Elephant Day!

I started my first morning in Chiang Mai in true Jess fashion: with a run.  Since the old city of Chiang Mai is surrounded by a wall (the city has of course outgrown these small confines, but the ruins of the wall and the beautified moat remain), I decided to run along its length and see a part of the city.  It was fun to see the children - monks and non-monks - walking to school, the commuters hanging on to motorbikes, and the very occasional jogger sharing my route.  I like to see a city waking up.

Then the morning began in earnest with a 9:00 am pickup for Elephant Day!  We jumped in the back of the car and were brought to a market where we loaded up on bananas for both the elephants and ourselves.  Then we bussed up into the mountains (about 60 km outside of Chiang Mai) and arrived at Eddy's.  First, they sat the group down and taught us "elephant language" which we were to use when communicating with our new friends.  Here's a quick guide (transliterations provided as best I could understand them):

Zong zoon - leg up

Gway gway - turn (accompanied by a tickling of the ears on the opposite side than where you wish to go)

Hu hu - go

How - stop

May long - sit down

Bun bun - spray water

Well-versed in a new tongue, we got to meet the elephants.  We fed them bananas and hunks of sugar cane, each piece being greedily pried from our hands by a long, searching trunk or a muscular tongue.

  

I loved having them find treats behind my back, which only worked when other people weren't offering easier access to food.  When we got to ride the elephants, I got up on Susie, a big female elephant with red speckles on her forehead and ears.  It was love at first leg up.  We ended the morning with elephant hickeys, a very strange feeling where they suck on your neck with their trunk.  It tickles unbearably but is adorable.

We broke for lunch and met our fellow riders over delicious food.  There were two Germans who were only 20 but looked much older, three 28-year olds from New Zealand who had quit their jobs as accountants at HSBC to move to London (one is planning on going into the family business of thoroughbred horse racing, while the other two are planning on sticking with accounting), a couple from Holland, and the four of us.  It was fun to hear where people had been before this, where they were going, why they were traveling.  

After lunch we finally did some serious elephant riding.  We mounted our giant elephants and rode up hills and down into valleys.  The elephants knew the instant we accidentally dropped bananas and wouldn't move until every one had been slurped up.  The countrywide was so beautiful, rolling hills growing into mountains.  Green everywhere.  

And we bumped up and down, feeling the roll of elephant shoulders beneath us and hanging on to the massive head with both hands for some semblance of balance.  Our walk ended in a river, where the elephants sat down, allowed us to slide off, and then rolled over to be bathed and scrubbed.  Some elephants seemed more into this ritual than others - our elephant wasn't a huge fan but this one baby elephant was loving it, wiggling in the water and spraying itself with it's trunk.

After a drive back to the city (during which we all passed out), we went out for dinner at another little restaurant, ANCHAN Vegetarian.   It was on the second floor of a building on the complete opposite side of the city from anything we had previously explored.  We saw a large local crowd at the surrounding restaurants and even a few places that looked good for going out.  I think we found a bit of local flavor, even if we did not partake this time.  The restaurant was frequented by westerners but was so fantastic.  We had incredible banana smoothies and shared purple eggplant in red curry (note: we later learned that most Thai cooking uses a small green apple eggplant instead of the purple kind we are used to in the US) as well as some pasta.  Another incredibly successful meal.  The boys still wanted to stay out, so we tuk tukked across the city to The Riverside, an incredibly touristy bar on the water where they got a jug of beer to share and some friend bananas with ice cream for dessert (Nick's passion is turning into an obsession).  The restaurant was a taste of the backpacker culture that I personally tend to avoid - loud, with 300-item menus of mostly Western fare, music streamed in from America, and prices that are definitely more Western than Thai - but it suited our purpose and I was content to slip quietly into a post-dinner food coma at the table.

Spotted: www.chiangmaielephantcare.com

Our photos from Elephant Day should be up for the next week on the site.  We bought a CD of them, since we won't be able to download them in that time.

Also, as a PSA, Tuesday has now been declared Elephant Day, as in:

"Gosh, I'm having a really horrible day."

"Never fear, tomorrow is Elephant Day, and Elephant Day is always wonderful!"

PS more elephant facts below: (note, these are from our guides and haven't been checked)

The elephant gestation period is about two years, and females only have 1-5 young in a lifetime

Elephants have 6 teeth on their cheeks, four up top and two on the bottom.  They use their muscular tongues to push the food around so it can be chewed up.

Elephants drink about 160 L of water a day and eat about 200-300 kg of food.