Treking Through Koh Phangan

With a much needed few days of rest and recuperation, my mom and decided to venture out and do a Safari Boat adventure that was set up through a tour company. The tour group was apparently was the largest group they had ever had, which explained why it didn't go as smoothly as expected. The tour was supposed to include elephant trekking through the jungle, snorkeling, visiting a Chinese temple, three different beaches, and lunch. Since the weather here has been pretty overcast and windy (we are thinking because of the full moon and the storm that is blowing in from China) we didn't get to snorkel and we couldn't get to the beaches that were only accessible by boat. It wasn't a big deal that we missed the beaches though because my mom and I were simply tickled pink by the elephant rides.

There were three female elephants, one was a 7 year old baby elephant, and the elephant camp was located up in the hilly part of the island. It was actually run by northern Thai's (you could tell by the design of their huts) who imported the elephants to the island of Koh Phangan. It was an entire family of elephant trainers that have been training elephants for many generations. To my mom's delight there was a shim that lived in the elephant camp as well.

Right when we got there they encouraged us to buy a bushel of bananas to feed to the elephants. As soon as these elephants (who were only chained with a little metal chain wrapped around their ankle) saw the bananas they reached out for them almost grabbing them out of our hands with their trunks. I've never been this close to an elephant ever, except for once when I was little I rode one at seaworld with about 10 other people. The skin of their trunks felt like rough hairy leather and they were kind of snotty. hahah, it was so fun! They even made elephant noises when they wanted more food. My mom and I were the last people to get to ride them through the short jungle trail. We of course wanted to get the biggest one, so we stood on top of the rickety loading platform to wait our turn. The trainers didn't help anyone mount the elephants they just pushed the elephant up against the platform and motioned you to step onto the elephant and sit on the two-seater open bench. For anyone who is wondering what the bench was like, it was about the same as a two-seater chairlift with no safety bar and much less padding. Mmmmhm, really safe... So once the trainer had taken a picture of us on the elephant alone, trying to get the elephant to stand still, he climbed up with a lift assist from the huge creatures leg and trunk and then situated himself on its neck. To our horror, the trainer had a thing that looked like a tiny, fairly blunt icepick that he used on the elephants temple just in case it didn't listen to him.

My mom and I were having a grand time just sitting on the tiny open bench, wobbling back and forth on our hungry elephant as he grabbed branches and uplifted tiny trees for a snack while giving us a ride. Then the trainer jumped off and motioned for me to sit on the neck, no assistance needed, while the elephant was walking I quickly crawled onto its neck and rode it bareback. I felt like a model because the trainer kept telling me to smile as he took pictures of me awkwardly trying to control the animal, my mom was clutching to the back of my shirt to the point of getting white knuckles. Quite amusing. The elephants neck felt very weird, oddly human actually except for the fact that it felt like a wire brush against my thighs, and it was kinda sweaty. Hmmm, we both smelled great afterwards to say the least. My mom turned out to be the expert elephant rider though, she hopped right on its neck after being egged on by me, and tapped the back of its ears with her feet just like the trainer. She even went so far as to imitate the Thai words the trainer would grunt at the elephant, I wish I had captured it on video because of course my mom sounded like a cartoon character with her high pitch squealing and giggling and grunting. My mom was so good at controlling the elephant that the trainer let her ride it all the way back as he strolled along 10 feet in front of us, just taking pictures and relaxing.

The whole thing was so unsafe in so many ways, we were laughing about how this kind of think would never ever be allowed in the United States. It was a very personal experience though and we really loved it. I forgot to mention that while we were waiting, we went over to the resident shim and chatted her up for a while. Right off the bat when we asked her where she was from she told us then added that she was a "lady-boy" my mom smiled and said "I know! You are very pretty", she laughed appreciatively then wanted to show us around the village. We later watched a monkey on a rope climb up the palm trees and spin ripe coconuts off of the tree. Over all a very great animal encounter for us.

The rest of the Safari Boat trip was a bit underwhelming. Many of the people we were touring with were girls that wore dresses and cutsie sandals... apparently they didn't know that they would be getting on a speed boat without a cover to protect them from the soaking sea spray, or that they would have to hike up to a waterfall, or really that they would have to lift a finger. Overall, they really slowed us down. But my mom and I chatted up the guys running the program to keep ourselves entertained. One of the men was Slovenian and he had come here on vacation, being somewhat of a vagabond in his early teen years, he decided that he didn't want to leave. So this was about his 4Th year here and like many of the people we have met at restaurants or tour guides, they can't bring themselves to leave.

After the adventure day, my mom and I spent our last day on Koh Phangan and took a ferry to Koh Tao first thing in the morning. I of course didn't learn my lesson well enough the first time and didn't think of taking a seasickness tablet. Luckily when we were all settled on the top level of the boat, there was a local that was hustling for a Scuba Diving company. He was loaded with plastic bags and Tiger Balm, helping out the majority of people vomiting the whole way there. Lucky for me, the Australian man who was with his seasick wife gave me a tablet and I just sat back and enjoyed the humour in watching all these beautifully tanned tourists vomiting all over. It was just as scary as our first ferry trip, just a newer boat. My mom was alternating between squealing out of the excitement of the ride and panicking. Just another adventurous day!