January 14, 2011 ELEPHANTS!!

Today we visited the Elephant Nature Park outside Chaing Mai and it was amazing!  The elephants were rescued from all sorts of horrible situations.  Some were abandoned once logging was banned, some were being abused, one had been hit by a car in the city while being used to beg, one had been an amphetamine addict because they were feeding her them to make her work 24 hours a day.  Each of the 32 elephants had a story.

In the morning they picked us up from our hotel then drove us out to the sanctuary.  We were introduced to the animals, given instructions how to feed them, allowed to wash them in the river.  They fed us lunch, told us the elephants' stories, let us hang out at the wonderful facility.  There were dogs everywhere, one horse in a separate field, a herd of cattle, at least one cat, a bear (we didn't see) and a pair of sloths that only come down at night.  It was so amazing to see the elephants just walking around, doing whatever they want.  One of them wandered into the field where the cattle were even.    This was definitely one of the highlights of our trip!