Day Three.

 Of Elephants and temples.

Where do you start with a day like today?
Step one, buffet breakfast where all of us except Sharon over eat.

We met Jan and the driver bright and early and took our private disco / karaoke bus (inside it's all leather seats and flashing mirrors) out of Chaing Mai and into the hills for our first stop, Thailand's Elephant nature park. This place is a conservation park which cares for and breeds Asian elephants to help bolster their dwindling numbers. Only 5,500 still exist.
As the city thins and becomes increasingly covered in creepers and palms we pass  all manner of tiny family businesses. Roadside vendors selling roasted crickets, bugs, worms, pineapple and bananas streak by in a blur of Longan trees, abandoned buildings and coke signs.

Before long we arrive in the low hills at the Elephant nature park. We had high expectations and were all excited as we had planned the trip from home and Sharon has a real thing for elephants (but who doesn't). Once over the thrill of seeing our first Asian elephant wandering through the trees with its trainer we arrived at a stable where elephants were being harnessed in readiness to lug foreigners like us through the jungle.

We bought tied stems of sugar cane and hands of small bananas for 20 Baht a piece (70 cents-ish) and delighted in feeding them to the waiting elephants, metering the food out to extend the experience. It was really fantastic, us trying to pat them and feel the texture of their trunks while they probed for the next treat.

 

Sharon and her new friend.

Chris' turn.

.. and Ash.

...and Brad.

Soon after the elephants lined up in a procession, the front two holing a pole between them supporting a gong which was hit by a third smaller elephant as they walked. The rest of the conga line linked trunks to tails and walked past us to the show grounds.

The gong procession.

Once there, we were treated to a great little show where they bowed, dexterously picked up their trainers hats with their trunks and showed how elephants could drag and lift and arrange logs all with amazing precision and neatness. It really looked like they took pride in their work. 

Then three of them painted quite amazingly figurative paintings of elephants and scenery. Ashley was sure to line up first to buy this favorite of the three. The stand out performer in the show was a three year old elephant cutie with a chain of bright flowers on her head who did her best to keep up with the larger elephants and painted a beautiful picture of flowers.

Little cutie.

The artist in deep thought creating a painting for Ashley.

After the show we watched as the elephants took to the river and played in the deep water oftentimes dipping out of sight leaving just their trainers sitting on the surface. Have some funny video of that little sequence of events.

Bathtime!

Finally we set off on the elephant ride. We alighted via a wooden balcony that the elephants lined up to in turn. Three elephants, each with a two seater wooden bench, for the five of us. What a fun hour. Our elephants lumbered down an embankment and into a dam before climbing out the other side and following a river bed, crossing it frequently. They have very fine motor skills for their size and navigated the ricks and pools expertly.

Ash heading into the lagoon.

Sharon and Bradley and friends.

I think Sharon enjoyed herself;)

They ate along the way. Chris and my elephant stopped to clear a felled log which cracked and splintered as he heaved it aside. His trainer, sitting without saddle on its head complained to it but it paid him no mind. Later it bull-headedly veered off the path to where a palm grew on an embankment and proceeded to yank it from the earth and carry the thing all the way up the hill, eating it until it was gone.

Dinner on the way.

Sharon and Bradley's elephant was gassy which Brad thought was hilarious and Ashley's elephant ate non stop along the way. What a peasant hour. It sped by.

Lots and lots of shaky footage taken of the ride.

After the ride, we saw how the fibrous elephant dung was cleaned, sterilized and turned into paper for sale as bookmarks and note pads and then onto the elephant nursery where four cute elephants, several only months old stood with their mothers in sheltered pens. Tiny chicks darted between their feet and we bought more bananas to feed them. Such cuties! My favorite thing of the day was how we had to peel the bananas for the tiniest as she couldn't yet stomach the peel. It was like cutting the crusts off bread for a toddler.. just couldn't be any adorable. With their soft trunks, beautiful eyes and coarse hair on their heads, we found it hard to say goodbye. 

Being the off season there were only about thirty other  people  there so it was very peaceful. Lastly we saw some poor elephants in rehabilitation nursing misshapen legs and other afflictions and then we left for Lampang.

Distance-wise, driving to Lampang is like driving to Geelong from Melbourne. It is a much smaller town and we stopped at the Wienglakor Hotel, the town's finest, for a lunch of beef and chicken and vegetables with the obligatory Coke and Beer. Following lunch we hired carriages pulled by tiny horses and trotted, bells jingling around Lampang, following the river and many small shops and gardens and temples.

A fairly long drive for a fairly forgettable visit to a pottery factory was next and to me at least it seemed more like simple product placement than a tour of any kind. We only saw the showroom but it was cheap. Chris bought a neat Japanese looking tea set and Sharon bought some polka-dotted bowls. (which means we also need to buy another suit case). We didn't stay long and left for....

Temple-a-gogo!

I will simply show you some pictures of the temples and the story and importance of each was explained but the names were so complex and there was so much information that even now, merely hours after being there my recall is poor. Still, they were impressively old, impressively large and very, very golden.

The first was the Wat Prathat Lampang Luang, an fascinating place to visit, shoes off and kneeling. We saw a great example of a pinhole camera where a side building developed a hole and the sunlight that poured through threw a projected image of the Chedi (pagoda) onto a sheet and it's now displayed as a marvel. ( a true Kodak moment). The second detail of the second two is sketchy but the dwindling sun provided some nice lighting for us budding photographers.

Sharon with Jan, our guide for these past three days.

The sun was a low, orange disk in the afternoon due to smoke from burning fields.

A nice shot by Sharon.

Trainee monks. Sharon has to be careful of them because if a girl touched them, it would be bad for their continued monking.

We saw three temples, the last in the town of Lamphun as far from Chaing Mai as Lampang. It was almost 6:00 by this time and 10:00pm by our body clock and we all were a bit muddled by the temples and keen to get home to rest.

Chris Ash and I walked the night market again and now it's late and I;m tired of writing. Sorry this is so wordy but I do like these things as a record for us to remember things later.

Goodnight,

Glenn