One of the first things my boys bring up when asked about their Thailand trip is the elephants. Right after playing with tigers at the tiger temple we headed to an elephant camp.
Our guide, Kung, had requested that Full Moon be reserved as one of our elephants because she is so "naughty." We learned that the translation of "naughty" meant that if you were riding her she would dunk you in the water and if you could still hang on after going in the water she would shake her head side to side until you fell off. It was akin to riding a mechanical bull with the river as your foam mat to fall off onto.
She also liked to have water fights...probably because she won all of them.
Mick is a huge animal lover and he and Full Moon bonded. I think if the mahouts had invited him to stay and live in the jungle with Full Moon he wouldn't have come home with us.
The #1 thing that made our trip so unique and enjoyable was Tour with Tong. They are a private tour company...meaning it's just you (& your family) with a guide and in our case a guide and a driver. Our guides were fabulous. Not only did we get the best elephants or tigers to play with, they took fabulous pictures of us, they took us to their favorite restaurants, they taught us about Thai history, culture and the current political race that had piqued our curiosity. They bought us all the local fruit that we wanted to try and they would stop along the side of the road to purchase special Thai desserts that you can only get in the region we were in. The van was always stocked with ice water and cold wet towels to wipe away the sweltering heat. They came highly recommended and completely lived up to all the hype.
We took 4 tours with them.
We had Jerry for the Buddism tour in Bangkok. I'll do a separate post on each of these tours.
Nang showed us the old capitol city of Autthaya and the area around it. Kung took us to the Train Market, Floating Market & Fisherman's Hut on our 4th day in Thailand and then she took us to the Bridge over the River Kwai, Tiger Temple, Elephant Camp and Erawan Waterfall on our 5th day.
Our driver, Rodger, was fabulous too. Bangkok traffic is a nightmare at rush hour and he know all the back alleys and streets to get us through that congestion.
