My Travels: The Elephant Nature Park

First off, I'd like to say a massive thank-you to Jo for the recommendation. It has been a better week than I could ever possibly have imagined! If it weren't fully booked for this week, I'd still be there!

The Elephant Nature Park is a vast sanctuary for abused, domesticated elephants. It's a place where elephants who have spent their lives performing in circuses, begging for their owners on city streets, pulling logs out of jungles or just giving tourists rides on their backs can live without abuse, can get proper medical care and aren't chained around the clock. As a volunteer, it's your job to keep the park going; making sure the elephants get their food, fixing what needs fixing, planting what needs planting and mostly just shoveling shit, sand and soil. Groups of people come for day trips to help feed and bathe the elephants and then watch a documentary about what some elephants go through at the hands of their human owners. I have this on DVD and you'll all be watching it once I'm home. It's not pleasant.

There were 4 girls who had all been there the previous week and were staying for two weeks in total and there were 7 of us newbies staying for one week. There was also a family of four joining us for the first three days.

Day one was spent getting to know each other and doing the tourist 'day-trip' routine of feeding elephants, bathing elephants and watching horrible documentaries. Our group were a varied bunch of people. Included were a horse farmer from Australia (Peter, who I've been traveling with for the last week), a married couple from Australia, a mental health worker from Australia (can you see a pattern here?), an ice cream factory worker from Australia, a family from Tasmania and half a dozen students and ex-students from Australia, England and the US. Our volunteer coordinator was a self-styled Thai Brad Pitt (his real name was not the easiest word to pronounce, so everyone does actually call him Brad). Or Hugh Jackman, for the Aussies. We all got on like a house on fire and I certainly had a thoroughly enjoyable week with the group.

I was practically adopted by the Tasmanian family, so for the first three days I had a new mum, dad and two sisters. I was quite sad to see them go, but within hours of them leaving I had a waterfall to jump off and that well and that truly took my mind off things. Take a look for yourself:

Other activities of note included a trek up to the Elephant Haven; an area of forest about three or four miles up in the hills from the park, where the elephants are allowed to roam free overnight, unchained and without the continual watchful eye of their mahout. We stayed in a surprisingly well built bamboo and timber structure with no electricity, running water, flushing toilets or even internet. Despite this, we shared the most amazing meal I've ever eaten. It was seriously good. There were six of us volunteers who'd made the trek to the Haven and four were vegetarians, so me and Eric (one half of the married couple) had quite a feast of red meat curry and chicken drumsticks, while the rest shared the vegetarian options, which were also apparently really good. I honestly don't know how they managed it in such conditions, but Pom and the mahouts really know how to put a meal together!

We had five elephants with us at the haven and we'd made the journey up with three of them - Hope, Mae Perm and Jokia. Hope is a youngster at 9 years old and is fast becoming a moody teenager, so he's usually kept away from the rest of the group in case he tries anything too ambitious with any of the female elephants. Jokia is a bit of a special case. She's completely blind having lost both eyes to her previous owner when she refused to work after the death of her baby. Watching a blind elephant climb a mountain is something I don't think I'll forget in a hurry - at no point did she put a foot wrong, even in parts that were steep enough to make me struggle! Mae Perm acts as Jokia's eyes and you can hear the two communicating while they walk, Mae Perm in front, Jokia behind.

A few points during the evening, you'd hear an elephant call in the distance and Pom's ears would prick up and she'd know exactly which elephant it was and what the call was for. At one point, the mahouts had to go out into the forest with their torches to reunited Jokia and Mae Perm, who had become separated.

Back at the park, some other activities included paying the local school a visit, where we attempted to teach the kids some English, while they, rather more successfully, attempted to stop us from teaching them English. In the end, I relented with my group of kids and they took me outside and taught me a local Thai sport - basically football tennis (for those unfamiliar, it's like volleyball, but with your feet) - and I proved a lot better at this that than I had at teaching English.

Not only does the park play host to 33 elephants, but there are also 47 dogs and about a dozen cats. And the one thing that I'll miss more than an other from the park is being in the company of so many dogs. Everywhere you turn, there's a dog wanting some attention or two rival packs of dogs at each other's throats. Okay, that bit wasn't quite so much fun, but a week of being around that many dogs has made me really, really want one. I'm sure the cats won't wind, mum...

To finish the week on a high, we spent a few hours with Mae Boon's (I think) six week old baby Fai Mai. In the presence of Lek, who started the whole Elephant Nature Park going, who's presence has a visibly calming effect on all the elephants and who just happens to be a pro photographer, we could safely play with this 300lb bundle of fun. Unknown to me, the act of getting on the floor, below the eyeline of a baby elephant is paramount to saying 'come here and climb on my head' and so there I was, trying to get a photo from a decent angle, a good half a grand's worth of camera in my hand, and Fai Mai, spotting a new play thing, trots over and does indeed climb on my head, face and anything else she can find. She also tried to eat my hair, get a piggy-back from me, steal my camera and generally pummel me into submission. It was great fun, I managed to save my camera (though I don't think my T shirt will ever be quite the same) and I got some good shots to boot. Since then, I've been given two CDs full of the photos Lek was taking and some are spectacular. Trust me to pick a computer with no CD drive and dodgy USB ports... the photos will have to wait.

As a last goodbye to everyone, we all went out for one big meal and drink. At least those of us who enjoy such things did. The Reggae Bar was the venue and, with some quite good music to accompany them, most of our group were on the dance floor pretty quick. I did my best to resist, but they got me up there eventually. I blame the beer.

The last two days in Chiang Mai were spend with Peter and Poonam (she works for HSBC in Birmingham, of all places) in a hotel well above my means, eating at some really nice restaurants and spending far too much money. Bloody good few days though!

Me and Pete happened to be heading in the same direction, so we figured it best to stay together until Luang Prabang, where we'd finally split and head our own separate ways. It took two bus rides to get to Chiang Khong on the Thai-Lao border, the first of which was air-conditioned and comfortable and the second of which was cooled only by the open doors and windows, noisy, full of locals, cheap and much, much more enjoyable than the first. The views out the windows grew increasingly spectacular as we neared the Mekong river, we stopped at a street stall selling nothing but mushrooms and we had the whole back row to ourselves. I later found out that the back row of buses is usually reserved solely for monks, but we didn't know that at the time and nobody seemed to mind, so I'm sure it was fine.

In Chiang Khong, we stayed in a guesthouse, whose name I can neither remember nor pronounce... it began with a B, I think. There was loads of info around the place about Laos Visa regulations, info on the slow boat and speedboats and loads of maps of Laos and surrounding areas. It was surprising that we were the only people staying there that night. Well, apart from one American guy, but he'd been there for 15 months and pretty much worked there. We had a lot of useful conversations with him and the owner, who were both very knowledgeable about Laos and helped Pete sort out an itinerary of sorts for his next two weeks traveling; he's heading back up to the Chiang Mai ENP the same week I go down to Surin.

The slow boat down the river was not quite what I had in mind. I though that it'd maybe hold a dozen people and would go at about walking pace and be nice and comfortable, but in fact, it had well over 50 people on board, most of whom were of the scummy, drunken English/Aussie variety, hard wooden benches with legroom that even Ryanair would be embarrassed about and it went pretty quick, weaving between rocky outcrops in the river. Oh and when it rained, the rain covers didn't work too well and when it rains in this part of the world, it really rains! Nonetheless, we survived the first leg of the journey and arrived in Pak Beng, half way to Luang Prabang on time(!) and found a decent guesthouse to stay the night.

Day two was much more sedate and enjoyable. After only about half an hour, we pulled up beside another boat and were given the option to jump ship and split the passenger load between the two boats. Pete went on the other boat and I stayed put... a bit of a race, if you will. So with more legroom and less noise, I quite enjoyed the last days boat ride. There were a group of girls sitting behind me (from Loughton and Woodford, would you believe?) and one had spotted my camera and we got talking about photography type stuff. Now somehow... don't ask me how... she'd managed to format her memory card, wiping nearly 8GB of photos from her camera and was understandably quite distressed about it. So I spent a while explaining how to get them back again.

After a while the boat pulled up in LP and I met up with Pete to find a new guesthouse. Walking around Luang Prabang is much like walking around a small french village, complete with markets, bakeries and dead rats in the gutter. It really is a charming little place and I'd love to spend more than my three days here.

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Sorry, but I'm really bored now and this wooden chair is hurting my arse... I'll be back with more stories (and hopefully photos) soon...

An edit for photos: