Our last day in Thailand once again began before the rising sun. It was quite a journey to Elephant's World; I think we left the apartment around 5:30am (aiya!) and took a taxi to the bus terminal. The taxi ride itself turned out to be an adventure! When we told the driver we wanted to get to the bus station he did not look pleased since it would take him out of his normal pick up area but he agreed to take us anyway. The first couple minutes were fine but as soon as we got onto the freeway our driver went completely loco. He was driving almost 100 mph and we had no seat belts in the back seat. I tried my best just to go limp and grip the seat for dear life. At one point the traffic got stopped up a bit but there was a small gap on the left. Our driver decided to gun it and try to make it through that gap but right at that moment the traffic started to move again and the gap closed! All three of us in the back went flying and both me and Pamela screamed EEEEEEEEEEK! as we bashed into the front seat. Since there isn't any car insurance or traffic laws (it's like a free-for-all Mario Kart kind of situation) in Bangkok, our driver just kept on going after bumping into this other taxi. It was so weird. And not once did the guy apologize for almost killing all of us.
We got to the bus terminal around 6am and it was a pretty strange place. First of all, the place was HUGE, so huge that there were a million places to eat. It was kind of like a mall. We had the worst time just figuring out which teller to see to buy tickets for the right bus. By the time we bought our tickets and found where we were supposed to be picked up our bus was already pulling away and would not stop to let us in. Gaaahhh...After about 30 minutes another bus came and we were on our way. It was about a 2 hour bus ride from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi where Elephant's World is so I needed a way to pass the time since I wasn't really sleepy. I mentioned in an earlier post that Thailand is full of wild dogs so I decided that I was going to count them. In 2 hours I counted 105 DOGS! It actually turned out to be a really fun game because it got me to really focus on the scenery instead of just absent mindedly staring out the window. After our bus ride a van was scheduled to pick us up and take us the rest of the way to the elephant sanctuary. The "van" turned out to be large tuk tuk and we rode over with 3 other people. Two were boys from London and the other was a young woman from Paris who was travelling all over south east Asia all by herself. I love all of the interesting people and stories you hear while you're travelling abroad. While riding on the tuk tuk I had another moment where I was like, "Is this real? Am I really riding through the jungle in Thailand on the back of a tuk tuk?" It was a pretty cool experience.
The motto of Elephant's World is "Where the elephants don't work for us. We work for the elephants" and boy, they weren't kidding! Elephants require so much love and care. Just feeding them was an all day endeavor. It was quite the workout! The first thing we did was feed the elephants fruit. To be honest, I was a bit scared since I'd never been so close to such a large animal before. I placed a handful of bananas into her mouth and she gripped my hands a little bit and I thought, "She could just rip my arms right off if she wanted to." I did like the bristly feel of her tongue and trunk, though. It was pretty cool. I never really thought that I'd ever be putting my hand right inside an elephant's mouth! Life is full of surprises. After we fed the elephants they needed a bit of exercise so we walked off the grounds with them. I had only worn flip flops that day since I didn't think I was going to do a lot of walking so it wasn't long before my feet were killing me. But anyway, the elephants were so well behaved and never once got aggressive. Some of them had new mahouts (trainers/keepers) so they weren't exactly both on the same page yet. None of the elephants were bad but some of them just kind of did what they wanted. It was funny.
Another funny thing were all of the doggies that lived at the sanctuary. We asked our guide about them and she told us that they just showed up one day and then never left. They all seemed so happy and got all of the scraps from the kitchen. What a life! Next on our agenda was to prep food for all of the elephants without any teeth. I didn't know this, but an elephant loses its teeth around 60 years old. In the wild they die at this point since they can't feed themselves any longer but at a sanctuary they can live to nearly 100 years old. The oldest elephant was born in 1936! It blew my mind how old many of the elephants were and how sweet they were even after the difficult lives they'd had before they came to Elephant's World.
We all helped make the sticky rice balls for the older elephants and then it was time to feed ourselves. It turned out to be quite the feast! They even had tofu in curry sauce so I was one happy camper. After lunch we rolled the sticky rice balls into actual ball shapes and then headed over to feed it to the old timers. Again I got a little shy about sticking my hand in an elephant's mouth but our guide reassured me it would be fine since she didn't have any teeth (I was more concerned with her trunk whacking me in the face tbh). Pamela wasn't scared, though, so she jumped right in there. The last thing on the agenda was to bathe the elephants. At this part you were allowed to climb up and sit on top of an elephant. Out of everyone I think only Michelle and I didn't partake in this activity. The river the elephants were bathing in was a FOR REAL river with a rushing current and it just seemed to easy to get washed away. On top of that, climbing onto the elephant looked like such a struggle. Pamela volunteered to be the first one to sit on an elephant (she's totally fearless) and soon after she managed to get up there she got kind of bucked off and belly flopped into the river. Michelle busted a gut at this and we both decided that sitting on top of an elephant wasn't something we needed to do in this life. It was very entertaining, though, watching everyone else trying to scramble onto the elephant's backs and then being tossed back into the water. One girl even swam through a fresh pile of elephant poo without really realizing it.
We finished up around 4pm and were going to take the bus back to Bangkok, however, some other people in our tour group were headed in the same direction and asked us to share a van with them. Big mistake. We got stuck in a van with two German girls and they were two of the most obnoxious human beings I've ever had the misfortune of being trapped in a van with. One of them sat in the middle and the other sat in the back and they kept shouting across the van to each other with no consideration that there were other people in the van. One of them even told off the driver because he wouldn't let her stop and smoke a cigarette. There was a ton of traffic on the journey back so it took 3 hours instead of 2 and I had to pee for the majority of the trip. When we finally got back to the city I had no choice but to use a pay toilet before I peed my pants. While I was in the toilet Pamela bought us some snacks and I found myself eating buttered corn out of a plastic bag (it was both surreal and delicious).
So yeah, it was a long day but all in all, a good one that I don't think I'll ever forget. The next morning I would travel back to the states solo (Michelle stayed another week in Thailand). It's not too exciting of a story but I will tell you that I went kind of overboard in the airport gift shop in Tokyo and bought $100 worth of Studio Ghibli products. I was a little afraid to fly back by myself but it turned out to be a piece of cake and now I feel confident that I could fly pretty much anywhere in the world by myself and be okay. Thank you so much for sharing this adventure with me. I hope you enjoyed it (I know I did). My next trip won't be until October where I'll be meeting up with Melissa in London for her birthday. Until then, it's back to living the craft life for me.
