Dalat, Day 1 - Elephant Ride

From lunch, a private car picked Kathleen and I up and we were off to our hour-long elephant ride!

Growing up, elephants were my favorite animal. I collected toy elephants... had hundreds of them! I still have a select few of my favorites stored in my parents attic in NY. I somewhat remember riding an elephant at the Buffalo Zoo when I was little... but I think it was just around a little circle. Going on this tour, I was excited to see what this elephant ride would be all about.

It's funny - once the day began, Kathleen and I really enjoyed the tour - it was great! But still... we had to just go with things. After lunch, the group tour kept going but we were picked up by some other "private car". I have no idea how these two tour guides are connected - I don't think it was the same company... but somehow they knew to pick us up and take us to ride the elephant. We kept asking along the way, "You're taking us to the elephant ride?" Or... "We will do the elephant ride and then a boat ride this afternoon?" ...Just trying to make sure we were somewhat on the tour that we paid for... the new guide assured us that we would go on a boat ride and an elephant ride... and we just went with it.

We arrived at a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains... we waited a bit and a small boat arrived to take us to the elephant ride. The ride to the elephant was great... beautiful, nice to be out on the water, and cool enough to wear a sweater.  :)

Our boat to the elephant! 

Just gorgeous.

Hello! Hello!

A five-star hotel.

Our 'new' tour guide took some great pictures... some of the pictures coming up of Kathleen and I on the elephant were taken by him.  :)

The tour guide pointed to some land with great looking wood and straw buildings and said that was where the elephant was. We got off the boat and began climbing up this hill with very cool buildings and beautiful greenery...

Then... we were told that the elephant was ready! Yahoo! Here's a short video clip of me walking up to the elephant (I held myself back from skipping!)...

I really enjoyed the elephant ride. An hour wasn't too long... but long enough. It's an experience that will be very special to me but I don't necessarily need to do again.

I'm so glad the handler treated the elephant nicely. Some of the other teachers I've talked to have told stories of the elephants being 1/2 starved and the handlers hitting them and not treating the elephants nicely (most of these stories were from travels in Thailand, where I think elephants are more prevalent). Anyway - I was relieved that this handler was nice and seemed to have a friendship with the elephant. He did have an iron cane, which he raised a couple of times as if to strike the elephant... but never did... thank gosh. Each time he raised it, I winced and kind of made a "Nooooo" sound!

Kathleen and I were laughing when, a couple of times, the elephant would be walking into a thick part of the woods and walk right up to a tree... and just pushed the tree over! The strength was impressive and it was so funny how the elephant would just take the tree out... "I didn't like that tree anyway!" it seemed to say.

Below are a couple videos of the ride (not super impressive to watch probably but still pretty cool I think)...

"I don't wanna be on an angry elephant!" haha

(The handler made grunting and humming noises to communicate with the elephant... and he never spoke a word to us.)

At one point, the handler got down from the elephant and motioned for me to give him my camera - alright! Then he even let me crawl up onto the front of the elephant where he usually sat... my dream!! (Well, my dream was really to bond with this elephant and have the elephant adore me... but I guess I'll take what I can get haha.) It was pretty awesome... I didn't want to move to give Kathleen a turn! ha.

And... some more photos from the ride...

When the ride was over and we had gotten off, I took a cute video and some pictures of the elephant up close...

I loved when the elephant put its nose straight out!!

BUT our tour guide told me to be careful and not get to close. He was saying something about the elephant being mad... not liking color... I'm not sure what he means but Kathleen and I both think he might have been saying that the elephant does not like the color of my hair and if I got any closer, it might not be good news! (So much for bonding with the elephant!)

We bought some sugarcane sticks to feed to the elephant once the ride was over. That was fun too.  :)  Seeing its nose come towards you and curl around the stick was very cool.

And another video:

Very, very cool.

Then we hopped back on the boat for the ride back and the car dropped us off at the hotel.