welcome to the 16. edition of my travel-letter:

up to hundred  years old
up to 3000-3500kg heavy
consumes up to 30-50 liter water and 200kg food day
his name: Tong.

In Pai, which was my first destination on my trip with the motorcycle
through northern thailand, I enjoyed a long ride on an elephant.

Encounting elephants at Thom s Elephant Camp in Pai is different than
visiting a Zoo. Here you can really get in touch with this
impressive big, lovely, peaceful,intelligent creatues.  For example,
Elephants have an I-Identity and can discover bones or tusks from dead
fellows. They are also used to do some research about disposition in the
village of humans who have killed fellows.

Thom, a woman s, owns about 8 of this huge animals. But one of them looked
very kindly to me: Tong, the „baby-elephant“.
9 Years old and already too big to get on his back without help. Help
from….. yes, from Tong! He put me up to his back with his trunk. Thanks,
very friendly!

In the following two hours we had an exciting trip through the jungle and
finally we took a bath in the river together, where I played with the
elephant for a little bit.On the way he was always trying to catch up with
his 200kg of food per day. The guide was not to happy about that. But I
enjoyed to see the elephant picking out gras or fights with some big
bamboo.

Afterwards, I gave him a couple of bananas as a thank you for the great
trip – a delicous treat for him tough!

cheers
Oskar.