TRIP DAY: Monday, November 7th, 2022
POST DAY: Wednesday, Nov.9th 7:00 AM GMT+7/ Tuesday, Nov. 8th 6:00 PM CST
I could honestly say yesterday was my favorite day yet. Yesterday was a very long, exciting, adventurous day that I never finished the blog for day 5. So today you're getting both day 5 and 6. My day started with elephants and ended with tequila.
This morning, waking up in the hotel, I was able to get breakfast from the buffet that they had downstairs. We had an early start and we had to leave the hotel by 8:00 AM in order to get to the elephant sanctuary. Once we got into the van and we headed up to the elephant sanctuary, I decided to take my edible that I brought with me to Thailand. Now, please put a pin in this part of the story because it's an important factor for later. I had this edible since I left the states trying to figure out when I was going to use it because I was unsure when I would be able to find more edibles in Thailand. Spoiler Warning, I eventually did find more.
Nevertheless, lets get into the story for today 😊
EF GUIDE:
Visit an Elephant Sanctuary + Optional Home Hosted Dinner
Elephants are the grandpas of the animal kingdom, with their adorableness and little hairs atop their head, and you get to spend the morning with them. Hang with them in their natural habit
Elephant Sanctuary that we visited was Up in the mountains of Chiang Mai. The row together was quite windy and very steep very similar to the road that we took yesterday to get to the temple. However, this time around, not only did we have road to get through, but we also eventually had just dirt roads that we had to travel through. At this time, I decided to take my edible in hopes that I
gave it enough time for it to hit while we were going to look at the elephants. We got to the end of the road. We still had to climb another 1 1/2 mile to get to the actual location of word sanctuary begun. In order to get to the sanctuary, we had to hike through the local tribe. This tribe is located on a rice field. As we were walking through, we were able to see the people harvest the rice from the grains of the field. It was
cool to see them pounding the rice bundles onto a plastic tarp, and that tarp is where the rice grains were collected. They will then take that plastic tarp and sift out the rice from the small particles of hay. There was also a very sketchy bridge that was just made out of old trees and tree planks in order to get over the little river creek to get to the sanctuary. Once we arrived at the sanctuary, we were able to see a very beautiful view of not only the rice fields but also the River Creek in the endless forest that the tribe has ownership of. Before we even went on the walk we were able to use the bathroom and it Amazed me to see how strong the plumbing was and then having actual physical toilets up in the middle of nowhere for foreigners can visit the sanctuary. I'll say this, they have better plumbing than most areas in Chicago. And where? In a very developed country. But I digress. Once we got debriefing from our tour guide. On what to expect when looking for elephants, it was then made clear to us that we will be traveling literally through the jungle and into the elephants’ habitats to see them in their wild state. The elephants on
the sanctuary are all Live freely and are in the wild. They do each have a caretaker that allows them to manage where the edge of their territory is and make sure that the elephants do not put themselves in harm, but other than that they are not captive. They are not forced to do anything or eat anything that they do not want. The elephants are truly in a free state to live as they please. In the elephant groups here, there were four elephants, a grandmother, a mom, and her daughter and then one other elephant. Now, once again, to get into where these elephants live, we had to hike through so much dirt and mud and trees, good thing I had on my pants. I did not have a long shirt on. However, I did put on bug spray and I did not get as many mosquitoes as I thought I would. So, the hike for me altogether was actually a comforting experience. Too bad my Apple Watch died so I was not able to track my actual workouts of hiking for this, but I will. I'm pretty sure I burnt a lot of calories and worked a lot of steps because we were walking for a good hour and a half.
Now, even though these animals are big and beautiful, I had a near death experience in my opinion with these creatures today. One of the rules that the tour guide told us before we start was to not make loud noises. Loud noises not only scare the elephants but attract you towards their area
because they are curious to see what is going on in this defense mechanism. Knowing this everybody in our group tried very hard to make as little noise as possible. However, there was one person who ended up dropping a water bottle. In the process of dropping that water bottle, the elephant herd, the noise started approaching the group. I happen to be in the back of the group. This was also the path that the elephant decided to take when they heard the noise. As I am standing there realizing that the elephant is walking in my direction, I did not have enough time to fully move forward out of the elephant’s path. the elephant eventually gets as close that is she wanted to reach out her trunk and hit me she can. I literally froze with fear because I knew she would rush me on impact if she wanted to. It did however make for very beautiful pictures, so I’m glad I had that. Also remember, my edible still did not hit at this point as it was approaching 3ish hours since I took it. After the hike, the sanctuary provided lunch for us and after lunch we were able to see the elephants up close as well while they ate their snack/lunch, sugar cane.
After lunch, it was time to head back two options of places you could go, one was if you signed up for the cooking class to learn how to cook or you could go back to the hotel and relax until tonight. The regional plan was for me to head to the cooking class, as I did pay for this in advance. However, my body had other plans. Remember when I said that I had had an edible and it still had not hit yet, even after an entire truck to see elephants? Well, the edible decides to hit once I got into the car. So I knew I would not make it to the dinner to my heart to cook. So I decided to go to the hotel. Taking the car ride down the hotel, with all the winding roads and sharp turns was really inexperience. Having my own edible hit that hard was something I was not prepared. I was so high that I ended up going back to the hotel room and sleeping in the end that that sleep helps so much. After about two hours of sleeping, I got up and went down to the lobby for lunch from the hotel. Please note when I got back to the hotel I was supposed to write and type my blogs however make any high had other plans and was too sleepy and relax to tired typing. Later that night we went to market where there were several amazing things to purchase and endless booth. I did end up at the cannabis booth to purchase another edible for the ride to Phuket. We got to the market riding in a Tuki Tuki that had no doors to close so we were just riding around hanging half way out the window
Overall, my day went well amazing by seeing the elephants up close and personal. I had never seen elephants that close personal. Amazing experience just to be stupid high in another country, barely making it through. Chiang Mai is definitely one of my favorite places to be and I will be going back there in the future.
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