Elephant Camp

Yesterday we went to an elephant camp!! During the camp we got to ride a lot, feed, bathe, and play with the elephants! We took a truck for 1 hr and 45 min into the mountains of Chiangmai. When we got there we had a class on how to get on the elephant and tell the elephant to go forward, backward, right, left etc. (But the elephants only listened to the trainers anyway!) 

Bai: Forward

Toi: Backward

Qua: Right

Si: Left

Song: Lift up your leg so I can hop up

Melong: Lie down

Our group

The baby elephant is one year old, so cute! 

She kept trying to steal all my bananas! 

My mom and her friend were on an elephant and my dad and I were on another. Every time the elephant my mom was on got too close to the edge, she would yell "Help!!! Oh no what's he doing now? HELP! How do you say help in Thai?!" but none of the workers would pay attention because they knew she was fine (:

We rode to the river to give our elephants baths, which was about a 45 minute ride. "I thought the Thai massage was painful!" My dad exclaimed as he tried to walk after getting off the elephant.

They are so BIG!

While we ate lunch, tons of chicks and chickens ran around our feet squawking for food. We were eating chicken, so I felt kinda bad, but someone threw some chicken down and they ate it!! :P

No hands!

Walking through the river! As you can see our elephant liked to spray us with any moisture she could find, water, mud, her saliva, (ew) (:

 At the end our elephants gave us kisses goodbye (:

It was a VERY fun time!

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On our way back from the elephant camp, riding in the truck, we noticed a bad smell for a long time that wasn't there when we first drove that way. We all covered our mouths with cloths for about 20 min until the driver finally pulled over. Suddenly, someone said "There is a fire!" so we quickly jumped out of the truck to see that the engine was smoking! Nothing blew up or anything, but we had to wait for 1 hr on the side of the road before another truck could come pick us up. While we were waiting we looked at our arms and saw that there was oil splattered everywhere and some even on my dad's face! Something went wrong with the engine and we all had these black spots all over us. With some soap and water we managed to get most of it off, and after that we got home safely. Thanking God it wasn't any worse than it could have been!!