We were picked up at 7:30 in the morning and driven to the Patara Elephant Farm, about 40 minutes away from the city. Patara has about 31 elephants, and 7 of those are babies.
The owner met with us for about 10 minutes to explain a bit about their philosophy, then we were handed off to Wut(?) who introduced us to the elephants and explained the basic training. All 6 of us were matched with our own elephant, and we took a basket of food (at this season it was bananas and sugar cane) as a peace offering. You can't make friends with the elephants without food, as they said!
Mom was the first paired, and her elephant was Tirasu (named for the sound of falling water since he was born near a waterfall), an 8-year-old. Dad had to remember the name of Mae-Bun-San (bun-san means lucky, or good karma), a 31-year-old female; Mia was on the largest elephant, 38-year-old female, Mae-Ko-Pok (Mae means 'mother', ko-pok is sunflower); Ari got 27-year-old Mae-Tom-Kum (gold) and her baby Fern followed along; Ani was on the tiniest elephant, the other male, about 27 years old, Top-Tun (also meaning gold?); Myra was on Mae-Meung (going up? positive?). And since they are Thai elephants, we learned the commands in Thai!
Say 'buhn' to get the elephant to lift its trunk, which opens its mouth, then deposit food in mouth. Feel soft slimy tongue :). Give positive reinforcement by saying dii-di-di. Repeat!
Then we learned how to check the health of our elephants.
1. Are her ears flapping and her tail wagging? Yes? She is happy.
2. Elephants sleep on the ground -- unless they are sick. Then they know they couldn't get back up if they go down, so they sleep standing up. Elephants sleep about 6 hours a night, but only 45 minutes in each position. So when they wake up, they should have dirt on both sides. If they do, they slept on the ground, and are doing well.
3. Elephants sweat in one place only: between their toes. If they are sweating, good.
4. Elephants have no tear ducts, so they are always 'crying'. If their tear paths are the same length from both eyes, good. Otherwise it might indicate an eye infection.
5. You can tell a lot about an animal from its dung. From an elephant's droppings, we were taught to observe (and check for ourselves!):
5a: There are at least 3 piles of poop. Elephants digest in about 2 hours, and should eat enough for that.
5b: The poop has moisture. This means the elephants is not dehydrated.
5c: There is no strong smell. It should smell like grass (except baby poop). If it smells it means the food took longer to get through the digestion and there may be a problem.
5d: The fibers in the poop are small. Big fibers mean the elephant didn't chew properly, and may have a problem with her teeth.
After checking them over, we gave them the command to sit, 'na-long', and whacked some dirt off with grass brushes -- which we then fed to the elephant -- then hosed them off and let them eat some more. Elephants go through about 250 kg of the basa(?) grass every day.
(Interesting fact -- the dung is used for fertilizer, but nothing grown for elephant food can be grown with elephant-dung fertilizer. The elephants won't eat it.)
Then our elephants were ready to ride. We learned 3 ways to mount the elephants.
1. Make them sit down. Mount.
2. Have the elephant bend its leg, use that as a stepladder.
3. In front, have it lower its head, grab the ears, step on the trunk and the elephant lifts you up. Turn around.
4 - special way for Mae-Meung, so the way I mounted: Have her lower her head. Grab the rope around the middle. Jump! Turn around.
Once we were mounted, we set off on our near-2-hour elephant ride through the forest. Lots of ups and downs and interesting footing for the elephants! And they always want to eat. My elephant at one point saw a ripe bamboo branch (maybe 20 feet long) just sitting in the path, so she decided to take it with her. My trainer hacked off half of it, but she carried the other half for a few minutes, dropping it now and then to snack on the leaves, then picking it up. She just wasn't going to let it go, until Ari's elephant took hold of the other side and they lost it to a separating tree.
We rode the elephants bareback. We had pants they provided so it was soft on our legs, we rode without shoes and could rest our feet sometimes on the elephant, our knees on their ears. I found them soft on my feet, but it was work to make sure we didn't fall off!
Kicking the ears and saying 'bye-bye' makes her go forward, or one ear turns her. Tapping my heels back and saying 'toy' I could make her reverse, while setting the heels back and saying 'hao' halts her.
Thus we rode with 1 break (for water and bananas), until we arrived at our destination: a small waterfall, where we were to give our elephants 'skin care'!
This meant getting in the water (in our swimsuits), with a scrub-brush and water basket, and scrubbing the elephants (who would rather roll around in the cool water). This was pretty fun, though we took care not to get squished or stepped on. The baby elephant almost went down under two adults at one point.
Washed and scrubbed, the elephants were finished, and so were we. We enjoyed an elaborate feast of Chiang-Mai fried chicken, pork and sticky rice, black sticky rice, mangosteen, tangerines, bananas, sweet sticky rice, palm tree cakes, banana and coconut cakes, and banana fritters. Lots of rice, but pretty tasty, and we couldn't finish it all. Almost everything was wrapped in palm leaves, so we took a few things back with us. The rest was divided between being saved and being rolled up for us to feed our elephants.
However, it wasn't the end!
We were driven over to see the baby elephants, and learn a little bit about them and their mothers. Baby elephants stay with their moms until 1-2 years old, and the elephants continue growing until 20-25 years. They live about as long as humans, and between the ages of 11 and 55 female elephants will have up to 5 babies.
Then - that really was the end. We were driven back to our hotel, talking about our experiences.
It was an awesome fun day and the highlight of our trip to Thailand!
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