Thailand Vacation, Part I-The Elephants

We took one day and went up in the hills to see the Maesa Elephant Camp near Chiang Mai. It was a wonderful and very pleasant experience. The camp is about 40 kilometers outside of Chiang Mai, up in the mountains. We got a driver through our hotel and he was excellent. We rode in a new and very well kept Toyota Camry and we were very comfortable. The driver came with us through the camp (though he did not ride the elephant) and made sure we found everything.

The first thing when we got there, the handlers had the elephants lined up and people could go and get their pictures taken with them. You can see I did that. The elephants kissed me on the cheek (and it was a very passionate kiss) and took my hat off and put it on again. Then the handlers took all the elephants down into the river and bathed them. One elephant was very near the shore and a man was feeding him bananas, which they sold at a stand in the park for 20 Baht. The man tried to stop feeding the elephant before the elephant was done eating. He almost climbed up onto the deck with us before the man relented and fed him.

After the elephants were bathed, all the tourists retired to an arena and the elephants paraded in. There were more than a dozen of them. They performed various tricks, like playing soccer and massaging a handler, but my favorite was the elephants painting. They really painted. I thought they would just throw paint at the paper in random patterns, but they actually created real pictures. You can see the one that the elephant nearest us created, and probably half a dozen elephants painted and several of them were pretty good. The paintings were on sale for 2000-6000 Baht, about $50-$150.

After the show, Mexica and I rode elephants. They were fun to ride, but rough, especially going downhill. That was pretty exciting. Our route took us through the jungle in hills and we were out about a half hour. A very exciting morning!