Elephant days

One of the other great things about the trip was that Sarah and I got to spend time with some of our favourite people who we never get to see. Raegan - Sarah's best friend from high school and maid of honour at our Canadian wedding - had just that week moved from Canada to Israel to be with her boyfriend Yaron, so she decided while she was on the move she might as well come and spend the entire two weeks with Sarah and I in Thailand!

It was so fantastic to see her again and get to hang out for a decent length of time


Then Deb - one of my best friends from uni who also managed to make it to our Canadian wedding as one of my "groomspersons" - found out that her and Kris needed to leave China to reactivate their visa (they've been living in Shanghai) so they decided to fly out and join us for our second week at the park as well!


So what did we do for 2 weeks? Well the days passed blissfully; after a pre-dawn run or yoga session I'd grab a bite of brekky and we'd get started on the chores for the day. Cleaning elephant poo (not as nasty as it sounds, they're like sweet-smelling balls of dried hay!), chopping down banana trees for the elephants to eat, reparing fences etc.

Banana duty - swinging machetes on a vertigiously steep hill


Then a couple of truck loads of fruit come as a daily elephant treat, so we schlep giant bags of bananas, watermelon, papaya, corn, cucumbers etc off the trucks, wash them, ration them out between all the elephants and then feed them, which is a beautiful experience.





Then we lunch ourselves on a range of absolutely incredible vegetarian Thai meals in a buffet which usually resulted in me piling a plate so high that my wrists could barely cope with the weigh of carrying it back to the table.



After lunch it was down to the river to wash the elephants clean, which they absolutely loved. Although they loved even more getting directly out of the water and covering themselves with dirt, or as for the babies - diving directly into the mud pit for a wallow!






In the afternoon we'd hang out and chat, or nap during the hottest part of the day, or sometimes cut more bananas, or go and watch the elephants, before the patented sunset "sit in the river with a beer" until the elephants came down for their evening bath.





Tough life really.