Riding Elephants

One of the major things that I wanted to do while in Thailand was to ride an elephant. I’ve always wanted to do that, but my recent foray into collecting elephants certainly inspired this as well. We drove to a place that the Ashlocks felt was humane towards the elephants. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the ride if they yelled or beat the elephants so I’m glad they were conscientious about this.

We fed some of the elephants while we waited on ours to be “saddled” up.
The kids were a bit tentative at first. And it was mainly because the elephants were a bit snotty. =)
I got sneezed on a couple of times. It's a very strange sensation.

 Jon and Dominic got on first. Caitlin and I climbed on next. And by climbed on – I mean literally stepped on the elephant’s head to get to the seat. Jon and I each had cameras so we could take pictures of each other.

Caitlin and I got on and the elephant started backing up. I was a bit dismayed to realize that our seat didn’t have a bar across the front like Jon’s. But Caitlin hung on very well and we enjoyed out trip. The only scary part was when we went down a super steep section on the trail and I had to wrap my arms around the bars and Caitlin to keep from slipping off. But it was all part of the adventure and a definite highlight to the trip, in my opinion.

After we left the elephant place we headed to Khao Yai Park. Caitlin kept asking when she would see the monkeys. Before we left Caitlin kept telling everyone that we were going to the jungle. And in her mind that consisted of three things – elephants, tigers and monkeys. And since we’d seen the first two, then we must be going to see the last ones soon.

We were going to go up the mountain into the park and eat a picnic lunch. We stopped at a scenic overlook on the way up and Caitlin got her first glimpse of a monkey. We opened the door and he tried to steal our food before we could even get out.

We saw them quite frequently on the road our entire time in the park. We even stopped the van to feed them bananas from the window once.

 While eating our lunch we also fed the local deer. Caitlin is getting quite good at attracting the local animals. =)

After lunch we headed to a water fall. In the rainy season it’s rushing over the ledge. But since we had arrived during the dry season it was just a trickle.
 

We stopped for ice cream and Thai food on the way home.
 
 

Another couple of random odd things -
We drove through a movie set in the park as they were getting ready to film a motorcycle scene. The actor and actress were getting their makeup on and they were getting the camera ready. It was mounted to a remote control helicopter. So cool.

As we were leaving the park they were setting the fields on fire. We saw this frequently while in Thailand. I guess, even though it's incredibly dry, they don't have to worry about it spreading.