April 12th.
Today was our long awaited trip to the elephant jungle sanctuary in Pattaya.
Pattaya is a 2 hour drive from Bangkok and we'd booked a driver through our air bnb host, which it turned out was cheaper than the bus for 5 of us.
We were transported in the back of a pick up truck with seats from the bus station to the elephant sanctuary. We shared the journey with a young American who is teaching English in Korea and exploring Asia whilst she's there. It was interesting to hear her stories of the stress on Korean students and the adventures she's having.
When we arrived at the sanctuary we were given a woven overgarment which the elephants recognise and we were introduced to the elephants, with an explanation of how to behave around them and given food to use to befriend them. This included pineapple, bananas, cucumbers and sugar cane.
There were only 6 elephants and they had all been rescued, with sad stories of their previous life, such as being used to haul logs or trained in the circus.
When we'd fed the elephants, both by putting food in their trunks or bravely slotting it into their mouths we walked with the elephants along to the mud bath they use, then we joined in covering them with mud to cool them. We also got rather muddy in the process, of course.
Our favourite part was going in the lake with the elephants to wash them. We could splash them and scrub them with a brush. One of the elephants squirted Matthew with their trunk, which was very funny. The elephants look surprisingly graceful rolling over in the water and they certainly enjoyed the attention.
Once we'd showered and changed three was a buffet lunch provided before we could feed the elephants again and say goodbye to them before heading to our next activity, making elephant dung paper by spreading the cleaned, boiled dung out in a frame in water and setting it out to dry.
Toby was not feeling well all day but he still managed to enjoy the experience, especially the water splashing and scrubbing.
Once we'd made the paper it was back in the pick up to the collection point for our driver and the journey back to Bangkok. Pretty smooth going until the last 2 km took almost 15 mins in a traffic jam. Crazy Bangkok traffic.
Once home, Toby went straight to bed and Jon and Matthew went out to collect some food for tea. Delicious fried rice from a local stall was filling, and the chilled Chang beer very welcome after such a hot day.
Packing again in prep for checkout and the homeward flights was a necessary evil so we could have a lie in on Saturday.
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