{Thailand Day 3, Chiang Mai}

Our absolute favorite thing about our Thailand trip was Patara Elephant Farm. We spent the day with our own elephant, feeding her, cleaning her, riding her and scrubbing her down.

Each couple was assigned their own elephant. Our elephant was Memai, pronounced meh-my.  She is a nursing mommy and her baby is Noon. We loved our elephant. We each had a basket of food consisting of bananas, sugar cane, gooey tamarind balls. Here we are feeding her. Their mouths are so weird, and it was so cool listening to her eat. She pounded that food down like nothing i have ever seen. In fact, that's all she wanted to do constantly...eat.

 And then we went and grabbed corn stalks and fed those to her....

 Our guides, who were part of the Karen Tribe, explained how to check to make sure the elephant is healthy. They look for these signs everyday. 1. Ears flapping and tail swaying back and forth. This means the elephant is happy. 2.Dirty on both sides. If they are dirty on both sides that means they have slept on both sides of their body. A healthy elephant will sleep on both sides. 3. Sweating from their toes.  4. We check their poop. It should be fibrous, and filled with moisture, and smell like grain. We smelled it, and we had to squeeze the moisture out of it. Gross i know. The good thing is that their poop doesn't really stink like poop.

 sniff sniff...

 We had to bring Memai over to the cleaning area. We have to hold her ears and say "mah" over and over while we guide her. Mah means come.

We hit the side of her body and say "nonlong" and then she lays down. We used these tree branches to beat all the dirt off her back and head. :)

 Now we are taking her over to wash her off with water hoses...

 She was really thirsty. Shane did most of the washing off while i just filled her trunk with water over and over...

 Then it was time to climb on our elephant to ride through the jungles of Thailand.... We would hit the back of her leg with our foot and she would lift her leg up so that we could climb on it in order to get on top of her....

 Here comes the famous renegade bandito.... aka...el guapo

 Shane was the first in charge. I wasn't ready to be the first to guide her. He would tuck his legs up behind her ears. Pretty comfy. Mine was a bit uncomfortable. She has that hump on her back, plus after riding for 4 hours on the bikes the day before made for a really sore bum. :) He would get his turn though. Often throughout the ride Memai would try to stop and eat.  To tell her to GO the word is "Bai" pronounced BY.  Shane had TONS of fun yelling out Bai. He was pretty persistent, but i think she listens to him about as good as i do. :) She did whatever she wanted.

 The crew....

 After riding through the hilly jungle for over an hour we were ready for food and so were the elephants. They had a table of food waiting for us in the middle of the jungle. They had banana leaves rolled out as our table cloth, and TONS of food waiting for us. It was sooooooo good!! As you can see, there was more mangosteen for us. yum!  Then they had tons of different sticky rices and some fried chicken...oh man it was all soo good. I am craving it as i am thinking about it.

 

 After we were done the elephants came and raided the leftovers. The elephants know they have to wait until we are done and as soon as we stood up they all came over and cleaned up the table. It was awesome. Our guides were quick to grab all the chicken and water bottles before they accidentally ate all of that. Then we hopped back on our elephant and took off again.  This time i was riding in the captain's seat. As were the rest of the girls. The boys didn't enjoy sitting on the hump. haha!

 At the end we came to a river where the elephants like to bathe. The baby you see in the picture is Memai's baby, Noon.  The elephants would literally roll in the water and go under, and you would only see their trunk come out of the water once in awhile.

 Then it was time for us to get in the water with them and give them a good scrub down.

 Then we all splashed tons of water on them and it was time for pictures ...

 The elephants had fun soaking us with the water...

That was the end of our day.  It was TONS of fun and the coolest experience EVER!! I feel soooooo grateful that we had the opportunity to do that. We will NEVER forget it.