In Thailand, again...
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
1
191
272
Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Chiang Mai,
Thailand
Friday, June 6, 2008
I first heard about the Elephant Conservation Center in the planning stages of the trip, through another travelpod member entry. They offered a three-day mahout training course that allowed you to work with elephants. This was right up our alley. Back then the price was expensive, but not bad.
When we were trying to figure out our plans for the tail end of Southeast Asia, I went back to look at the website. It turned out that the price had increased quite a bit, a combination of rising price and decreasing value of the dollar. We went back and forth over whether our dwindling stock of cash could take the hit, then decided to go for it. I made a reservation for the 10th of April, right about the time we would be in Chiang Mai. I got a short email back saying that the elephant camp wasn't doing the course during the month of April because it was too hot for the elephants. A crushing blow to my carefully laid plans. We couldn't do it while we were passing through Thailand the first time. Since we had already committed to Borneo, we couldn't shift things around that fixed date.
We still really wanted to do it though, despite everything. And it turned out our flights to Africa would be cheaper if we flew from Bangkok and not Jakarta. So we purchased tickets leaving from Bangkok and then squeezed in three days to run up to Chiang Mai and do the course. He still wasn't being cooperative. We could choose any dates on the reservation form, but he only gave us the option of dates before and after the ones we had chosen. So I juggled the schedule again, paid a ridiculous amount of money, and finally reserved the elephant camp for the 7-9th of June.
So that's why we're all the way up in Chiang Mai. To play with elephants. And to use lots of Internet since it was scarce in Indonesia.
~Travis
