Day 22 - The. Best. Day. Ever.

Today was up there with one of the best days of my (I think our) life.

We went to the Elephant Nature Park, which is in Northern Thailand, just outside Chiang Mai.

Elephants were used a lot in Thailand for work years ago but now that's illegal, a lot of them have to be used for tourism, otherwise they'd die... but they're being used In the wrong way, with the mahoots abusing and mistreating them.

So the Nature Park was set up years ago by a woman who wanted to help them,  she rescues injured or mistreated Elephants, as well as hundreds of dogs, cats, buffalos and other animals too.

There's Joekia (if I remember correctly) who's blind because when she was pregnant, the mahoots still forced her to carry logs...whilst pushing the logs up a hill, she gave birth and the baby died. She refused to work afterwards, so they used slingshots and knifes to stab her eyes to make her move.

Then one of the elephants we were mostly looking after was Tilly, who broke her hips when she was used for trekking.

Each one has a story behind how it ended up there.

At the Nature Park they don't hit them or mistreat them and they have a lot of freedom to roam around in their families (there are about 37 altogether and most aren't related but naturally divided into five families)

(Apologies in advance for excessive amount of pictures)

Waffle over.

...... enjoy!!

Then we ended our day with a lovely stop at Mojito Gardens 2 hostel, in Chiang Mai!

Next stop... Laos!