TEACHING THE BABIES TO SWIM

OK THATS ENOUGH FOR TODAY YOU CAN DO IT , I'VE GOT YOU

ARE YOU SURE YOU'VE GOT THE ROPE ON ME

As you know if you read my blog ,that the thing I love a lot about Thailand is the abundance and variety of birds , and of course my all time favorite ,ELEPHANTS. This is maybe a short post , but the other day when Ciejay and me were coming home from church and crossing the bridge over the River Kwai in our village of Wang Pho , she saw the elephants in the water and Ciejay said"STOP" and I did and , we found out that we were watching the trainers and the mama elephants , teaching the babies how to swim , the trainers had a long rope tied to the baby and they would take them (the babies) in the deep water and they would start kicking and spitting water and thinking they were drowning and then they would bring them back to the shallow water and let them rest and then do it again , after a few times the babies were swimming around like they had learned, it was so much fun to watch that I forgot I had left the camera in the truck and , when I got back I only got a few ending shots . I hope you enjoy them. You know that is just the way I taught my boys to swim , ,I was on a big rock with a rope tied to their waist and they would let go the rock and kick their feet and hands , while I held their heads out of the water, after a few minutes they were swimming around the rock on their own. how I wish I had a picture of that , that was forty years ago in Alaska down on the Kenai Pennsula ,at Daniels lake where we had a little fishing cabin.Wow how that filled my head with memories.

I know you have heard lots of stories of how horrible they threat the baby elephants to break their spirit and will, and make them afraid of the people before they can train them, well I can say for a certain that no baby elephant is poked with sharp stick and caged and starved and given no water in order to train them at our village . I have wittnessed first hand the training and of the babies . the Sai Yok Elephant Camp has about thirty grown elephants and lots of babies and the babies stay right by their mother's side all day , the camp is open every day for the tourist to ride and they have a show of the elephants dancing , and massaging the people while they lay on mats and the little babies run around and pick up the plastic water bottles and bags and put them in the trash can, it is so cute to watch . I have made a few unannounced visits , to the camp and have never seen anything but love and gentleness from the trainers here in Wang Pho. I can't speak for all the camps in Thailand but I can for the Sai Yok Elephant Camp , and for Elephantworld where my dear friend Moll-Lee live in the jungles of Kanchanaburi. Check out their web page ---www.elephantworld.org and as I have said before come on over and we'll go take a swim with the elephants , you'll love it , and if you can't swim .I'll tie a rope to you and stand on the big rock and hold your head out of the water while you swim. Malcolm