elephants everywhere

Dear travel journal,
This morning was an early one. Dana and Nadine got picked up at 6.30am as they were headed out to an elephant park somewhere to play with elephants for the day. The rest of us net at 7.30am and went down to a little local cafe for a quick breaky and then left at 8.30am to head out to FAE (friends of the Asian elephant) elephant hospital. These guys are said to be the first elephant only hospital that treats sick and injured elephants and then return them to their owners when they are well, for example after giving birth, eye infections, bloat etc. Or they keep them long term and retire them if they are not able to rehabilitate them. For example they have 2 elephants that are missing parts of their front leg from stepping on land mines that now have fitted prosthetics. The first of their kind in the world. One with a now deformed foot that does not require amputation post land mine incident, an aggressive older male who doesn't like people or other animals, and a premature little man who is now 6 but they are concerned about long term health implications. Elephants are usually pregnant for 18-24 months. This little man was born around 15 months and was too small to even be able to suckle from mum so he was bottle fed on goats milk. He is developing a bit slower then he should. Mum was taken back by the owner and he is now living in the hospital. He is a healthy looking cheeky little thing, but they are constantly monitoring him for changes. They have enclosures in which they can move around and during the cooler parts of the day they give them long leg chains and let them have free time out on the grass areas. They always have a leg chain on for the safety if the elephants and the keepers. Elephants can like up too 90-100 but the common age these days with like people are more like 70-80. They currently have 10 elephants on site. 5 permanent residence and 5 inpatients. They have 15 staff in total including 2 veterinarians. After the hospital we headed off to the conservation park because we were interested to see the difference between 'hospital and rehabilitation centre' and 'conservation centre'. But the hospital and nursery were closed today and none of use were interested in watching the elephant shows. So back into town we headed. We walked down the road from the hotel a bit and had some lunch and then were picked up at the hotel for a river cruise. Just euan, Nicola and myself this time. Its good that everyone feels that they can head off and do their own thing when they want to. The river cruise was awesome and better yet we were the only 3 people booked on it. The guide was lovely and the little cultural village we stood at was beautiful and the fruit they gave us tasted amazing. We also tried 4 different types of juice, tamarind (the nicest), ginger, lemongrass and longan, which had very interesting flavours and on one wall they had a list of he different remedies for common ailments. It was very cool. All along the river were people fishing, kids swimming and the progression from old to new was so obvious. It was an awesome relaxing afternoon. Some more down time in the arvo and a team meeting at 7pm to talk about what's happening the next few days and we headed off back into town and the market place for dinner. After dinner we headed down to the Sunday night market past all the bars and lady boys and small market stalls. We even saw a nice old car parked in front of a fancy hotel. The markets where insane. There were people absolutely everywhere. Everyone kind of split off into two. Dana and I got henna tattoos. I got a dream catcher on my right forearm and she got a lotus flower on the inside of her left wrist. Then we walked around chatting a little before meeting up with everyone else. On the way back to the hotel Micheal and I were playing a game we created called spot the lady boy. As you can imagine its easy to play. We walk past a bar front with people sitting all in a row out the front and we guess lady or lady boy. Its quite entertaining really. Once back we all crashed cause it has been along day. Night xoRead more