Chiang Mai

this post is all about ELEPHANTS!
first some catching up - arrived in CM 2 days ago - only 2 hours late = 16 hours on the train so not so bad. only had a fan seat so soooo hot during the morning (we arrived at 2.30). found a nice guesthouse only 450Baht for hot water and a swimming pool!
Yesterday I wandered around this walled/moat city and saw a few of the temples that are dotted around - there are over 300 in this city. beautiful outside but a little underwhelming inside. however i am fascinated by the monks. what do they do? why? on friday a local temple hosts a 'monk chat' with monks from the local monastic university so maybe i'll go to that.
yesterday evening i went along to the night bazaar, a couple of streets lined with stalls selling lots of tourist tat and fake brand names, but also some nice stuff too (although none of it i could see a local thai buying, so very tourist orientated) - there's so many westerners here.
now onto today - instead of going for the usual hill tribe trek/elephant ride/bamboo raft trip, i decided to go (at huge expense compared to the other options) to what was described as a 1 day Mahout course (a mahout is an elephant guide/carer).
got up very early this morning and was picked up and taken the 1 hour to the park, north of CM.
we started off the day by feeding the elephants, there were 31 in the park all 'rescued' from one thing or another by the parks founder, each one had a special basket and you had to hold out the food (stood on a platform) for them to grab with their trunk. quite messy eaters. then after our lunch we walked with them down to the river where their real mahouts got them to lay down and we all waded in and threw buckets of water at them and then started scrubbing. after a while of their own volition they got up and wandered away, and we went to see the big male, who was now in Must (like being on heat). we then watched a National Geographic documentary on the founder of the park and the conditions and trauma that domesticated elephants go through before being trained. some not very nice scenes of Thais being horrible to elephants to get them to be docile. i'm not sure i agree with the park's founder that no elephants should work at all; however some laws regarding training and living conditions would help. currently they've got no more rights than a cow, despite being an endangered species.
anyway, the elephants then got another wash in the river before we came home. all this was pushed along by a very nice but heavily tattooed american lady who had been there a long time and was obviously very into her elephants. there were also volunteers there who stay for several weeks and help do all the mucky stuff.
right, tomorrow i'm doing a cooking course so i'll let you know how it goes on saturday. i'll also let you know the website address of the elephant park so you can have a look.
charlotte