Phuket: Relaxation Central (Part Two)

After a couple of days of R&R at the Indigo Pearl, Michael and I were ready for a small adventure. In thailand, elephants are the national symbol, and lots of resources are devoted to maintaining and protecting elephants from all over Asia. Thus, there are many programs which offer elephant treking as part of these conservation efforts (i.e. funding).

Before the trek, we watched a short show presented by some of the younger elephants at the elephant training center. The men in red shirts are called mahouts. They are the elephant's trainer and personal care givers. Traditionally, they stay with the elephant for their entire lives and travel with them wherever they go.

After the young elephants performed, we had the option of purchasing baskets of fruit to feed them. Check out the eyes on the littlest elephant. Do you think she likes fruit??? I literally couldn't feed it to her fast enough. She was taking it directly out of my basket by the end!

We treked on this elephant, Kra-jeab, for about an hour. The mahouts name has 15 letters, and I'm not even gonna try...

After our treking adventure, Michael took his turn at rewarding our elephant with some fresh fruit, but the darn guy kept trying to eat his camera too! (Hence, I don't have a very good active shot, and you'll have to settle for this posed shot instead.)