Yesterday we went to the Elephant Sanctuary in the hills of Chiang mai. It was an awesome experience and we fully support what 'Lek', the tiny Thai lady that runs and owns the sanctuary, is doing here. Lek is trying to save elephants from the trekking companies here in Thailand because a lot of these companies abuse and hurt the elephants. We watched a very emotional dvd on how the mahouts (the elephant owners) break them in at only 4 years old to make them trainable. Its really awful what these baby ellies go thru and they have no idea why they are being beaten and hurt. Lek brings the elephants to the sanctuary for healing which takes a long time and her elephants are free to be elephants - grazing, bathing and roaming around the sanctuary. She already has 32 ellies but so many more need saving and she's running out of space. So that's where us tourists come in, the money we pay to go there ( and they only allow a small group at a time) goes towards buying more land and more ellies.

And on a lighter note, we got to feed the elephants and walk them to the river and then give them a bath (after which they sprayed mud and dust all over). The baby elephants were so cute, just like naughty human 2 and 4 year olds. Pushing each other into the mud and trying to scatter us tourists by running at us for fun. Always pushing their boundries and making us laugh so much. We would recommend this day tour to anyone coming to Thailand, its so worth it.

Just sitting in Chiang Mai airport now waiting to fly to Vietnam, the next exciting chapter in our travels. Write again soon. nix