Day 10: Sok Yai Elephant Haven

Elephants!

We’ve spent the day hanging out with 9 elephants. Our first cooking class of the day was banana sticky rice balls for our large four-legged friends, and chopping watermelon.

Elephants are huge fans of most vegetarian options (except spicy food), and hand feeding elephants is a truly incredible experience, feeling the strength, flexibility, and dexterity of their trunks.

Elephants are awesome.

They are also the stealth bomber of the jungle, at least twice today we had one sneak up on our group, appearing out of nowhere. They could follow you and you wouldn’t hear a sound.
They are also cute. Very cute.

Hanging with elephants is mostly about food, they eat around 150kg/day, basically like your average teenage boy, except with the willingness to find their own meals, tearing down huge bamboo.

Other brief highlights included wading with some of the elephants (it was raining today so some thought a swim was a daft idea; the cave and a different stretch of the Thai-Burma railway; the streetside doughnuts filled with condensed milk and pandam; an evening feed for a couple of elephants; and bamboo sticky rice.

just a short update today, as we’re pretty exhausted.