Elephant care in Surin village

I’ve never been so close to those amazingly gigantic creatures, so close that I could feel their snuffling; elephants’ trunks are like huge pipes, but more flexible and powerful. Muscles in their trunks make it easier for them to twirl and tear the leaves on the banana trees at once before chewing. Those pipes can also be used to storage water as they always put their trunks inside their mouths after sucking water that could fill out half of their trunks.
During my homestay in Surin village, I was able to take care of Bank, a pregnant 18years old elephant. Because of her pregnancy, her emotion was a little bit unstable and she probably did not like the water very much (cause she was pretty restless and kept hitting the ground with her trunk before going inside the river). I help the Mahoo(owner of the elephant) scrub his elephant; sometimes owners asked us volunteers to climb up elephants' backs, and that was the time when I felt extremely insecure but exhilarating! Why? Because what elephants would do was pretty inestimable, lean to one side and dump us into the river? Diving to wet us dummies on their backs?... Who knows? At this point, here's a tip: do not ride on a male elephant if you are not prepared to dive all the time, because they are like whales, excellant swimmers!!! They go up and down, without giving you time to breathe...My roomate was dare to ride on a male elephant, and that fascinated and frightened her pretty much..haha.
Taking elephants to a shower was just one of the fabulous experiences I had during my stay in Surin village. There are other wonderful experiences to, like going to the local market (which I love the most because the dim-sum and fruits there were extremely delicious and cheap), going to a circut, and so on..
In all, I would never forget my stay there~