What a nice way to wake up this morning. Gradually coming out of a great slumber to the sounds of elephants 15 feet away, shuffling around, trumpeting and slapping their trunks on the ground. They were raring to go for the day, and so were we.
I saw one of the elephants coming out of the infirmary pen that has a short rear leg due to a land mine. So sad, but very cool that she can have a productive, happy life in this sanctuary.
After breakfast we went for a nice walk to visit the ladies and babies who had now become close friends of ours! Some were eating breakfast, so we could approach very close and get some hands on contact. The keenest member of our seven person group is Robin - all she wants to do is touch them, feed them and talk to them - she is a natural born animal lover.
Here's the little super girl in her element...
It's really cool seeing the relationships between the mahouts and the elephants. All of the mahouts are Burmese refugees. Lek has given them a job, provided housing, healthcare and education for them and their families, and employs their wives in housekeeping and food prep. According to Apple, it's a great place to work and they have very little turnover and very few problems with employees. Sounds like Costco!
The park also has a huge herd of buffalo, who cross the elephant field area twice a day while visiting the river.
We continued down the river to watch two packs of nannies surrounding their young charges - the 2 year old "naughty" boy, and the four year old girl, Dogmae, which means flower.
It's funny how we could get so close to the adults, but occasionally, the babies would come close to us, then it was time to clear out. Usually, we'd see one of the nannies come at us to make us move away. The mother is always close to the baby, but the baby usually also has three or four nannies with different roles - watching the baby or watching outwards on different sides of the baby for outside threats. There is also usually a nanny that stays apart from the group to get a farther view of the baby. It's quite interesting.
One of the nicest moments of watching the elephants is their time in the water - it's so cool to see them really play with each other.
After an hour or so, we continued on to walk around the male pens. Each male has a very large area where they live (they can't live together!). Even the mahouts for the males have to be very careful when they enter the enclosure, usually only when the elephants are feeding. Apple cautioned the Dutch couple one time as they were getting a little close to the concrete enclosure fence, even though Jungle Boy, the largest of the elephants at the park, was fifty meters away. She said he can really charge at people, running close to 25km/h and that he was not very friendly. Sure enough, as soon as they backed away, he approached us with a small log gripped in his trunk, and threw it at us through the slats in the fence. Just being 15 feet away behind the enclosure wall, our heart rates were definitely elevated.
We had another task before lunch. Some of the elderly ladies were on their last set of teeth (they have six sets over their lifetime). In the wild, when they lose their teeth, they die. At the sanctuary, with special food, they live much longer. We fed two old ladies some watermelon with most of the outer peel cut off, so it would be nice and soft on their teeth. The trunks are so amazing and this time we were very close up and felt so comfortable being near them.
On the way back to lunch, I saw the "back office" where all specialized food prep for the elephants takes place. It is such a well oiled machine. With the the amount of food required every day, it's amazing to see the logistics of it all in action. Lek has agreements with all the nearby farmers that they grow 100% organic, pesticide free crops. In turn, she presents them with an insatiable customer base that requires all the watermelon, corn, tamarind and rice they can grow.
Our growing teen has an insatiable appetite, so she is loving this delicious vegetarian buffet.... Though I think she could have fit a few more spoonfuls of food on the edge of her plate here...
Dogs are always around - this one camped out on my foot so we couldn't leave and had to play cards while he had a nap.
We had a little break after lunch, then it was back at it. We still had a few key tasks to do this afternoon before we left. The first was to give the ladies a good bath. This time, we were in a more private setting, away from the day trippers. Abby loved the bathing part - really getting into it, throwing water and trying to get all the mud off.
With half our group on one side, and half on the other, some of the splashers got quite aggressive. The girls got pretty soaked!
After we finished washing, we had a little distraction to do. In order for the day trippers to get a chance to see the baby boy, we had to distract the number one, over protective nanny of the baby. Usually she will not let people get near the baby, but she wasn't so diligent as to not be distracted by a basket full of watermelon. Still, she seemed to want to chow down very quickly and get back to her task.
Our last task of the day was to feed two really old ladies. They both had no teeth, and they required a special treat that was easy to chew and digest. We were tasked with going thorough thousands of green bananas to pick out the riper, softer yellow ones.
We peeled the bananas, and Apple added rice, rice flour and a little coco powder and we started mashing up the concoction with our hands. Beth really loved getting her hands in there, mashing the bananas up and getting all slimy.... Not. But the girls did love it!
You can see the volunteer food prep schedule is pretty complex - and this is just for the weekly volunteers, not the full time workers.
Here are the completed sweet rice balls! It's funny to think about these old ladies eating their sweets. Beth was talking about how her grandmother had a banana split every day for lunch when she was in her eighties.... And why not?!
We were able to go right up to the old ladies and push the rice balls into their trunks. Apple was quite happy as one of the old ladies that had gotten out of the infirmary and hadn't shown much interest in food started gobbling down the rice balls.
As we were packing up and ready to leave, I notice Lek sitting at a table looking after some dogs. I went over and introduced myself and eventually Beth and the girls came over and we had a long talk. She really impressed upon the girls that they had a voice and could be very powerful with social media. She tasked them with a mission in Sri Lanka, so they are definitely focused on that. Lek also introduced us to her husband - a Canadian former firefighter from the East end of Toronto - he seems like a great guy and was very active in the hands-on business of the facilities at the park. Lek is such an inspiration and you can't help but feel changed after meeting her.
The ENP was a quick, easy addition to our trip highlight list. The list is getting pretty long, and I don't like playing favourites, but it must be close to the top of the pile. What an all round adventure - fun, educational, relaxed, inspiring and we always felt like we were treated very well.
A drive home wouldn't be complete without Robin's head sagging down to her chest. She is either big energy, or sleeping :-)
We got back around 5, collected our bags at our old hotel and walked 500 meters to our new hotel. I can't even remember why I chose to do two hotels, but it worked out in the end. The new place has a pool, and we had a big swim before getting ready for the evening's activity.
Sometimes I feel like I'm hamstrung a bit with the camera (for our real pictures :-)) and phone (for blog pics and videos), so I chose not to bring them on our walk through the Sunday "walking street" night market. I kind of regretted it tonight, but oh well. The walking street is a set of two intersecting streets, the main one being about 1.5 km long, that closes to traffic every Sunday night and turns into a full on market. What's special, and a little unique, about this one is the way they intersperse the really varied vendors with food stalls and some entertainment. I don't think we've ever stayed in a market that long before - it was so relaxed! Abby bought a cool black and white painting, Beth got more scarves (Jesus!), both girls bought rings and Robin got an elephant painting. We have a full, big box to mail home tomorrow ;-)
More importantly, on the food side, we had (you can guess which parts were the girls....): Cow soi (a Chiang Mai dish that is basically chicken, vegetables and noodles in a bit of curried broth, similar to Ms Ha's Cao Lao in Hoi An), pork gyoza, pork dumplings, Phad Thai, stir fried noodles, sugar toast on a stick, a chocolate fudge brownie (ding dong!), yaki onigiri (flame roasted rice on a stick), mini donuts (ding, ding, ding!) and mango fruit shakes.
What a day, what a night. We will all sleep well night!
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