Elephant Encounter

To most people Southeast Asia means beaches, cheap everything, sunny weather, temples and elephants. Today we got to command elephants, ride them, feed them and wash them in the river.

We did a lot of research to try and find a place that was nice to their elephants and was more than simply riding elephants in a circle. We found a place that was owned by a German and run by people in Laos. We were picked up in the morning and taken out to the Elephant Sanctuary.

The elephants are taught their commands in Laos so the elephants only understand Laos which meant that we needed to learn some Lao to command the elephants. We learned these simple commands:

We learned how to climb onto the elephants by grabbing their right ear and then telling them to raise their right foot so we could climb onto it and then pull ourselves onto the elephants neck.

I got a little bit stuck

We then rode around on the elephants neck, with the real mahout on it's back to make sure that everything was safe. Here is a little video of me riding the elephant around.

After that we rode the elephants around for a bit which was a lot of fun.

Then we fed the elephants sugar cane and bananas. Some of the elephants would take the bananas in their trunks and then put it in their mouths where as my elephants wanted me to put the bananas straight into her mouth.

The sanctuary has a total of nine elephants and they are all females. We were told they have all females because they are easier to control and cause less problems.

After the elephants were all covered in banana mess we rode them down to the river and gave them a scrubbing in the river.

Overall it was a good day spent with the elephants, learning about and playing with them. They are really amazing creatures that need to be protected. See all of the rest of my pictures from today below: