World cruise 30M

From Margaret
Phuket, Thailand
Siam Elephant Safari

Well, I don't know that this was a true "safari",but it was an excellent tour, and I did get to ride an elephant. I learned a lot.

We left the port by bus, but transferred to vans fairly shortly because the buses could not get into the elephant sanctuary. Once we got to the sanctuary, we were taken to their meeting area for Thai tea and coconut pancakes. I rather liked both, but I am not sure everyone did. After tea, we had a demonstration of rice planting in the old way – using water buffalo to plow the land, etc. This amiable beast (too fat and comfortable with his easy life at the sanctuary) was quite happy to have pictures taken of him and to haul us around the yard in a "farm" cart.

Next, we went up a hill to learn what spices are used in Thai curry and how they prepare the spice mixture. We got to taste this "jungle curry" and rice – it was quite good. They had packets of the prepared spices that we could buy so I now have some. Then we went to demonstrations on the preparation of coconut milk and coconut oil, followed by rice hulling. The particular kind of rice that they grow in that area of Thailand has to be hulled. The tool used was akin to a very large wooden mortar and pestle operated by stepping on one end of the suspended mortar and letting it drop back into the pestle filled with rice. After 15 or 20 minutes of stomping on the pestle, the rice is ready to be winnowed. Winnowing out the chaff by flipping the rice in a wicker tray is a definite skill set that none of us had. The whole set of demonstrations gives one a real appreciation of the amount of work food acquisition and preparation takes in a non-technological setting – and how good it tastes. The final demonstration was harvesting sap from rubber trees as shown here, and processing the latex into the rough cured mats that are later sold to the natural latex industry.

After this, we went up to visit the baby elephants. Neither was full-grown. One was 7 years old and the other 3 years old – cute as only an elephant can be and quite ready to accept any handouts we could be persuaded to give them.

Each baby elephant is assigned a mahout who will be with her for all of her life – at least that is what we were told. The mahout trains his elephant to do whatever that elephant is supposed to do. The two young men (teenagers) put their charges through their paces for us. After this, they let us touch them, feed them if we wanted to buy a basket of fruit for this purpose, and have our pictures taken with them.

The last part of the day at the sanctuary was a ride through the woods of the sanctuary on an elephant. I had not realized that elephants pace – both legs on one side move at the same time. This gives them a rather rolling gate and the rider sways from side to side. In fact, if we had not had a "safety" bar across our laps, we might have slid right out of the seat as we went up and down the hills.here, again,is the official photo of me on an elephant.

Lunch was at the Red Chili in what appeared to be some kind of resort. Halfway through lunch, a group of middle-aged men appeared in the swimming pool below us for a water aerobics class (at least that was what it looked like). The funny part was the fact that agility and coordination did not appear to be a quality these individuals possessed.

All in all, this was definitely one of the best days.