... that we went to Thailand: day 5

Tuesday was the day I was most excited for: ELEPHANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Matt and I booked tickets to tour the Ran-Tong Save and Rescue Elephant Center. We did a lot of research and decided that this seemed like a very humane center for retired/rescued elephants that treated their animals well and seemed like a ton of fun! They picked us up early in the morning and the hotel was even nice enough to pack a quick breakfast to go for us! We drove about an hour out to the reserve and had a short walk down into the small valley where the elephants lived

Our guide's name was Nancy and the first thing she did was give us our elephant riding clothes.

Hawt.

Then we had a little class on elephant commands

Most of which I promptly forgot. But it didn't really matter anyway, because Nancy told us that the elephants only really listen to their mahouts. Each elephant has their own caretaker called a mahout, who walked along side us the whole time we were riding and made sure the elephants were behaving. They weren't mean to the elephants at all, just there to keep them on the track. They also held our phones and took tons of pictures while we were riding, so it was fantastic!!!

After our vocab class, we met our elephants and got to feed them bananas. My elephant's name was Satian and Matt's was Comoon.

Pretty soon it was time to mount! The mahouts had the elephants lie down, and we just pulled ourselves up onto their necks! Nancy told us that they have patrons ride bareback because it is easier on the elephants than wearing a harness or a basket. But it sure was a little unnerving to be sitting that high up on a giant animal with nothing to hold you in! Also, elephants are surprisingly hairy! My elephant had tons of really coarse hair on it's head that was very scratchy!

We rode the elephants around the little valley and back to the camp for a little water break.

Then we walked the elephants over to the edge of a little river. Satian was standing on the edge looking in... And then she walked right in! I was not expecting it! Then I realized that the mahout was yelling at me to jump off of her, so I jumped into the river next to her. She immediately laid down and started rolling around, splashing water all over herself. The other elephants jumped in the river too and the mahouts threw us all bowls to bathe them.

It was AMAZING. Absolutely surreal to be chillin in a river with a pack of elephants. Totally scary at first, but incredibly cool. After the elephants were nice and clean, they climbed out of the river and we mounted them again to take them out into a field for feeding

This high five pic was Matt's idea. He's a nerd.

After we fed the elephants, we took them back to the enclosure for a few more pictures.

As we were walking among the elephants, Matt whispered to me, "I think an elephant may have stepped on my foot." I looked at his foot and gasped: it was cut and bleeding. I started to cause a scene, but Matt told me to be quite and insisted that he was okay. He said that he had felt his elephant's foot coming down on his foot while it was standing up in the river, so he yanked it out as quick as he could and it just scraped him a little. He had been walking on it for the last 30 minutes without saying anything to me about it, so I figured that he was probably okay. He wasn't limping too bad and he did NOT want me to let anyone there know what had happened, so I decided to just let it go. But seriously, who has an elephant step on their foot? Matt Harrison, that's who.

Anyway, after we finished hanging out with the elephants, we rinsed off in some showers, changed back into our clothes, and they fed us a lunch of khao soi before taking us back to the city. It was such a fun morning and something I will never forget!!!

After cleaning up back at the hotel room, Matt asked me if there was anything else I wanted to do on our last night in Thailand. And I started to FREAK OUT: I realized that outside of our cooking class, we had not eaten a single Thai dish the whole time we were there!!! What were we thinking??? Matt and I both LOVE Thai food, and we hadn't eaten any of our favorites! I started panicking thinking of everything I wanted to eat before we left! How could I have let this happen? I immediately walked to the front desk and asked them where the best place to get pad thai was. The lady said we should go to the Chiang Mai Gate Night Market for good food, then looked me up and down and asked, "Are you afraid of street food?" NO WAY!!!!! Matt might be married to his little guidebook, but I'm not afraid of food poisoning!

We waited for the night market to open, then took the scooter down to the south gate. The street was lined with all sorts of food stands galore! We walked along for a bit, but it seemed pretty sketchy... most of the stands were selling unrecognizable masses of pre-made noodle dishes in large bins that had been sitting there for who knows how long. I was getting worried, then Matt said he thought we were in the wrong area and pointed across the street. On the sidewalk next to the river were tons of food carts!!! We ran across the street and walked right up to a little cart where this lady whipped me up the freshest, most delicious plate of pad see ew I have ever had in about 5 minutes

It was delicious!!! I was thrilled!!! And I couldn't wait to eat and explore more!!!

As we were walking, I caught a glimpse of a sign out of the corner of my eye that said "Rotee." I remembered that Jake had mentioned something called a rotee and said it was delicious. I had no idea what it was, but I was determined to eat it. I walked up to the stand and saw a bunch of stuff on the menu that I didn't understand. But there was something that said "banana chocolate," and I figured you couldn't go wrong with that! So I ordered a banana chocolate thing, and the guy at the stand asked me if I wanted it with egg. Egg? What is this thing? The guy took one look at my confused face and said, "Don't worry, it's good!" So I said okay!!! He then proceeded to slice a banana into a crepe, pour a scrambled egg on top, fold it up and fry it in a vat of butter, then drown the whole thing in chocolate sauce and sweetened condensed milk.

It was probably the most delicious thing I have ever eaten in my life.

We walked around the market a little more and Matt decided to get a plate of shrimp pad thai that was also delicious

"Does it look like I'm making out with it?"

After we had stuffed ourselves, we decided to go to another night market on the east side of the city that Jake had told us about: the Anusarn Night Market. It was less food and more souvenir shopping. We looked around, but the stuff they were selling was not as cool as the handmade crafts that they sold at the Sunday Market! This stuff was definitely cheaper and mass produced. but it was fun to look around and explore. We bought a couple more little trinkets and limped back to our scooter exhausted.

We love elephants and night markets and good food!!!!!