Day 10: Elephant Stomping Grounds

December 29, 2024

Today was elephant day and I could not have been more excited. We had to get up bright and early before we got picked up for a long drive to the Elephant Nature Park, a wildlife sanctuary that is home to around 15 elephants. Before we could go, we had to check out this hotel's breakfast. As we have now come to learn, these fancy hotels do not mess around with their breakfasts! We didn't have a ton of time, but we were very satisfied with our choices once again and the view was pretty spectacular as well!

We were picked up at around 7:30 am in a van with a few other folks already on board and one guy who would be our tour guide for the day. The drive took a little longer than an hour not including one stop for gas and a bathroom break and one to pick up another couple.

Our first stop at the nature park was the "Sky Walk" which is exactly what it sounds like - a suspended walkway around a field that housed both elephants and cows and the occasional dog that lives on the property. What became very clear during both this Sky Walk phase and as the day went on, this sanctuary takes its ethical responsibility as an animal sanctuary and rescue center very seriously and tries to limit direct guest interaction with the elephants as much as possible. More on that later.

The Sky Walk gave us a really cool vantage point of the elephants that were mostly being fed by their keepers. Each elephant has a caretaker called a Mahout, who are responsible for the care of their elephant. This mostly seems to mean bringing the elephants food to eat, which is basically a constant request. Our guide told us that elephants can eat around 10% of their body weight per day and the amount of food (specifically bananas and watermelons) that the facility needs to keep on hand at any given time is staggering.

The intellect of elephants was also on full display even from the Sky Walk. As we would walk around the perimeter of the field, the elephants would cut across because they thought we might have food. They also seemed to like playing with us by putting their trunks on the Sky Walk for a pet, and we were both happy to oblige. Their trunks were a lot rougher than we expected, but it was a really cool experience to be able to pet them and as we would learn, this was the only opportunity we would have to do so.

A fun moment from the Sky Walk was being able to watch the Mahouts feeding the elephants watermelons. The elephants would pick up the fruits with their trunks and just when you thought they would crush them to make it easier to eat, they'd stick the whole thing in their mouths and take them down at once! It really puts into perspective just how massive these creatures are.

After we were done with the Sky Walk, we were brought to Cat Kingdom. You may be thinking, "Cat Kingdom sounds like a pretty cool exhibit where they likely have rescued big cats like lions and tigers that you can observe from a safe distance." Well, you would be wrong. Cat Kingdom is obviously an enclosed outdoor pen with probably a hundred rescued house cats roaming around. If you know Em at all, you know that this is her living nightmare. Before we really had any opportunity to understand what was going on, we found ourselves inside Cat Kingdom amongst the cats, who took a particular affinity to Emily that was not reciprocated initially. Eventually one cat found its way onto Emily's lap and before she could shoo it away, the cat settled in and they became fast friends!

We spent way too long in the Cat Kingdom before we piled back into the van and headed to lunch. One thing to note about our day was that each individual part took much longer than it needed to - seemingly because they were stalling to kill time as there really wasn't enough to do for the 6+ hours we were there. For lunch, they had a pretty solid buffet of Thai food that was quite good!

After we finished lunch, we sat around for another hour or so, wandering the main building which had a small souvenir shop and another mini Sky Walk where you could view the rest of the park.

Finally, our guide tracked our group down and led us out into the main park. We had learned during lunch that a flood had come through in early October of this year and done a lot of damage to the property. As a result, there were piles of dirt and construction equipment everywhere. In general, it seemed like maybe they had reopened to tours a little too soon after the flood.

But being out in the park itself was pretty cool. We were very slowly led by our guide from herd to herd. Typically, groups of 2-4 elephants would be together where they were being fed by their Mahout. We had a couple of opportunities to get very close to the elephants to have our pictures taken with them, but again were not allowed to pet or feed them. There were also multiple opportunities for us to buy hand-carved wooden elephant figurines made by the Mahouts (who stood there looking especially hot and sad as our guide guilted us into buying them). A lot of the commentary over the course of the tour focused on how much they needed our money!

You can see us getting progressively more sweaty and disheveled as the day wore on. At one point, we were led to the bank of the river that flooded where two elephants were bathing and seemingly having a great time! We took a TON of elephant pics across our phones and the fancy camera, so I'm going to just put a sampling of those here for your review, but can send more upon request!

Finally, after a lot of slowly walking around the property in the hot sun, it was time to go home. Knowing how long of a trip we had ahead of us and seeing how people competed for the front row of the van going from the Sky Walk to Cat Kingdom, we hustled back to the van to secure the coveted seats and we were on our way. The ride back took almost 2 hours!

All in all, the elephant sanctuary was a cool experience, but we think there was a middle ground of ethical elephant interaction that would've allowed us to interact with them a bit more. For example, these elephants are all fed by hand by their Mahouts all day, every day. I don't think it would be unethical or problematic for us to have been able to also hand them a stalk of corn.

Anyway, back at the hotel, it was obviously nap time for Emily while I blogged. When Emily awoke, she thought it might be a good idea for us to go to the gym. Begrudgingly, I agreed and we hit the gym at the hotel before getting ready for dinner.

We had originally planned on going to a Night Market for dinner, but made another audible after reading about a restaurant called The House by Ginger that we wanted to check out. We called a Grab, which we had much more success getting than last night. The Grab did hit a bunch of traffic as we drove straight through a Sunday Night Market that was packed with people. When we got to the House of Ginger, we put our name down as we did not have a reservation and even though they said we'd have to wait 40 minutes, we were seated in 15!

The food was probably tied for our favorite meal so far. We ordered a ton of stuff, including an appetizer platter, a crispy pork belly and apple salad, fried soft shell crab stir fry, and more stir fried morning glory. For dessert, we obviously had to get mango sticky rice. But again, while still delicious, it still didn't quite stand up to our first experience only a few days ago. We are already mango sticky rice snobs, it seems.

We walked back from dinner through a different part of the city and by the time we got back, we were exhausted and ready for bed.

Tomorrow is another early morning for our last scheduled activity of the entire honeymoon and probably Emily's most anticipated one - the Thai cooking class! We're excited to show off our knife skills and bring back new recipes and techniques and can't wait to blog about it tomorrow! Thanks for reading and leave us a comment!

Love, Max