Surin

We were based in a pre-existing 'study-centre' in the Surin Elephant Village, which includes ivory stalls, a circus and elephant rides... hardly the best education you can get. There were 8 volunteers and we were the first ever to go there. We paid 6 mahouts 500B each a day (about 4 or 5 times what they normally earn) to unchain their elephants, put their hooks away and have their elephants follow us around while we went off and planted fields of grass, trees etc... Then each afternoon, we'd head off to the local river or mud bath and bathe the elephants with the mahouts. Basically we were trying to show them that they can make a lot of money without having the elephants work and without them putting in any effort whatsoever. All the mahouts co-operated completely and apparently were surprised at how well things turned out... some promising to continue the routine of a daily bath; something that doesn't happen at the moment. Whether or not they will, I don't know. he morning we left, we saw one of our elephants back in chains, mahout on its neck, hook in hand, so it might take a while to educate them completely.

The place itself is stunning. Completely flat, rice paddies everywhere and thanks to deforestation, not many trees in sight... we're hoping to change that. They currently have 65 elephants at the centre (we saw about 20 in total... it's possible the rest are on Bangkok streets. We thought it best not to ask that sort of question just yet), most involved in the circus. We're hoping that their mahouts will see the money we've spent on our six and be more willing to co-operate with us in future.

Eventually, it'll just be a vast area of land for up to 300 elephants to roam free in, with volunteers and visitors working with small family groups, while the rest are free to roam, undisturbed, and we'll cycle families. As it stands though, the land itself just isn't ready for that number of elephants, so we need to plant loads and loads of grass, trees and fruits for the elephants to eat.

The local river is awesome. It's so much wider and less currenty than the ENP river, and bathing elephants without throngs of day visitors is so much better. We even got in little fishing boats for one of the afternoons, which was insanely good fun! You also get to get an awful lot closer to the elephants themselves here than you do in Chiang Mai. There's a lot less security stuff like barriers for feeding and it makes a big difference... I felt like I really got to know the six elephants we were with.

The volunteer group were, if it's possible, even more awesome than our group was at ENP! We all got on, were all hard workers and everything went excellently. Couldn't have asked for a better week (could have asked for a longer one though) - it was hard to leave.

There are lots and lots of photos to come. Hope you've got unlimited internet, John!