Elephant Trekking Through Koh Lanta, Thailand.

We did experience an Elephant adventure safari whilst holidaying on the stunning Island of Koh Lanta this year, with the boys heading up through the hills on their elephant and us girls supposedly following, but believe me.....our elephant had very different ideas to what he wanted to do! My past experience involving elephant riding was in South Africa on a crazy 'Bull' named 'Michael Jackson' and I swore after my near death experience ( my husband says that maybe I'm a bit of a drama queen, but thats debatable) that I would never hop on another elephant again!!! But the things we do for our children, correct??

The boys had a fabulous hour trek through the forrest, whilst Isabella, Lucie and I had the ride from hell. The elephant handler who was merely a child was trying to control this crazy animal with his bull horn, which I didn't want him to do, I feel its very cruel, by this stage the elephant was kind of bucking and the girls were screaming, so I suggested to the handler, just take us back. However our gorgeous elephant had other ideas and hightailed it down the dirt track towards the highway....the girls were freaking out by this stage, thinking that we were going to be killed by the oncoming traffic, but our dear old elephant stopped 10 metres from the highway at a drinking trough, had a long drink and then sprayed it all over us....this happened 4 times and then he happily took us back to the dismount station!!!! I can tell you now, that Elephant riding for tourists pleasure is merely a form of torture for these beautiful animals and it is something we will never , ever do again!! The poor animals are only treated with food after they have carted us humans around for an hour and are obviously abused by lack of water and also the bull horn...Is cruel.....no more elephant riding for this family......xxx

It's all looking rosy at this stage....however, things were about to take a change for the worse

Robert, Louis and William enjoying their Elephant trek