One of the things that we thought would be fun to do while in Thailand was some elephant trekking! Although our little family had been to the elephant camp in Coorg, and seen some elephants in the wild, we had yet to actually ride one more than a few minutes. So trekking on an elephant through the jungle for an hour seemed pretty cool! Jess was of course completely on board with the idea too and was such a delight to watch as she had her first encounter with an elephant! She made the trip all that much more exciting!
Because our family was so big (7 people) they divided us up into two groups. Adam went went with Ady and Harry, while Jess and I went with Dawson and Brans.
Jess wanted the complete elephant experience and so she asked to sit up front with the driver ON the elephant instead of on the seats provided. I thought she’d eventually come and sit with us at some point seeing as elephants are NOT comfortable at all to ride directly on (very bony and bristly) but Jess held out the entire time and actually rode the elephant the entire full hour! Way to go!
This is me thinking to myself, “I’m on an elephant, hiking in a river, in the jungle! This is AWESOME!!!!”
We saw some cool lizards, bees, flowers, spiders, and nuts along the way.
No big deal. Just an elephant ear!
I know this picture is blurry but it shows how the chair was strapped on to the elephant.
Doesn’t look too comfortable.
Our elephant tour guide was nice enough to get off and snap a few pictures for us. When he went to get back on and turn the elephant around though, it did NOT want to go and actually trumpeted at him twice. Holy cow was it loud! And so cool, but we were all a little nervous she would get mad and throw us off! It got a little scary there for a minute.
One of our favorite things was when the elephant would stop to “eat.” She would reach up her trunk and just pull en entire tree branch of the tree and gulp it in 1-2 bites. It was so awesome. The tour guide wasn’t amused with the elephants “delay” though and would hit the elephant hard with a stick with a spike like thing on it to get it to keep going. At one point he hit the elephant so hard he broke skin and she started bleeding. 🙁 I’m sure its completely normal and part of the elephants training but it made all of us sad to see.
After our hour long trek we were able to feed the elephants a treat. The kids always love this part!
On our way out we found some cool flowers and stopped to take a picture.
Then we hit up the closest Thai restaurant we could to fill up our hungry tummies. We got 7 different dishes and fed our entire group for $7. Amazing!
These two cute ladies ran the shop and laughed when we wanted a picture of them in their aprons.
Such an amazing day and experience! Is it any wonder we love Thailand so much?!