Wednesday: Elephant kisses part II

We were all pretty excited for this day, even though us Africa ladies had already been to an elephant reserve. But first our trekking guide joined us back at Lisu Lodge to take us through the surrounding Lisu village. He brought us to a shaman's house (witchdoctor/spiritual healer) which I was looking forward to. However, yet again, it was a little disappointing. The tour guide talked the entire time about what the shaman does when someone in the village comes to him while the shaman and his wife looked on. They literally sat there staring, not understanding the English and with nothing to add or demonstrate. Like I said, a little bit of a let down. But then it was on to the elephant nature reserve.

The park was started by a tiny hill tribe woman named Lek, which means small in Thai I think. Once there we were able to feed two elephants and look around the massive reserve before lunch. The two elephants we got were best friends, Maedo (mae=girl, do=limp) who had had her hips broken in a forced breeding program, and Maelenna (don't remember what lenna means) who was completely blind. Poor Maedo looked completely crippled and had an awkward, painful looking gait which really broke our hearts. She also preferred to eat bananas and refused the squash we offered her.

Maedo's hips (and Megan creeping)

Then it was off to lunch, which was a gigantic vegetarian buffet, complete with huge plates. Challenge accepted. I took a little bit of everything at the beginning, only to fill my plate before I hit the noodles. I had to pile those on top. We had all gotten a little overexcited and ultimately couldn't even eat a majority of the food we'd gotten. I blame the large plates. But I'm pretty sure they gave the scraps to all the dogs.

One thing I loved about this place was that it had also recently developed into a dog shelter. There were massive floods in Bangkok not long ago and they opened up a shelter for all the stray dogs that were displaced. Most were deformed in some way, missing eyes or legs, it was so sad. But they were just roaming free with the elephants and volunteers. It was quite the scene. If anyone is looking for a dog, there are hundreds and they're all fixed, vaccinated, and being adopted out.

After lunch it was on to what we were all waiting for: bathing elephants in the river. We got two new ones whose names I don't remember, and with our buckets we splashed them incessantly with river water. I got hit a few times in the face by someone on the other side of the ele throwing their water a little too high. Mae and our guide stood on the shore and took pictures for all of us, each with 10 cameras hanging off their arms.

Finally we finished our time there by going to visit Lek. Our guide led us out to the middle of a field where a small herd of elephants were circled around an older baby. There were people with cameras around it, and once we got close enough we saw that Lek and another woman were sitting under the baby's legs singing to it. It looked like Lek was being interviewed for something by the other woman, then they took pictures of her sitting with the herd. We were all quietly watching from a distance, a line of falongs in the middle of the field with cameras in hand. I hadn't been much for touristy "take a picture of me with an elephant!" photos all day, mostly because I already had some. But as we're watching this herd eat around Lek and the baby, the guide walks up behind me, takes my camera and says to me "this is a great shot, turn around!" And she was right:

Immediately after this a mahout brought up one of the elephants to give us kisses. Everyone for the most part got nice, dainty cheek, neck, even forehead kisses. Then she decided to eat my face. Elephant makeout. This picture is getting blown up and hung on a wall as soon as I get home.

Full contact

It was amazing to get back to the Imm Hotel in Chiang Mai and take a properly hot shower. I scrubbed all the mud/elephant poop off my feet and now I almost feel human again. I'm headed back out to the everything restaurant for a chicken burger and fries (don't judge me, Thai food for the next week after this) then I believe we'll go back to Zoe Yellow. This time I will be extremely careful of curbs.