One of the boxes on Steve’s checklist was an elephant ride. We negotiated one with a very pleasant woman in a kiosk across the street from the resort. Included in the deal was transportation to and from the elephant ride and a monkey and snake show, all for one low fee! At the appointed hour, a driver drew up in front of the resort in a pickup with a covered bed and two parallel benches. We lurched and thumped our way south through Karon and Kata and up a road with a mix of housing ranging from posh to poor.
Steve is very susceptible to motion sickness, and he held on tightly while we both endured four endlessly yammering young gentlemen packed into the bed with us.
Happy to finally emerge, we went under the thatch cover of the reception area. There was water available gratis, and some lovely ice cream. I grabbed coconut flavored. Ever adventurous, Steve chose durian flavor. If you’re not familiar, durian is a powerfully fragrant Southeast Asian fruit that is truly an acquired taste. One taste and it was into the trash!
After some initial confusion we went to a makeshift theater in an ancient cinder block building. We were seated very close to a cement circle about 4″ high enclosing a carpeted area. The snake handler was introduced by another man shouting occasionally intelligible noises over the music pounding from a karoke box. The snake handler displayed one deformed hand, sans index finger, a casualty of his brand of show business.
Pulling them one at a time from a box in the corner he had three beautiful smaller cobras whom I’m sure were identified by the karoke man, but the name escaped me. After much derring do the handler put them away and brought out an impressive boa constrictor which we were able to meet quite personally. The snake show climax was a king cobra. He was one big snake!
Here’s a short video to give you an idea. This is the first of the three dance partners he drew from the box:

 
 

We wound up next at the monkey show. The monkey handler entered with a macaque in adoring and devoted tow behind him. Apparently farmers use them for harvesting coconuts. He demonstrated how the nimble little guy can climb, and holding a limb with his hands, spin the coconut with his feet until it dropped. This little guy was a little more warm and fuzzy so he got up on our laps and posed for photos.
 
 
 
Finally we got the platform to get on to the elephants. They appeared to be all cows, very docile and very hungry, stopping frequently to have a pull of one particular vine. The drivers had no end of fun referring to Steve as “big Buddha.” They had a point.

Waiting for our improvised transport, we had lots of time to take in the elephant’s end of day. After a spraying down they settled into a dinner of some plant scaled appropriately. There was what appeared to be a village behind the elephant’s dining room. It could have easily come out of the Bridge on the River Kwai.
We were very happy to be back in Patong for dinner.
The heat of the elephant trip took the starch out of us the following day. We hung around the pool and eventually walked over to the dive shop where I’ll take my lessons on Monday and then go for the 3 open water dives each day on Tuesday and Wednesday. Steve, already certified, will be joining for the six dives on Tuesday and Wednesday.
We settled on an interesting place for dinner. Big mistake! After gorging on delicious food, my nether regions served notice. The night featured hourly runs to the little room and built to a sudden 4 AM crescendo that was spectacular. The poor overnight guy had to deal with the aftermath. Meanwhile, I quietly speculated that the resort featured ceramic tile floor for reasons besides heat stability.
After spending a fair amount of time wondering how this would impact my upcoming dive plans, I got up at 12:30 realized I could handle water, and after re-hydrating am none the worse for wear.
Not sure about dinner tonight,(Saturday, Jan 23) however!
For some fairly obvious reasons this got delayed in posting. It’s Friday January 29, and I’m waiting for photos from two days of amazing dives. It was so good I decided to re–up for more training and dives on Sunday and Tuesday. I woke this morning to confront the fact that I’ll be in the air a week from today.  In the meantime I’m hoping to get one or two more posts up.  We shall see…