Elephant trek

The one thing I really wanted to do in Thailand was to do an elephant trek in the jungle. I had heard you can do them in Chiang May which is in the North and I was planning on going. We however happened to see a lot of brochures that highlighted elephant trekking in Phuket.

We booked a half day excursion and were stoked about doing something cool on Phuket... or so we thought.

We arrived at the tour place and I could tell it was a tourist trap of crap! I think it cost them about $200 to put this place together- there was nothing to it and what was there was not even run down, because it would have had to have been nice at one point ot be run down... it was just a dump! The tour was suppose to cover a lot of ground and include a lot of fun activities, I soon realized it was all to be done in this little center... what a rip-off!

We first rode elephants. Now the picture showed people doing it in the rain forest... we did it next to the rain forest but not in it. It looked like it was in the process of being cleared land for development... it was bumpy with some ditches and such; it was not the back drop or conditions I was expecting! We even went through some garbage at one point. I got to ride the elephant but I felt like I was at the zoo. That's what this place was like, a petting zoo.

Next was the monkey show. They had a monkey take coconuts (that they tied up to the tree) out of the tree. I think it was supposed to be educational on how the monkeys get the coconuts free, but it was not an impressive show. We didn't even get to hold the monkey.

The elephant show came next which was even more stupid. I can't even remember what they had the elephant do. At the end though they had Danielle get up and lay down on her stomach.... they had the elephant stomp (lightly) on her back... I once again didn't see the entertainment in this. Kris then had to lay down and they shoved bananas on the sly up his pants.. so the elephant went to get the bananas up his shorts, through the bottom to make it look suggestive and a horrible thought of bestiality... I thought it was corny and predictable trick.

Two things made this very expensive tour worth it...

1) A rice field tour. Well, it really was a man made tiny replica of a rice field on their premises... but the explanation of how rice is rice was given and I was blown away by the presentation. It was really cool to see the plant in different stages and how they get the rice and have to separate it from the shell like stuff. I am sorry I don't have more information on this. I didn't have my notebook with me and have since forgotten all of the cool facts on rice. I think I need to google it.. you should do the same, it was really cool!

2) Rubber Tapping. We actually got off the premises for this and drove to a random spot off some road to a dirt road. We had to walk in the forest, just a few feet to the specific tree. This is one way you can make rubber... you take a spacial tool that reminds me of a cuticle cutter (the ones that you just run over the cuticle and it comes off, kind of like a half circle shaped shaver). With this tool you run it over the bark of the tree in a downward slope. The bark comes off and almost instantaneously white sap comes out. The sap dribbles down the tree and is collected in a cup for three hours. You can only do one slit at a time per tree and it is done in the wee hours of the morning due to temperature, light and general conditions.

Once the sap is collected it is put in water and mixed with some other liquid that I didn't understand what it was (Thai tour guide with very broken english). I can't remember how long it stays in the liquid, sorry folks. The sap was sticky to begin with and after this process has now hardened and is put in a roller. It gets squished out like a lasagna maker and then put in water again. It then gets squished out of a finer and textured roller. The last step is hanging it to dry on a clothes line for two weeks. It turns brown and becomes rubber!

Those were definitely the highlights of the tour and I wish we could have ended on a high note. Nope... we were off to a canoe trip in a... well I am not sure what you would call a body of water like this. I guess it was a narrow river, very calm though. We got there and all loaded onto a long boat that took us down the river. There was nothing spectacular to look at and the river had these contraptions along it that caught muscles. We went about 5 minutes in the boat when we had to get into our canoes. John and I got into our canoe and we were told to paddle back to where we came from. It took us all of ten minutes and we were completely dumb founded by this activity. I still don't understand the point of it.

Oh and the brochure also said we were going to go on a 4x4 safari ride... that was the transport from the petting zoo to the tapping tree and then to the canoe. Rip off?!

The last stop they also managed to fit in time to bring us to two gift centers. One was a pearl store (I did see some magnificent pearls) and the other was a gem store. Wow... they had tons of precious and semi precious stones of all shapes and sizes. I admit it, I loved this stop and totally regret not buying the most beautiful aquamarine... the prices were cheap, really cheap and the goods were certified. Oh well...