Elephant Walk

Today we went on an "Elephant Safari" tour at the Mae Taeng Elephant Nature Park, another must-see event outside of Chiang Mai. This day long program started out with a welcoming Elephant Show where dozens of Asian Elephants bathed in a nearby river and marched on the stage together. They performed various tricks for us such as carrying their handlers by their trunks or legs (we even saw a few handlers standing on their tusks!), kicking a soccer ball or putting a golf ball, and finishing off with a few elephant artists painting for us. The nearest elephant to us painted an elephant, go figure. It was pretty impressive though, the elephants seemed pretty pleased with themselves.

After a rickety ox cart ride up a hill, we loaded on to an elephant for our hour long elephant ride. The elephant that Haj and I rode on was one of the bigger elephants with large ears, very uncharacteristic of an Asian elephant. I had heard about this in the past but didn't realize how bumpy elephant rides really were! We had to get used to the constant shifting and held on for dear life when the elephant walked downhill, I almost slid out under the bar. We went on quite a walk though, through a river and up hills. Thank you Elephant.

After lunch we went on a bamboo raft ride down the river. They gave us rice hats which now I can see why everyone in Vietnam wears one, they really give you shade. April is supposed to be the hottest month of the year in this area so the water level is very low, which resulted in the raft running over rocks on the bottom of the river and getting stuck. Our raft rower let each of us row the raft for a while, I'm sure he was entertained by that. We got to see more elephants crossing the river or in their pens as we made our way down. Our tour also took us to an Orchid Farm, which was nice but nothing too special then finally took us back to our hotels.

Haj and I tried to meet up with some friends for dinner but couldn't find the place. Instead we noticed a very cheap Pad Thai stall crowded with locals and went in there, after giving up on our original destination. The cooks didn't speak any English and I'm not even sure if the water they gave us was clean but the Pad Thai was soooo good. I've also been enjoying the banana roti they make on the street carts. I've always enjoyed roti since my trip to Singapore and Malaysia but eating it as a dessert gives it a whole new dimension. We've had the banana roti with honey and with chocolate, both very decadent but the honey is the best. Since my sickness in Hanoi I had been a little hesitant to grab food from street vendors (and Ali can tell you how I look at their food so longingly during our entire trip) but at this point, I think I can tolerate a lot more than before and Thailand has a good reputation for keeping their cooking facilities clean.

I am about to finish my third book on this trip, Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult. Anticipating that, I picked up The Lovely Bones which recently came out in theaters at a used book store and I can't wait to read it since I really wanted to see the movie. A small reason why I enjoy traveling is because I can catch up on reading and so far I've read My Sister's Keeper by Picoult, The Kite Runner & A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, and now finishing up Handle with Care. I'm totally getting into Jodi Picoult's novels, so Lifetime but I love reading about bioethical drama and families. Anyone have any other book recommendations? I bet I can get a lot of reading done on the beach later this trip.....