Riding elephants!

Wednesday in Chiang Mai was off to an early start. We already had our tour booked to ride elephants. we actually have been looking forward to this for a long time! chiang mai is known for this! we also had the thai cultural dinner experience to look forward to that night with the dinner and dancing show. so it was going to be a full day! early that morning they picked us up in a van as they were making their way around to different hotels to pick up the various people who had signed up for the same tour. so, in our van sitting behind us were two girls who looked like they were in their twenties. we turned around and said "hello" to them and they spoke back in english. then i heard them communicating with each other in a different language and finally put my finger on it that they must be from israel! i wanted to lean over to julie and tell her that was my guess. i like to play this game when i travel for some reason. before i could lean over and whisper that, they started talking to us. sure enough, they were from israel. i had to make my israel connection to them by telling them how much i love their country and how special it was to go there in 1999. they were so happy that i had been there and liked it so much. they were our friends for the day. we also had another couple sitting in front of us on the van. they were a couple from holland and had gone on vacation while leaving their new baby at home with their parents. they were fun, too. the man was actually very mysterious throughout the day. he would never tell me his name. so i had to resort to calling him, "Mr. Holland friend." I'm serious, i had to call him by that name throughout the day in order to get his attention since he was anonymous! he loved it, though. we all exchanged contact information by the end of the day. hmm, do i need to go to israel or holland? i think so!!!!! :)
so we got to this elephant camp and a thai tour guide explained to us that asian elephants are smaller than african ones. they are still huge!
the elephants performed a lot of tricks for us during the elephant show. i'm serious, they could kick a ball and play soccer, they could take a paint brush with their trunk and paint a flower on an easel, they could stand on their hind legs and also know how to step over a thai man lying down on the ground. they were so cute! especially the young ones, they had fuzzy hair on their heads still. trust me, i felt it and it ended up not being so fuzzy, it was hard like a rough bristle brush or something.
then it was off to getting in an ox cart and riding in the ox cart up the mountain before we got on the elephants. now, i truly know what it looks like to see a yoke on an ox. i like that the Lord says His yoke is easy even more now after seeing how painful it looks for those animals to carry such a heavy load up and down mountains day after day. we rode with the holland couple in the ox cart. we took turns taking pictures for each other. it was so funny, i made one slip up. the thai lady steering the ox at the front turned around for us to stop and take pictures, i looked up and said, "of what?" and the holland couple quickly chuckled and said, "never mind, keep moving." i can't believe that came out of my mouth. i didn't mean it in a bad way. it just came out so funny. i meant, that we had already been taking pictures and i wondered if we were stopping for something different. anyway, close the mouth, zsila.

then the elephants majestically came up the mountain after we had some time to spend up there waiting for them. they had a few vendors up there selling crafts and snacks. julie and i got on a big elephant and both sat sort of in a box on top of it while our "driver" was merely sitting on the elephant's head without any type of rope to hang on to. he just simply sat there balanced. we were impressed! well, riding on an elephant is not exactly like a horse. the ride is a little bumpier. in fact, at one point i asked, "is this supposed to be painful?" it got better after you get used to the rhythm of it. they move slowly and can go on steep inclines with you still in the box. it was so much fun. then we came upon a river and went into the river! at that moment, our "driver" took our picture by getting off the elephant and down into the water to look back at us. he had me get on the head of the elephant where he had been and julie stayed on the seat or box. i was like, okay? it was so much fun! then he walked beside us for the rest of the way as i sat with nothing to hold onto while on the elephant's head. we switched after a while and julie sat on the head while i went back on the seat. during her ride on the elephant's head, we had to go down a really steep 60 degree incline and she had to hold on for dear life without anything to hold on to. i was holding on for dear life in the box. in fact, i started sliding out of it and started pushing on her. not good, since she had nothing to hold on to. we made it and had no stories of falling off elephant to tell.