Chiang Mai day 2
Walking with Elephants

Elephants

This morning we were picked up from our hotel and driven to the elephant sanctuary, our guide was called Nell but I'm 99% sure that I have spelled his name wrong.

Arriving at the elephant sanctuary

Once we arrived at the sanctuary, we were shown around where to find drinks, cafe, toilets and smoking area. It turns out that the smoking area is the most beautiful down by the river, or so I was told.

Nell gave us a brief history of the sanctuary and explained that they not only rescued elephants (200) but they also rescued dogs (700) and cats (2000). We were told not to touch any dogs with a red collar. We only saw a few dogs and no cats at all, although one of the smokers said they were down by the smoking area.

Out into the sanctuary

We were then led out from the hub to the sanctuary itself. The first group of elephants we came across, Nell referred to as a family but explained that they were mostly just a group of elephants that had chosen to live together. Nell told us one of the elephants he called Trouble Maker as this elephant went and stole fruit from the elderly elephants.

The second group of elephants we were taken to see were down by the river and there were three baby elephants. One of them was a black elephant, he was my favourite, and he was chasing and pulling the tails of the other elephants.

Lunch

We were then taken back to the hub where we could get a drink and use the toilets before we were driven to a different part of the sanctuary. There we were led up to a hut on the top of the hill where lunch had been prepared for us. The food was great and we got to chat to some others on the trip with us. Two of them also lived in Newham close to where Susan and I live, there was a family from Melbourne Australia too.

Feeding the elephants

Once we had been fed we went down to a food preparation area where we were assigned two tasks, one was to separate the bunches of bananas 4 huge buckets of bananas and the other was to make some banana sticky rice. Both of these we to feed the older elephants that were not capable of eating the sugar cane as they were weaker and had lost their teeth.

Once the meals were prepared we got to go down and feed the elephants, there were two that we got to feed the bananas to and then two that could only eat the sticky rice. The ones eating the bananas seemed to be quite greedy and would put up to 7 bananas in their mouth at once. The ones eating the sticky rice had to have balls of sticky rice placed into their mouths.

Walking with elephants

Once they were fed, we walked with the elephants down to the river and watched them play. One of the elephant got right in the water and rolled around while the other was a bit tentative and only got its feet wet.

Once we'd walked back with the elephants we were driven back to the hotel, everyone was truly contempt with the day we'd had.

Khoa Soi

Before I came to Thailand I asked my friend John what I should do in Chiang Mai and he immediately came back and said:

Find the best place to eat Khoa Soi, it's the regional dish of Chiang Mai.

We had a number of recommendations but the closest, was called Garden to Table. When we got there there was a queue of about 20 people and it was closing in just over an hour. So we searched for Khoa Soi near me and we were offered Another World. When we arrived they said they were full but if we went across the road to Blue Bar that they would come and fetch us once they had a table.

We only had to have 1 drink before they came and fetched us, all but one of us chose to eat Khoa Soi. It was amazing and I now have a new favourite Thai dish, I just need to find somewhere in London that serves this and I need to go visit Mrs Lawson to learn how to cook this dish.

Once we had finished the mains the waiter brought us what he described as pineapple whisky for the table. I translated the label and it read:

Dragon fruit horse How is the person's stomach cooked? Main object pineapple iosten