On October 28th we went on another trip, this time to the north of Chiang Mai firstly to visit a butterfly & orchid farm and then onto see "The Elephants at Work".
Sorry no pictures of Butterflies they were just too quick for me, the majority of the orchids were bare rooted getting nourishment and liquid from sprays above and below.
On to the the Elephant Camp, there are 5000 elephants in Thailand over 3000 are in camps where they are trained and protected. They were all well cared for and looked in very good health. This Camp was mainly a tourist attraction with the elephants giving a show followed by a one hour ride in the jungle (which we declined).
Here the elephants were being washed before the performance, downstream a few yards were two people with large baskets catching the elephant dung, this was used to make paper which was very good because the fibres are broken down.
The performance involved the elephants picking up various items to show their dexterity. They also worked as a team to move large teak logs around and stacked them in a pile. At the end it turned into a bit circus act with them playing football, blowing mouth organs and painting!
After the performance you could feed the elephants with bananas and sugar cane, for 20 baht you got a bunch of 10 small bananas. They said that they eat as much as 250 kgs of food a day and it seemed that we were the ones providing the food. They even eat the coconuts people had as drinks which included the shell!