roten

Phoenix’s elephant noises are pretty cute, what better way to hone in on the authenticity by taking an elephant ride?

This is Phoenix’s first reaction to seeing the elephants – it was the visual part to, “what do elephants say?!” He was very excited.

We thought he was really excited, until we saw true excited when he fed the elephants unpeeled bananas and sugar cane. He kept asking for more and more and squealed as the elephants took the food. They also left some sort of remains behind on his hand, a snack for later for Phoenix.

This is where we saw the elephants take a bath.

The elephants also put on a show for us! Phoenix’s favorite part was when he walked in he saw balloons.  He then sobbed when the elephants vs. human threw darts at the balloons and popped them!  He wasn’t crying because of the noise, he was just sad the balloons were all gone! By the way, the elephant beat the human in the contest.

To be honest, I was a little nervous getting on the elephant.  I mean, Thomas is a big guy. Our elephant driver let us know that “Mei Me” was a young girl! She was 27 and elephants usually live until they are 100.  This photo is a little deceiving because it looks like we rode by ourselves, our driver sat on her head the whole way up and down the mountain.