It's Pronounced Babar...

Today, we spent the day at Patara Elephant Farm, where we were able to become "elephant owners" for a day. 

Wary of these amazing animals being exploited for tourism purposes, we did some homework and hoped for the best. 

The good news is that Patara came through and I'd recommend them to anyone coming to this part of the world for a truly unique experience.  

Unique in the whole sense that you get to ride an Elephant.  Doesn't happen every day. 

Sure, these animals aren't wild and therefore it is for tourism, but the humanity shown these animals was far and away better than the treatment I saw in India and better than expected in general.   Patara is also doing their part to rebuild the Elephant population in Thailand that has fallen by almost 50% in the last 40 years. 

The Playful One (Just 14 months old) and son of my Elephant - Watch out for his kicks though!

Megan was the owner of an Elephant named Sue and I was the owner of one whose name I won't begin to attempt. 

Feeding Sue some Bananas, Megan really wanted to make sure she was getting them in there!

Good 'Ol What's Her Name...

We spent the day feeding them massive amounts of bananas/grass/cane/etc, learning about how to detect and keep an Elephant healthy (by all accounts, including the poop test, they were), Riding them through the forest and giving our new friends a bath. 

Sorry for the bathing suit shot.  Hazard of the Job today, and of reading the blog now too!

We even got to play around with a little 5 month old baby. 

It was amazing for a load of reasons, but certainly one of the biggest was that we felt like these animals were actually loved and cared for vs. exploited to make a few extra bucks. 

Sue gave us a nice bath afterwards!

There are a few more pics that the Farm took.  Since I don't have a disk drive (ahhh.. the 21st century!) they'll have to be included in the post trip recap or something!  In the meantime, I'll see if I can get any decent video from the GoPro.