Elephants!
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2008
1
37
38
Trip End
Sep 28, 2008
Surin,
Thailand
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The Surin Elephant Round Up is an annual event in which dozens of elephants trained in the arts of being awesome gather in the town of Surin in Northeastern Thailand.
The baby parade came first with all of the new borns that year coming out side by side with the mama's and their mahouts (Thai handlers) and just generally being cute and awesome.
The Surin elephants, unlike a lot of elephants in thailand, are not part of the logging industry, and so live a pretty sweet life of learning tricks and being fed and petted and loved by people.
The elephant talent show was a big wowzer! with elephants painting flowers, one playing darts, the handlers were making a baby elephant try to do a handstand which instead just looked like elephant-donkey kicks - funny enough in itself. Others were hoola-hooping and standing on little things like in the movies.
There was an elephant tug of war in which this massive elephant took out about 60 men - multiple times. It was cool to see him straining as they added more men. but victorious he was. The elephant soccer game was by far the greatest with a real 11 v 11 match complete with goalkeeperes, uniforms, referees, and a giant sized soccer ball. Occasionally an elephant would pull out a sweet soccer fake or pick it up with his trunk...one even pulled out the "i-have-four-legs-so-i'll-kick-it-with-my-back-legs" move and finished up with a bow to the cheering crowd in a display of proud modesty.
