Hello there,
Today, like all the days in Thailand, was an exceptionally magnificent day, but perhaps today was a little bit more magnificent than the rest. And you can probably guess from the first photograph why.
Today started at the beach where the wind was still wild but much more game than the day before. We soaked in the sun then got soaked by the sea.
After our short beach trip it was an early lunch at Baan Siam where we treated ourselves to fresh mango juice which was quite delicious.
After lunch we went to the hostel for a shower and nap before getting picked up by our tour company at 1:30 in the afternoon.
Today's tour took place in the mountain jungles of Phuket at Siam Safari. Our first part of the tour educated us on traditional Thai culture. Our tour guide for the day was amazing, her name was Au, she was adorable, hilarious, sweet, smart and had impeccable English.
We were treated to coconut pancakes and the most tastiest and most sweetest Thai coffee (like Vietnam, they use sweetened condensed milk).
We learned how they used to use the Asian Water Buffalo to plow and harrow the rice fields. The Asian Water Buffalo can live to be 30 years old.
After our coffee stop we learned about the rice industry and how to harvest rice. The average Thai person eats 100 kg. of rice per year.
Our next lesson was all about coconuts and how to make coconut cream and coconut oil (this was an exceptionally tasty lesson).
After the coconut has been husked the shave out the meat, which is then pressed so that all the cream is drained from it and then it is boiled until the oil separates from it.
We then moved on to the curry station where we were taught how to make authentic Thai curry (double yum).
Next we learned about one of Thailand's largest export industries: rubbed. If anyone out this is like me and didn't know how rubber was made you'll find it fascinating to know rubber comes from the sap of rubber trees.
They tap the rubber trees the same way we tap maple trees to get the sap from them.
Rubber trees must be tapped at night because that is when the most rubber can be excreted from the tree (during the day it's just too hot). Because they have to tap them at night they wear little head flames to see and to scare away scorpions.
The rubber is then added to a ratio of water and acid and pressed into mats or moulded into bricks which are then exported and can be remelted to be re shaped.
The last part of our tour was by far the best part and the part of our trip I had been looking forward to the most.
This was when we got to ride elephants.
Unfortunately in Phuket you're not able to directly ride the elephant but it's still pretty amazing to be up there on top of these incredible, beautiful, and strong animals even if you're sitting on a bench.
M
I'm used to riding horses everyday who are much smaller but let me tell you, horses walk a whole lot faster than elephants. We rode through the jungle trails with 9 other elephants and it was rather evident these girls were in no rush to go anywhere (the Siam Safari uses only female elephants due to the more even temperament where males are often more difficult to train and control).
At one point in the tour one lady spilt a couple items out of her person, but not to worry, elephants have exceptional trunk control and one of the kind elephants was able to pick up her lipstick off the ground and pass it to her (my heart melted at how adorable and precious such a massive animal could be).
This lady turned around to wipe her snot on us and we were more than happy to oblige.
It was such an unreal experience to see how gentle and accommodating these giants are (not going to lie, it definitely made me homesick for my saddle and the back of my horse).
I'm not kidding. This was all the food they made just for me.
Dinner concluded our tour and we headed back to our hostel where we freshened up and then headed out into Karon for some deep fried ice cream (om nom nom).
We both got Oreo. It was fantastic.
We took our ice cream to the beach to listen to the waves of the crashing sea and as a bonus watched a local Thai man catch a puffer fish accidentally on his fishing rod.
That concluded another amazing day in Thailand.
As always, thanks for following along and prayers for safety and health are always appreciated.
-mo
