I started my week of volunteering with over sleeping. I managed to get up really early, too early, in fact, to check out of the hostel so I thought I'd lie down on one of the sofas and wait for 7.30 to come before paying up and then getting a tuk-tuk to the office where I had to sign in at 8am. I finally managed to open my eyes again at 8.03am so it was a bit of a mad rush to get to the office. They hadn't left without me and there was still people arriving so I think I managed to get away with it! :P

The first day was spent working us in slowly feeding, bathing and getting to know the elephants and showing us films of how domestic elephants are mistreated within Thailand. In the evening our group all met up to get to know each other before the real work started the following day. Our morning chores would differ between cutting corn (difficult on the muscles), washing food for the elephants (difficult on the attention span) or mucking out the elephant shelters (difficult on the nose) after that, depending on how long we had before lunch we could either feed the elephants or relax on one of the many benches at the park. Lunch was some of the best I've had so far in Thailand- there must've been over 40 dishes to choose from so the first couple of days everyone just piled a spoonfull of everything onto their plate and then strugged to finish the mountain of food!

In the afternoon, we would do any chores around the park that needed doing, and one of the days we went on a walk to meet all of the elephants and hear about their backgrounds. The elephants never failed to provide entertainment for us. On day when we were mucking out the elephant shelter and our coordinator had gone to empty the trailer we noticed on of the elephants starting to get closer to us. We'd been told if the elephants mahoot wasn't around to just move out of the elephants way when they get close. This was OK just we were backed up to where the fence was. Luckily there was a break in the fence that we could get though but it was only after the elephant followed us through that it wasn't us the elephant was after but rather the bag of food that had been stored under one of the huts. At this point the mahoot noticed his elephant was missing and came running over, she turned around and went back into the park but not without taking the bag of food with her and I swear she had a cheeky smle on her face when she got back! One of the volunteers managed to take a video of one of the baby elephants escaping for the enclosure that they are kept in over night and trying to cause as much disruption as possible before being caught! It's on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AqJlK0xO1Y&feature=channel_video_title

I thought the first few days were tough but they were about to get tougher. We signed up at the beginning of the week to the 'elephant jungle' where we were told that they had bought an old coffee plantation that they were converting back into rainforest and needed help with potting, planting and general help to get the place contructed. This turned out to be a day of manual labour and trench building followed by a long ride back to the park in the back of the open air truck during torrential rain. we all thought the day had been very mis-advertised and knew this was the case after the way the volunteer coordinators laughed at us when we arrived back looking like drowned rats! :D Still, it was a very good team building exercise and we spent to evening telling the group that were supposed to go the day before but couldn't because of the rain about all the hard work they had missed out on!

Our final full day was doing chores in the morning as usual but at lunch time we packed our bags with enough stuff to last a night in the jungle and set off along the road. Along we way we were joined by three of the park elephants- Joika who was blinded by her previous owners, mai pong who is Joika's best friend and doesn't leave Joikia's side for very long and Hope who is one of the few elephants in the park that haven't been through 'the crush' which is the training process that the elephants get put through when they are about 5 or 6 to 'break them in' Hope was too quick for us to keep up with so we let him go ahead and caught up later. We were happy to stick with the girls as they were travelling at a much more leisurly pace. It was really nice to see how Mai Perm looks after Joika. We were walking alongthe road for the first 30 minutes and Joikia scared herself by hitting her head on one of the metal signs while grazing at the side of the road. Mai Perm was right by her side as soon as she made a distressed noise and was probably the only thing that would calm her down at that moment and did the same a couple of other times on the way up to the jungle where we would stay for the night. Some of the slopes where quite slippy so both the elephants and us had a bit of trouble getting up them but it must've been almost impossible being blind. Mai Perm had a wooden bell around her neck so Joiika always knows where she is and helped Joikia find her way whenever she got into any trouble. After a few more hours we got to the place where the elephants would be left to roam around the jungle as they wanted for the night and then sat down for a cup of tea and biscuits. We sat around the camp fire listening to stories about the elephants and then when the bugs got too much, split into two groups to play cards under our mosquito nets. In the morning, we had to find the elephants and then walk with them back down the mountain to the park where we would also be packing up and heading back to Chiang Mai in the afternoon. On the way back we were each given a strip of orange cloth that had been blessed by monks to tie round a tree on the way back in order to try to help stop the deforestation in the jungle. Buddists believe that if there is a sacred cloth tied around the tree, the tree also becomes sacred and that bad luck will fall on anyone who cuts the tree down. so hopefully, with all of the extra clothes tied round trees, the jungle should last several more years for all of the elephants to enjoy!

The park was an enlightening experience, I'd definately recommend visiting if you're every in Northern Thailand, Once you've been there, you'll never want to take a ride on the back of an elephant again. After a couple of days in Chiang Mai to get Laundry done and a bus booked, we were on our way to Chiang Khong to cross over to our next stop- Laos!