Swimming with elephants

Friday 9 2010

We started our morning with a swim with elephants.

Literally! This morning we woke up and took a quick 5 minute drive to play and swim with Thai elephants. I never knew how bristly their heads were, but my favorite is when they flap their ears with happiness. And my elephant made a real impression too, my groin has hurt all day from where his shoulder blades were rotating as I sat on his neck getting dunked in and out of the water... lol

We had a quick toast and egg breakfast to start the rest of our super eventful day. We left the floating house to go take a jungle ride on some elephants, where Elena bestowed me a souvenir ring made of elephant tail hair, supposedly containing good luck—good choice, totally my cup of tea!

Then we took a bamboo canal ride in the midmorning sun. One of my favorite moments was listening to Elena talk to a Czech woman in another language, it was endearing to hear them test out their English then make tries at other languages until they found one they both could banter through. An Australian mother-daughter couple jumped and floated down the river, which seemed an enticing experience until I recognized the logic that remembered locals (including our floating hotel) dumped sewage, waste, and shower liquids into the river. Didn’t seem smart after all the health precautions I’ve taken.

After, we went to a historical museum about the Japanese railroad that was built from the labor of allied prisoners of war and locals from world war two. It was a railroad that went from Burma through Thailand, but only a couple of the sections of railroad were historically significant regarding the reputation and amount of lives lost. Basically, there were section of rock earth that men (often barefoot or wearing a Japanese loin cloth called a “happy”) had to chip through using nails and hammers, haul rocks, and blasts without the use of any machinery. This feat was significant in that the project was to be finished in 12 weeks. Around 200,000 men, allied and Asian died because of this project.

Then we went to see a quick waterfall covered in colorful children, many people gather here to have picnics, something sort of unseen, a casual cultural thing that I really appreciate to have seen. The second image below, I really really love.

We finished our day’s tour with a trip to a monastery where tigers are kept. We had our photos taken with the cats and are now enroute to the old capital of Thailand.

The accommodations for tonight at the Baan Eve Guesthouse are the most raw in comparison to the others. The guesthouse has a really quaint common area with unique hand-made wood tables and chairs, the kind you see in the West and Midwest mountain towns. Our room opens like Indian houses do, two slim baby blue opening doors. Our mattresses are flush on the floor and our room is literally one large square. The back of the room opens from a screen door into a small closet sized outdoor room where the sink is located with an open window to look out onto the back alley, and from that little open area is another small room with a toilet and open shower. The toilet here is the first authentic Thai toilet we’ve had to deal with, which is nice, unexpected that it would take 5-6 days to finally have this. Once you are finished using the bathroom there is no flushing mechanism, there is a bucket full of water from a wall mounted faucet and a smaller container used to drop water into the toilet, force flushing. It is interesting :)

Love from all of us...