Blogging Pubbitch

We've now seen more elephants, by virtue of going to the Thai Elephant Sanctuary near Lamphung. This entailed getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning (though I stayed in bed until 6.30, because I'm fundamentally a lazy sod) and trying to catch public transport to the place. Everything was going fine until we tried to leave Chiang Mai --- the guide books that we have are fundamentally flawed in their descriptions about how to get there. Still, we managed to get past this particular problem eventually and spent a bone-shaking hour and a half on an un-airconditioned bus anxiously peering out of the window, wondering if we were nearly there yet.

We shouldn't have worried: the bus driver ground the bus to a halt just beside some large statues of elephants (not small things to start with) and waved his hands around until we got off, before departing, grinning, waving and ambling into heavy traffic.

A two kilometre walk, and we were in the park, starving. First order of the day was to get some food. This plan was somewhat thwarted because the restaurant was full of people on "home stay" at the place (yes, you too can live and worjk with the elephants, should you wish too) and a bus load of not terribly pleasant Aussies (fat, old, overly loud, etc) After eating we went to the elephant hospital.

It turns out that this was one of the heart-breaking things you can do, because there was a baby elephant there, that they were trying to persuade to nurse from its mother. He had fallen into a hole one night 7 weeks ago, and his back legs were paralysed. Consequently, he was held up in a sling, and looked terribly unhappy and deeply uncomfortable, especially because this is a rare injury for elephants, and the sling, being a make-shift affair, had caused him some nasty bed-sores.

After we made our way out, however, we ran into the home-stays again. They were off to learn how to ride elephants properly, and we were invited to sit and watch them. Of course, we sat and watched in just the wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) spot, just beside a big container of bananas and sugar cane. Now, our previous experience with elephants had taught us that they are greedy animals, constantly seeking their next treat. Holly and I were sitting next to an almost unguarded sweet shop...!

Running out of time now, but suffice it to say, we fed them (covering our hands in elephant mucus in the process), looked at them, stroked them and generally learnt a lot about them. Holly walked away in a happy daze. I walked away gently wiping as much liquid off my hand as discreetly as possible.