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We spent a lot of time researching places to go and ride on the elephants, those of you who know me well will know I have an obsession (passed down from my mother) with these beautiful creatures. I didn't want to go somewhere that made the elephants do tricks or somewhere that treated them poorly, so we spent hours looking on trip advisor at reviews, and finally settled on Kok Chang, which was only 20 minutes drive from Patong.
We caught a taxi to Kok Chang. As we were driving up and down hills around the coast of the island I felt nervous, but extremely excited, I didn't want to be disappointed by these animals I had spent 22 years loving! When we pulled up to the place I was relieved, there were 3 beautiful elephants, (each about 10ft tall) stood in a large paddock. They were happily stood around eating leaves, cut down from the trees by the workers. We went to the reception area, which was like a wooden bar, and we paid 1000 baht (about £20) each to go on a 50 minute trek. A lady led us over to the enclosure and we met our first elly, she was extremely friendly, holding her trunk out to meet our hands. We then continued up some steps onto a loading bay, we took off our shoes and a guide rode an elephant over and we stood on her to climb into the seat on her back. The seat was padded out with plenty of material so that the metal didn't dig into the elephant's back, our seatbelt was a piece of rope strung from one side of the seat to the other (wouldn't meet any British health and safety standards that's for sure!).
So then we were off, it was a bit funny at first to get used to the bumpy ride, and I'm a little scared of heights so I was holding onto the seat pretty tightly, but after the initial hill climb we got into it and decided to take off our socks so we could feel the elephant's skin with our feet. Their skin felt almost exactly as it looks, but much softer, the skin was dry and leathery, but was extremely soft to touch, it then had coarse hairs that were fairly spread out and very tickly! The guide continued to lead the elephant up quite a big hill, we were in a gorgeous forest with huge trees and lots of shrubs on the ground, our elephant was a little cheeky and wanted to stop every 2 minutes for a bite to eat; the way she swung her trunk around to grab food made us giggle, it was very cute!
We came to the peak of the climb and in front of us was a spectacular view of the sea and parts of the island, at this point the mahout jumped off the elephant and offered to take some photos of us. We also asked the elephants name, she was called Pancake, which was a little ironic since I had been eating a lot of them since being in Thailand. He then asked if we wanted to sit on the back of the elephants head (where they ride usually), this was the quickest decision I've ever made in my life! I slid down onto the back of her neck, it was so comfy and much less scary than riding in the seat at the back, the mahout took lots of photos as we began to descend down the hill, Amelia and I swapped places and she had a go at riding on the back of Pancake's head too, it was an amazing experience. We swapped back again and I rode on her neck right to the bottom, I wasn't even thinking about the height anymore. On her way down Pancake decided to rub us both up against a tree, I think she had an itchy ear, because she then went to scratch it with her trunk and caught my foot, it felt like she had kicked me, I couldn't believe how strong her trunk was!
After we returned to the base, we were allowed to help ourselves to free bananas (picked locally) to feed to the elephants, Pancake had gone for a shower after working so hard on our trek so we fed another elephant for a while.
Pancake came back a bit later and we fed her some bananas to say thank you, and she said thank you back, she lifted her trunk and trumpeted quietly, what a clever elephant!
This was the absolute highlight of my time in Thailand and is probably the highlight of my life, I wish I could've stayed there all day, and the day after that, and maybe the day after that....
- comments
Julie Taylor I wish I could do an elly ride with you Tinks x