The drive there was pretty long that Happy Gal put a relief band on me. After an hour, we finally made it to the Elephant Sanctuary, and it was really awesome. The elephants weren’t in chains or in cages, in fact the space was so big that they even had some of the mountains. The boy elephants had to be inside a fence because they fight each other and they are really aggressive so the farmers trained them until they were ready to come back into the “wilderness”.
On the drive to the elephants I saw some bananas in bags under our legs and I had a good feeling we were going to feed them and we did. The guide said that he put the bananas in a plastic bag because it wasn’t banana season, so he put it in a plastic bag to ripen it.
Anyways, at the start they gave us some clothes to wear and even a straw hat. The food there was also really good, we had pad thai and fruit. The guide took the bananas out and I was super duper excited to feed them. Their favorite food is bananas and their second favorite is sugar cane. So the people who were with us tried to cut sugar cane and they all kinda failed except for a man who used to be a butcher. After that we went to the grass and started feeding the elephants. One of them was about 60 years old and they only live up to about 70 years old. Their noses were always dripping water and their trunk felt hard and hairy.
Happy Gal loved to put it in the elephant’s mouth because of its tongue. I did not like to put it on its tongue but I tried it and the tongue was indeed very slimy. Then we could hug the elephants too but the guide said “no food, no friend” so the farmers gave the elephant food so we could hug them. Furthermore, we started to shower them but the little one was rolling around in the water and they also pooped in the water so I definitely did not go in. Their poop was giganormous. Happy Gal started laughing and the little one sprayed her. Then Happy Gal laughed even more and the baby elephant sprayed all of us and we were all soaked but we dried off with the scorching sun.
We got dressed in the changing rooms and after that I realized that while my friends back in California were doing school and sports I was in Chiang Mai seeing an amazing temple, climbing a waterfall, and being with elephants. The elephant sanctuary was really amazing, I loved it.
