The Thailand Fantastic: And I'll Never Go to Another Zoo Ever Again

Ohhh Thailand, you've done it again. The past two days have been something for the books, as the four of us have embarked on journeys we'd never dreamed of. There comes a time in every mans life when he's presented with true greatness, and this trip has been one of those times. Friday and Saturday's activities presented tests of our strength, wit, prose and brilliance... Fortunately, with the help of our faithful readers, we've passed with flying colors... And I'll never go to another zoo ever again.

Friday morning we were faced with our first test, waking up at 6 am to catch a shuttle to the Jumbo Elephant Camp. "But Noah, what is this Jumbo Camp you speak of? Didn't you already go to fat camp last summer?" Yes, I did, and I'm looking great thank you very much. But this is something different. We set out on our journey to Jumbo Elephant Camp with one goal, and one goal only - to ride an elephant. To what? To ride elephants, I said. And elephants we rode.

nothing like a man in control

oh hey!

Can't really explain how majestic the elephants were. As we rode them through the jungle, I just couldn't wrap my head around how smart they were. They say elephants can learn over 150 commands, of which we learned about 4. (But they were in Thai, so give us a break). Even though the elephants went where we told them to, we all got the feeling that the elephants were really the ones in control, and sitting 12 feet off of the ground on their heads, we were completely at their mercy.

Nonetheless, we got so good at riding them that they even let us lead some tours with some local students. They didn't speak a lick of English, so we had to converse with our stunning elephant handling skills.

"and on your right, you'll see the thai ka-chwen bush, one of the elephants favorite snacks"

Celebrity Status - I think they took more pictures of us than they did of the elephants. But who could blame them after seeing Eli man handle the mountains from Dumbo's back?

Friday night we headed out for some good old fashioned Muy Thai Boxing. Feeling burly after our bout with the elephants, we settled for VIP Ring Side seats for a whopping $15 a seat. To be honest I couldn't really tell whether they were dancing or fighting, but either way it was awesome. Furthermore, we were sitting right next to the announcer, and we may or may not have been getting a little loud and American-rambunctious in the fifth round of the night's headline. The announcer overheard us screaming about a particularly suave move by one of the fighter's, and let Trevor tell the entire stadium what he thought of the kick. "DOUBLE FAKE KICK TO FLYING PUNCH" he screamed into the announcer's microphone... pretty sure thats the technical term for it

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday.

This morning we woke up feelin a little wild, and theres really only one thing to do when you feel that way... Play with tigers. So we hopped on some motor scooters and headed to the Tiger Kingdom.

Then, as if it couldn't get any better.... baby tigers..

Finally, we hopped back on our scooters, and headed home. The first half of our ride we were clearly the Asian driver equivalents in Thailand -- I'm about 90 percent sure that Thai's have a plethora of jokes about how terrible 21 year old white boys are at driving. If not, they should, because we were going about half the speed limit and taking up every lane... It also didn't help that they drive on the wrong side of the road here.

Nonetheless, we soon got our bearings, and from then on it was smooth sailing. We made it home unscathed with ridiculously good looking helmet hair. Was thinking about joining Hells Angels until Eli told me that they don't drive automatic scooters. And that just about brings an end to our Saturday... Once again, thanks for caring, and hope everyone back at home is doing swell, we misses you.

Sincerely, The Thailand Fantastic.