So here it is, the highlight of our trip……one week…..working or volunteering at Elephant nature park. An eco-touristic approach to seeing how elephants are treated and looked after in Thailand. We started our week at the central office for the park in Chiang Mai and got a minibus out into the jungle where the park lay. En-route we made chit chat with our fellow volunteers, some were cool but others just overbearing. Our group consisted of 24 animal lovers and lucky for us they were all English speaking. Americans, Canadians, Australians and a few good English made up the composition of our elephant loving rabble intent on giving a hand with cleaning, feeding and general care of the 4 tone beasts!

The daily routine for everyone was a 7am breakfast followed by work at 8am. We worked through till 10am and fed some jumbos after this. Then it was lunch (much to our dismay, despite the vast array of food on the buffet there was not one piece of meat in site!! b******S! Just noodles and tofu with veg etc etc.. WOFT) Then it was back to work or maybe if we were lucky…we went tubing in the local river, a good experience and a chance to relax after a days work. All the jobs were orchestrated and organized by two fine young men, MR MIX and JANE! These lads were awesome and made the whole experience much better! Jane's pronunciation of the phrases ' good volunteer, we go tubing', ' ohhhh jack, you bad volunteer', 'ohhhh so hot, go tubing', 'jack, best bud', 'ohhhhhh so drunk' and 'tonight, big party, Stacey birthday, big party!' kept everyone in high spirits.

Staceys birthday was a much enjoyed day, and Jane and mix certainly sorted us out with a 'big party' The day consisted of a little bit of tree saving, the opportunity to go out into the jungle and tie a blessed orange ribbon around a tree so that it would not be cut down.

A little bit of elephant feeding and then most importantly tubing…. Piling the lorry high with tubes and people in and on top we made the bumpy ride up to the river grabbing beers on route… a fun float down and onto the party… A lovely elephant cake with happy birthday Stacey Howe displayed on it was presented (well done boys!!) and onto the party, needless to say it all got very out of hand as we went onto the sky walk… never have I ever came about followed by bad stories and the introduction of T Pain to the group! Fun times were had, until the 7am breakfast!!

Daily jobs included food prep or s*** shoveling in the morning followed by afternoon duties including dog walking, the moving or elephant poo around a dog pen?? painting and unloading the lorries of pumpkin, bananas and pineapples that arrived daily! This was all done by hand and even jack considered it as 'hard graft'.

The health and safety at this place was none existent and while you would think the most dangerous animals were the elephants, the park was home to around 250 dogs all rescued from towns and flooded areas. Nutty ones that would chew your hand off were identified by a red collar and the worst one had a green jumper that said 'I love mummy' on it. They all had their rabies jabs and were all quite well kept but disputes between dogs were more common than mosquito bites and you couldn't walk 20 meters without hearing some bloody dogs giving ten bags of s*** out of each other!

We are still unsure as to weather it was fleas, bug bites or just a general allergic reaction to the jungle!! But Stacey did experience a severe one…which consisted of her entire body being covered in spots, itchy ones at that!! The vet described it as a common rash but a very extensive one, one he had not seen this bad before!! Needless to say smothering herself in chamomile lotion by the hour and having cold showers as much as possible she battled on, looking somewhat unattractive!! The good new is there finally all gone!! She was very excited to get out of the jungle!!

The final day of the park came round all to quickly, we had seen many DVDs throughout the week enlighten us in the traditions of elephant treatment in Thailand, the abuse they receive and the lack of care or nurture for the elephants. All the DVDs featured and told us the story of the amazing woman that is known as Lek, which means small in Thai! The day before we departed we were lucky enough to meet this admirable woman and be presented with a talk about her story, the elephants story, what she has done and what she hopes to do more of. She was truly inspirational telling us of her continuous daily battles against locals, tradition, continuous court hearings and being a woman! She has an extremely big heart and it was so clear to see her love and dedication to the safety and health and care of these elephants. She has mothered and cared for every elephant that she has saved, all with fantastic stories, whether they were saved from a tribe, logging, the streets of Bangkok, with broken backs, blown off legs the list was endless. We all came away feeling like we had helped her by supporting her beliefs and what she does at the park.

The final closing was a 'big party, good volunteers!' which once again consisted of a trip to the shop to pick up bottles of the local rum and beer, a mass game of ring of fire with uno cards… interesting, all in all very messy times. Somehow it has been filmed, and may be shared at some point especially the fantastic performance of peel banana! … The night fizzled out but not before a rotten pumpkin, elephant poo and water fight…???

And with that we packed our bags after one last pumpkin and pineapple washing session and we were on our way back to chaing mai, an emotional departure from what was a truly awesome group of people who helped make the whole experience ten times better, hoping to meet a few of them on route as our paths cross through asia J

OVERALL an AMAZING WEEK!! J

Good Volunteers x x