After our historical day at Hell Fire Pass, we decided to spend the next day doing something a bit more light hearted; we volunteered with elephants. We heard about Elephant's world off a boy in Bangkok, and when we looked it up on tripadvisor, we found that it was the number one attraction. Elephant's world is a sanctuary for old and abused elephants, many of which have lost their teeth and can't eat normal food any more. There are lots, and I mean LOTS of places in Thailand offering elephant trekking, but a great deal of these places are unethical and treat the animals really badly. For example, they hit them with metal spikes, feed them badly, make them carry tourists on their backs all day on wooden seats (their backs can only hold 50kg comfortably). So we decided to opt for an option that was a little more expensive than your average elephant trek, but a lot more rewarding. We spent the day on a big farm with about 10 elephants, where we worked for them, gathering banana tree stalks, making sticky rice (for them to eat because they have no teeth), feeding them and finally, the highlight of the day, bathing them in the river. We all chose an elephant (I asked for the most gentle one and they gave me 'Mali - the world's happiest elephant) and Jemma got John - a 5 year old, very naughty and playful elephant. I went into the river first, on Mali's neck, with the mahoot (the guy who looks after the elephant) behind me. My mahoot was only about 15 but he was lovely, and very caring with the elephants and I felt safe. We went into the river on her and she kept submerging herself in water and blowing it out of her trunk. Her ears were flapping constantly (which apparently means they are happy) and at one point, she even did a big trumpeting sound out of her trunk, which means she was very happy. It was great fun. I stayed on her the whole time and she was very gentle. John on the other hand, was not so gentle with Jemma. She had great difficulty getting on him in the first place, he kept wriggling around and blowing water. When she finally managed to get on him, he dipped under and threw her off, and also wrapped his trunk around her leg and kicked her at one point! I remember looking over and seeing Jemma behind this elephant, clinging to his back, whilst he put his hooves up on another elephant! I shouted over for her to be careful - if he'd have tipped over backwards she would have been squashed! She loved it though, and they said that he was just playful and loved to mess about in the water.
Jemma riding off on Mali
After a while, we rode the elephants out of the water and back to the farm, and I let Jemma get on Mali to give her a taste of what it was like to ride on a good elephant. When we got back, we said goodbye to the elephants and then we were dropped back at our guest house. We had got along quite well with the people there who were volunteering with us (2 English, 1 Danish and a Swiss girl) so we arranged to meet them the next night to go for food at the night market.
The water was beautiful
The next day, we got up early again, and took a motor taxi (a motorbike, with a little carriage attached to it) to the bus station. We then caught a public bus, for £1, to Erawan national park, to see, what we have been told, are Thailand's most amazing waterfalls. On the bus, we met a Dutch girl and two Belgian girls, who asked to come round with us. So, we all set off together, and climbed to the 7th tier, which took about 45 minutes. By the time we got to the top we were so hot, and got straight in for a swim. The other tiers were lovely to look at but they had loads of fish in them (the kind that nibble your feet and eat the dead skin), so we were a bit too scared to get in. The second tier seemed to be a popular one for swimming, and although it still had a lot of really big fish, we got in for a swim and swam under the falls. There were monkeys in the trees above our heads (the biggest I've seen), that would occasionally come down and steal people's food, even though people had been warned not to bring food! After we had had enough of swimming, it started to rain, which was a nice coincidence and we were glad we had come early and missed the rain. We all got some food and then got back on the bus to Kanchanaburi, which took about 2 hours. That night, we went out for food (in the rain, so we skipped the night market), with the people from the elephants and the Dutch girl from the waterfalls. We then went to a few bars and had some drinks and played pool.
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