Day 7

When I woke up, Number One was on Melita’s bed. Baumi had left mine but Duke was still there. I took a picture of Melita first.

Then we switched beds so I could get a picture with Number One too.

After breakfast, we helped to husk corn. There were heaps of it. Then we had to take all the rotten food and corn husks away by truck. The battery of the truck was dead so we had to push it to get it started. Yes, I know we’re pushing it backwards! haha We had to do that first to give it room to go forwards.
Here’s the truck all loaded up. I wasn’t kidding when I said we husked HEAPS of corn!
Chris was the driver because Brad doesn’t know how to drive yet.
We all rode on the back of the truck to go to the field.
I never thought to ask what happens to the food after we dump it in the field. It doesn’t seem to have heaps of composting rot. I heard that it’s used to feed the buffalo or something.
Chrissie got stuck in the truck. Her door wouldn’t open. Rita’s trying to help her in the picture.
Since it was the last day, we went for a walk around the park to say bye to the elephants.
Brad brought a bunch of bananas for us to feed the elephants. We were so excited. We fed most of them to the first two elephants we saw.

We had to go through some rough areas.
We go to see the babies’ herd.
Brother and sister (from different mothers)
Reaaaach. He’s trying to get something yummy at the bottom of his slope. A mahout saw and went down to grab him some leaves. It was so nice of him.
This mahout was also so nice! His elephant was trying to get some grass beside the pole but he was having a hard time so he helped him out. You can see it wasn’t easy for the mahout either. He was at it for a long time.
Baby hair looks like coconut fur.
Itchy bums.
It’s so much nicer to be a mahout of an elephant that belongs to a big herd. Then you have people to hang out with and help you out. I think it’d be lonely if it was always only you and your elephant.
Hope is in musth (must). Bull elephants go into musth once a year, the period peaking for a period of one month.
We saw him bother three different elephants. Look at how happy he is (He's in the background in the first picture).
Tripod. We call him that because he only has three legs.
I wanted to get a picture of the banana branch. It curved nicely so Brad could hang it on his shoulder. When I asked him to pose with it, he stuck out his bum. So typical! haha
Candid is better.
She looks like she’s smiling! This is JOKIA. She’s blind, but she heard us coming. I felt bad because we had no more bananas for her.
Dirty dog. It looks like he put grass and dirt on himself to blend into the ground. Pretty good camouflage!
The dogs are sleeping on the platform. They seem to be sleeping all the time. Unless there’s a meal being served, they’re usually lying down with their eyes closed somewhere.
On my way to feed Kham Paan, I saw her walking to the deck too. Hello pretty!
This is Mae Tee and Kham Geaw. They’re waiting for their baskets to come.
Kham Paan’s waiting too. So are the day visitors! haha

Corn’s her favourite. She’ll always eat it first. Can you see the grass stains on her trunk?
Haha look at the piece of corn stuck to her lower lip.
Once we got to the cucumbers, she ate so slow. I kept giving her cucumbers to see how many she would hold in her trunk before she ate it all. The max was four (today).
I went to the feeding platform to watch Sri Nuan eat. I don’t know what it is, but I loove watching her eat! I don’t need to feed her. I just enjoy standing on the side and watching her interact with visitors.
Bye Bye! See you tomorrow. (I usually only go to her morning feeding because Kham Paan bathes right after her afternoon feeding and I don’t have time to go to the platform.)
More sleepy dogs.
Some pictures of the area around where Kham Paan hangs from morning feeding time to bath time.
This pumpkin is so bright orange. It stained her lips.

I went and had my last lunch with everyone. I’ll be the only one left to stay a second week out of all the volunteers. They had dessert today! It was a sweet soup with multi-coloured jellies. I liked it a lot. The jellies were bouncy in my mouth.

Everyone’s waiting around for bath time.
Mae Tee and Kham Geaw are at the back with Mae Tee’s mahout. He told me his name, but I never asked him how it’s spelled (so I’m forever referring to him as Mae Tee’s mahout). He also told me Angelo’s real name, but I don’t know how to spell that out either. If you know Thai, then you know that it’s impossible to spell out in English. They have almost twice the number of letters in the alphabet as we do. (edit: Angelo's name is Pon. Mae Tee's mahout's name is Pon See).

Mae Tee’s mahout is a really nice guy. He’s pretty funny. He’s always throwing rocks at me during bath time. I know that doesn’t sound very nice haha but he’s trying to find some way of interaction that doesn’t require English.

haha She’s got scratch marks on her silly head.

Probably from doing this all the time.
Bath time! I laugh every time he rolls it down wet. Do you see me holding the bottom of the bucket? It’s because I picked a bad one with a big hole in the middle. I’ve got a hole in my bucket, my bucket, my bucket.. (do you know the song? haha)
Angelo always rolls up his pants but he usually goes in deeper than where he rolled it to.
Someone didn’t wash themselves well enough. haha Look at the pumpkin on her lips.
Up up up!
Fail. haha You see how her mouth is closed in the second picture and the bread is to the side? She’s not very good at this trick.
After bath scratchies.
Angelo will sometimes pick up a stick and leave it in his back pocket for Kham Paan after her bath. If not, he will run and get her one when she starts throwing pebbles at her body. I got this stick for her!
Guess what. I got to bathe Kham Paan TWICE. That’s right! Some day visitors came and Angelo lured her back in with some bread.
See what I mean about getting his pants wet every time? haha
Kham Geaw walking to Dam.
After the second bath, she ran off and Angelo had to hurry after her.
We all gathered around the ice cream truck together one last time. I always felt that his small cart was magicked so whatever you ordered would appear because he never ran out of Milos no matter how many we got. Today, for the first time, he ran out of Milos!

We got separated when we loaded up the vans. Melita and Janet went with the girls from Singapore (our neighbours). I went with Chrissie, Rita, Chris, Emma, Lisa, Eric and Brad. We decided to watch the volunteer video again because Chrissie and Rita hadn’t seen it yet. I always get sleepy riding in cars. I feel asleep halfway through the video.