Elephant Heaven

You know ... they say an elephant never forgets.
What they don't tell you is, you never forget an elephant.
- Bill Murray

This is a special blog entry dedicated to time in Surin, Thailand, where we attended an round-up of domesticated elephants. Every year in November, this small town in eastern Thailand hosts this amazing event. We feel fortunate to have participated in this festival.

Just another harassing elephant!

We arrived into Surin by train at 6 in the evening on Friday night. As we walked out of the train station, we were immediately confronted with 5 huge elephants, and their entrepreneurial owners wanting to give us rides. At first we just stood there and stared for about 10 minutes. John also spotted one of the owners with a Texas T-shirt on, and had to get a photo with him. Later in the weekend we saw another man with a Texas T-shirt on as well!

Texas fans worldwide

After we checked into our hotel the first thing we did was take a ride. They have these little benches perched atop the elephants that we rode on, and it was quite a bumpy, but slow ride. As we walked along the street, the elephants were competing with the cars and motorcycles for the road.

Patient elephant taxis awaiting...where you go?

The next day our goal was to go to the elephant show at the stadium, but when we arrived all of the tickets had been sold. So we purchased them for the next day and used Saturday as an exploration day for Surin.

On Sunday we woke up early to catch Mass before the show began. We made our way to the stadium, and as we were entering John fed some of the elephants some sugar cane. They like that for sure...sweet tooths just like us! We got some close-ups of the new baby elephants, the smallest only 3 feet tall, with their mothers. During the show we got to see over 200 elephants processing through the stadium and showing off their talents. Some of the elephants painted, but seemed to enjoy painting themselves even more. There were also elephtants hula hooping around their trunks while standing on a little stool. All in all it was just an amazing experience to see all of the humongous creatures together in one space.

After the show we headed back to Bangkok on a tightly packed, sweaty bus for 4 hours and a cooler, spacious bus for 3 hours. We feel incredible lucky to have been able to be at this Thai festival. It was something neither of us will forget for a very long time.

Aunt Jane correctly answered the question about what year it is in Thailand, 2549. Her postcard is already on its way to Washington.

Hope all had a great Thanksgiving. Think of us on November 29th, can't quite remember why though.(JW)

NW