Thailand

For Eric and Jared and I, it was good to now visit a place we’re familiar with. We lived in Chiang Mai 15 years ago, and both the girls were born here, although they were very young when we left. We celebrated Gianna’s 17th birthday with a nice dinner and longtime friends. It was a joy to visit with our old friends here, some of which we stayed with, and they let us use their car.

There are fantastic tailors here, so Jared had a custom suit made. He will wear this regularly when he works as a DJ for weddings and other events. Eric also had some custom shirts made. We talked with the shop owner for some time, and I was impressed with the number of languages he speaks on a regular basis. He was raised in Burma and his parents are from Nepal, so he speaks Burmese, Nepalese, Thai, English, and German.

Certainly, the highlight in Thailand was visiting the elephants. And I say visiting, because we really spent time interacting with them. At the elephant sanctuary, we first got to feed some adult elephants together with a 3-month-old baby. The baby was adorable, and very active and playful. She liked pushing people around, and she especially loved coming over to us visitors and taking our flip flop shoes off. One time she came over to Jessica and wrapped her little trunk around Jessica’s leg and tried to take her flip flops to play with.

These full-grown elephants can weigh about 4 tons, so we quickly developed a healthy fear of them. The Mahouts (elephant caretakers and trainers) taught us some Thai commands that the elephants understand, like “ma” (come), hao (stop), and “didi” (good). We learned how to examine the elephant’s skin, tears, and excrement to determine how healthy they are.

We also learned 3 different ways to mount and dismount the elephant in order to ride it bareback. It’s important to NOT sit on the elephant’s shoulders, because that’s not comfortable for them or for you. The Mahouts explained that it works best for a male person to ride a female elephant, and a female person to ride a male elephant. They don’t know why that is, but they have found it just works better.

Each of the kids rode on their own elephant, but Eric and I shared riding on a huge adult female. Gianna rode like an expert, while Jessica rode comfortably on her smaller elephant, and Jared and Eric and I struggled to get comfortable on the 45-minute ride, with the Mahouts walking alongside. I sat on our elephant’s neck and continually felt like I could fall off any minute, especially when going downhill.

The best part was when we reached the river and got to go in the water with these majestic animals. I loved hearing one of them trumpet! We scrubbed and washed and rinsed them, which they really seemed to enjoy. Then they sprayed us with their trunks, and we took pictures together.

We could see these animals are well-taken care of and are thriving here.