The Elephant Nature Park... where to start! It's about an hour away from Chiang Mai itself, right in the middle of the mountains. It's probably the only safe place for elephants in Thailand.

on Monday (8th) we turned up at the office after dragging ourselves out of bed at 7am (which is really difficult seeing as we are in such a relaxed routine). We met a few of the other volunteers, became acquainted with the 8 dogs, 5 cats and a chicken that were casually running around the office (all rescued, I believe). We then got taken to the park where we met all of the other volunteers and Egk and Thip... who were hilarious, they were the two guys that were looking after all the volunteers for the week. That day we were just shown around the park, got to bath the elephants in the river and watch a DVD, which was incredibly disturbing... it was about how elephants are tamed, the way they do it is by breaking the spirit of the elephant. For example, one clip showed a 4yr old elephant in a cage no bigger than itself being beaten, stabbed and starved for days on end until they become submissive, you could see the pain and fear in its eyes, it was sickening! This happens to almost ALL working elephants, usually so tourists can ride them! The way they 'teach' elephants to paint is even worse, and more so distressing! I would urge anyone not to do elephant trekking, buy elephant paintings, or go to the elephant show!

Okay, rant over! After the DVD we were then showed to our rooms, which were very open to the elements but thankfully we had a bug net hanging over the bed! we also (thanks to lee) had a few dogs sleep in our room, which was fine until 4 in the morning when the would all start barking for no apparent reason.

The next day we got to work... throughout the week we would work for a few hours in the morning and afternoon. We would cut corn, clean and sort the elephant food, and shovel elephant poo (not as bad as it sounds) Cutting the corn was fun, carrying it on the other hand, was not!!

On the second day, between work, we took a walk around the grounds, which was amazing to be next to such incredible animals. At one point, when we were sitting on a platform, one came over to lee and decided to scratch its head on lee's legs, by doing so it almost crushed him! On another day they took us to the local school where we got to meet all the children, and play football, teach, make bracelets and cook with them... i ended up in a classroom with the 6 or 7 year olds, where they would point out Disney character stickers and insist i draw them... i think i drew about 8 of them, what was funny is none of the children knew what any of the princesses names! Lee spent the whole time playing football.

On another occasion we walked up the river and went tubing, which was a lot of fun! I managed to get some great pictures of everyone too!

I think it was on the last night everyone (bar me) decided to get drunk, which was actually quite funny for me to watch! We met such a lovely group of people there (one who actually lives in Farnham Common too) It was a shame to leave so soon.