Island Safari Day

We ventured off one day and signed up for an island safari tour. The jeep arrived promptly at our hotel lobby at 9am and we climbed our way onto the back seats and hung on for dear life due to the lack of seatbelts! The tourist destination was about a 35 minute drive through the city and a few turns later, we entered a jungle...a very green one that was lined with LOTS of coconut trees and filled with animals we wanted to see!


Our first stop was to visit the baby elephants...they're so adorable. I paid 50 bahts (just over $1 CAD) for a basketful of bananas and got a chance to feed them! I laid the banana on the palm of my hand and they'd use their trunks to sniff it out...kind of a weird feeling at first! They're skin isn't exactly the softest in the world and they'd wrap their li'l wet snouty trunks around the yellow fruit and would just toss it in their mouths like how we'd pop tic tacs. They're also quite greedy...and tricky! If you're trying to feed another elephant, the other one will just non-chalantly try to reach over and grab more bananas from your basket with its trunk! Bad elephant!


During the monkey show, we learned that aside from playing, eating and sleeping, they also climb coconut trees every day to help the locals collect coconuts. Thanks to their help, Samui exports an average of 3 million coconuts to the rest of Thailand on a monthly basis!


After watching a Thai boxing match, it was our turn to go elephant trekking. Back in the day, this was how their kings and royalty travelled around town! During the ride, our driver presented us with some jewelery he made as he was steering the elephant. He weaved two rings and a bracelet out of one long green leaf. Impressive...but even more so was how the rings fit our fingers perfectly!



Our day trip ended with a long drive to their famous waterfall. We were expecting something spectacular but instead, it appeared to be similar to the falls we can find hiking through Lynn Valley and unfortunately, nothing like the Niagra! We also took part in a canoe ride down a private river....which in fact was really just a hot pink blow-up rafty thing - nothing near an actual canoe at all but was still fun :)

Overall, our day was really eventful but we did question the reality of how our animal friends were being treated at this tourist attraction. After all the shows were performed, it made us very sad to see them chained or tied up to trees or their cages. We even witnessed some trainers whacking them on the head & tugging on their ears to obey their commands. We left feeling really bad and hope that the animals behind these gates are better off than we think...tourist's remorse is what we're calling it for now! xoxo safari friends!