waiting for baby = riding on elephants

If Southern Thailand means beaches, Northern Thailand means elephants.  Sure, you can find elephants all over thailand, but they're not exactly in a natural environment.  They're being paraded down the busy, touristed streets of Bangkok...or they're plodding through muddy, manmade creeks in beach towns for the benefit of tourists.  It's a little sad, but I guess people pay the money, so whatever.

But in Northern Thailand, they have the best elephant shows, the most (is it really possible?) humane elephant camps, and if you ride elephants, you're doing it through the mountains, through the jungle, through real stuff that wasn't created to be an "elephant show".  

We've done the elephant gig almost every time we're in thailand, but our kids didn't remember much from last year.  So we were excited to take them to a really good place this year.  

We started out with an elephant show, full of tricks that delighted people of all ages at the show - not just the three-year-olds.  

This elephant is actually playing soccer!  It was pretty cool -he could kick that ball really far!
All the tourists go crazy watching the elephants learn to paint.  We were told that japanese, thai and european teachers spend a year and a half teaching them how to paint.  Even though the trainers were the ones putting the brushes in their trunks and changing the colors of paint, it was really impressive watching them.  
Each painting was going for about US$100...times 12 elephants...times 3 shows a day...no wonder they're willing to spend all that time training them!  There were some paintings in the gallery that were priced at over US$1000!  
One of the tricks was this dude getting a "traditional thai massage" from an elephant.  That looked a little like taking your life in your hands to me!
At the end of the show, you could feed elephants as a way of showing your appreciation to them.  We had bought some bananas and sugar cane (for about 50cents) on the way in and were glad we had it left over.  (I'm happy taking pictures and leaving these more manly jobs to hubby.)  Samantha was happy to feed the bananas - though we joked that perhaps in her fave yellow dress, the elephant might have thought she was a huge banana!
He looks happy, don't you think?
Emma handed out the sugar cane...
After the show, emma wanted to find this "baby"elephant (it was her favorite the whole show).  She was delighted to learn that he was three years old - just like her!  - and was distressed that we had no more bananas to get.  
So after meeting baby elephant and seeing all the tricks, it was time for the big event - riding the elephants!  Let me just tell you, in case you have romantic notions about elephant riding - if it were being offered in America, there would be a warning sign longer than the scariest rollercoaster! It is not for the faint of heart, and probably not for the very pregnant either...but, in the absense of safety laws, we went ahead for it.  

Last year, Emma rode with me, so this year samantha and I were on together:
Daddy and Emma rode together:
Mommy and mantha's elephant is in the front of our 4-elephant group.  Samantha thought it was very cool that we were the leaders.  
Then everything switched up and we were at the end.  (Also - there is nothing else holding in those little ones except that bar you see!  There's no hidden seatbelts - and on the downhill slopes, samantha was about to cry because I was holding her so tightly!)
I guess elephant riders make it into lots of pictures!  =)
Ten minutes into the 30-minute ride, Samantha admitted she had had enough and was ready to get off.  It made me glad we opted out of the 1-hour ride!  Soon enough, she was happily off and we were all getting our land-legs back again.  Our tour guide told us we could walk about 10 minutes into the camp and check out the elephant nursery - and see the newest elephant born to the camp.

This elephant is two months old, and unfortunately, could not eat bananas yet.  Emma and Samantha had to be content feeding their bananas to the mama elephant.  They haven't yet discovered that behind every cute baby is a hard-working mama who deserves some bananas every once in a while!
And for sticking a bill (the equivalent of 50 cents) in the trunk of an elephant, the trainers will get them to hang all over you for the craziest picture you ever took in your whole life.  Samantha is actually sitting on the knee of that elephant...
...and yes, that elephant's trunk is rested lovingly on josh's leg.  (I was surprised he agreed to do the picture, but I sure thought it was cute!)
So the day at the elephant park was really fun.  We were all tired and it's expensive enough that we'd only do it once a year, but it was really cool.