Down by the River....On an Elephant

When people think of Thailand, they often times associate it with beautiful beaches, cheap drinks, and of course, riding an elephant.  Well, at least that's what crossed my mind when my friend and I decided to head to Thailand as part of our tour of SE Asia a few years ago.  Riding an elephant was on the bucket list and it was definitely something that we wanted to do.

After spending about three weeks exploring Thailand’s islands and southern beaches, we finally headed north to Chiang Mai where we enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the night markets and some spectacular zip-lining.  Our final destination in Thailand was a smaller town called Pai, which is where we were hoping to find some elephants to hang with.

My eyes were probably closed

I may or may not be afraid of heights

In order to get from Chiang Mai to Pai, you must take one of the curviest roads in the world.  In fact, it has 762 bends in the short distance of only eight-five miles.  Because the road is so windy, it can take anywhere between three-five hours. I did NOT know this before embarking on our journey.  When we got in our small, jam-packed mini bus, the bus driver casually mentioned that we should probably take some motion sickness pills. Perfect.  I instantly rushed to swallow down some Dramamine that I thankfully had with me. My friend on the other hand decided she didn't need any. Fast forward two hours later....she got sick and I didn't.  Luckily for her we had made a pit-stop and she was able to use the restroom. Needless to say, on a road with this many curves, it's easy to get sick...even if you usually don't suffer from motion sickness.  But that’s what makes it fun, right?!  :)

The next morning in Pai, we rented a motorbike and found a place where we arranged to do an elephant trek. I didn't really know what to expect, I just figured we would ride around for a bit and that would be that.  Little did I know what type of adventure lay ahead of us.

Within two minutes of our ride, I wasn't as thrilled as I thought I would be and was quite honestly ready to be finished.  We were riding bareback (without a chair) and I had nothing to hang onto except for a small rope. I soon realized that I could easily fall off this beast and get crushed! But on we went because I must have been too much of a chicken to ask to turn around.

Not sure how I'm feeling on this thing..

As we continued on, I noticed that we were coming up to a river that did not look clean by any means.  Before I even had time to think about what was happening, that's exactly where our elephant was taking us!  He stepped foot in the river, and decided he needed to go to the bathroom...number two mind you.  So there we were, sitting on this massive elephant, now watching it’s feces float down the river.  This is DEFINITELY not what I had in mind!

  

At the time, what seemed like the worst thing that could possibly happen did. The mahout (elephant keeper) started shouting things in Thai that we didn't understand, and all of a sudden the elephant started to shake us off (similar to what a wet dog would do to shake off water) and even went up on his hind legs!  I tried for a split second to hang on to my small lifeline of a rope but there was no hope.  My chicken arms didn't stand a chance and off we fell into the dirty river. My first thoughts were that the elephant was going to step on us...and I’m guessing that probably would have hurt! Thank God that wasn’t the case and when I finally surfaced I couldn't believe what had just happened.  Here I was in this dirty river with elephant feces, my clothes were now soaked, and I was wondering how I ended up in a situation like this.  The mahouts were of course laughing, so it was obvious they did this with all of the tourists.  Was this something that we had signed up for?  I couldn't remember.  I got back on the elephant again thinking we were finished and would head back. I couldn't have been more wrong.  Again, the elephant shook us off and tossed us into the river.  This happened three times before the mahouts finally had their fair share of laughs for the day and took us back.   

Ummmmmmmmmm

 

Really not sure why I was getting back on this thing

Upon arrival back in our guesthouse, I had the best shower EVER and was happy to be alive!  If you asked me if I would want to relive that day I would probably say yes.  I mean, I would of course never do it again, but you’ve got to try everything at least once, right?! So if you find yourself in Thailand one day looking for an adventure, I think you know what you need to do.