Chiang Mai - Ellies!!!!

Well today was the day I have been waiting for so far - apart from the day I win the lottery!!

For those of you don't know, my work colleagues contributed to a fantastic leaving gift/experience which was to spend a day working with some elephants. It wasn't your usual mass tourist thing, it was really personal and the elephants lived and behaved probably as close as possible to being wild. We were picked up at 7.30am from our 7 pound per night hostel (very, very, nice btw) and travelled by chauffeur mini van for 45 mins into the Hang Dong Valley where we arrived at the 'farm' and met the owner and the guides. They gave us a rundown of what to expect and broke the news that we would be getting a private trek because the family booked with us had cancelled and an extended one because we looked fit and healthy! We were delighted as we didn't expect to be on our own!! We trekked for a short while out to the area where our ellies were and were greeted by two big ladies called Kwuan and Masai Noi ('Jennifer' and 'good lady') They were both rescued, Kwuan from the streets of Bangkok (she cost 45,000 pounds 2 years ago) - most ellies today cost around 180,000 pounds to rescue so it is a pretty costly business. Kwuan was mine for the day and Masai Noi was 35 and rescued from an illegal logging company - she was the matriarch and responsible for training Kwuan, so as you can imagine mine was a delinquent at 19 years old. She was quite naughty, eating huge bamboo stalks and generally being a bit troublesome! I tried applying some horseriding skills - but unfortunately that wasn't too effective!!

I could go so much into detail, but it may bore you senseless, so I will sum up what we did, we checked the ellies were happy and healthy, we inspected some poo, we washed them and fed them and then trekked through countryside, paddy fields and very high into the mountains for a couple of hours, it was really beautiful and as I said totally natural on our own with the ellies and the guides following behind to make sure 'little' 10 ton Kwuan didn't make a race for the nearest bamboo trees. They were so gentle especially when we went swimming with them at the secluded waterfall. That was the best bit for us, also quite entertaining when Steph managed to fall down 4 times in the water into the deep areas - he was there one minute and gone the next!!! We also had a fantastic picnic there on a banana leaf table cloth with an assortment of weird and wonderful mainly vegetarian food (healthy like the ellies apparently - you would love it Noan, D on the other hand may have had a problem with eating off the rocks on a banana leaf!!)

This is a long ramble, I am sorry, but just a very cool day and hopefully there will be many more to come.

Gotta go now, more markets to scan and great food to sample.

Katie x

p.s. Just in case you need to control an elephant here are some basics:

Pai - Go
NonLong - Down
Look - Up
How - Stop
Yanna - Don't
DD - Good

And thank you to all at SportCentral/Active Stirling for helping us afford such a great experience - more photos to follow on flickr ;-)