest of the time at a really cool little side walk bar until heading back to the train station.

The train was a lot nicer than the Chinese one. Softer beds, not as jam-packed with people, AC… not a bad deal.

Also, for a bit of fun, here is some elephant dancing from Ayutthaya…

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