Elephant Orphanage

Well ... we had a terrific day today. After a very late night last night (went to Simons for tea, Willie & family were there too - we took some food we got from the wet market). Kids were in bed probably about 10.20pm I suppose. Maddison woke a few times in the night and decided at 6.50am that it was time for her to be up. So her and I mucked about quietly for an hour before Aaron woke, then we woke Lyndon so he wouldn't miss out on all the noise & fun!! :-)

Maddison was back in bed at 9am and we got ready for our trip to the elephant orphanage. Simon & Willie came with us (well to show us the way actually!), we had lunch and left about 1pm. This pic with the golden statue in it is going to be one of our next trips! Batu Caves - it's a limestone cave in this hill and there's a Hindu temple in there.

We also passed this on the way into the elephant orphanage ... it's a native house. I took this photo on the way out, but on the way in there were about five children (that I could see) playing just inside the door! There were quite a few places like this there. Very interesting - no air con in there!

Got to the elephant place about 2.30pm, but didn't realise that on public holidays it opens at 10am. What they do is they have the first however many people in get a "yellow" entry sticker which enables you to do "activities" with the elephants. Because we didn't get there till mid afternoon, we weren't able to do the rides, but could get up close. 1st pic is showing the main area and people queuing to have a ride on an elephant. 2nd pic is Lyndon and Aaron in line to have a ride, but being told they didn't have the right coloured sticker!

3rd pic is Aaron "feeding" an elephant. The elephant had tossed a bit of food over to where we were standing, so Aaron chucked it back (his chucking is pretty random, so didn't go very far!) 4th pic - us with the elephants, 5th pic Lyndon and Aaron "talking" to the elephant. hee hee

Here we have a pic of "sweetie" Maddison. It was sooooooo hot there, sure appreciated the shade. Not sure exactly what the temp was but it had to be high 30's.

And next pic is self explanatory! :-)

We could have got in the water to "swim" with the elephants, but couldn't ride on the elephant into the water. But since Aaron gets bugs from the water in the local fountain (which is treated), I decided it wouldn't be the thing to have him in this river!! It was very brown and the elephants were doing #2's in there and all these people were down stream of it ... ewwghh. Anyway these pics show some people getting on the elephant, riding out to the middle then the elephant rolls over and they all completely disappear under the water! I was quite happy to watch :-)

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We watched a video in an air conditioned room which was a lovely respite from the heat. It showed a couple of wild elephants being caught, transported and released into a different "jungle".

Coming home these pics of the kids are about 4 minutes apart! :-) I think I might need to get them little inflatable neck pillows!

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And these two are of the country side. Not flash pics as I just took them out the window as we were zipping along. On our travels today Lyndon said "nice to be out for a drive and see all this bush". Willie says "that's not boosh, that's jungle"! (Sorry I can't put exactly how he said "bush", but it made us laugh!). Back home about 6.30pm ... an exciting day for us all ... got to see elephants and jungle! :-)

Right ... I am off to iron some shirts for Lyndon as he's off to Vietnam tomorrow for the rest of the week.