Eco-Adventure Safari Tour

2nd Day

We slept well the 1st night.

Woke up only when William kept asking why the sky still haven't turned bright? I checked my clock, it's 8am. Ah no, it's 7am, almost forgot Phuket Time is 1 hour behind HK time. Great, still have plenty of time to enjoy our buffet breakfast.

After breakfast, we checked for the local tour at the hotel's travel desk. And we came across this, Eco-Adventure Safari Tour. Interesting, the name itself sounds cool enough.

There got several packages, i.e. 3-in-1 (2.5 hr), 4-in-1 (3.5 hr) & 6-in1 (4.5 hr). We choosed the 6-in-1 package which includes elephant trekking, elephant show, monkey show, snake show, ox-cart riding and Thai Cooking (6 activities).

After paid, the hotelier told us the van will be coming to pick us at 1.30pm. The van came very punctual. I like punctuality. Good !!

On the way to our destination, Chalong highlands, they stopped by somewhere for the snake show. First, a girl took us around to see the snakes that kept in the cage. Nothing too special about it. So, we quickly moved to the core program, snake show.

The same girl took us to a hut. We were seated, and waited for other audience to come. But no body came, the 4 of us are the only audience. After 5 min, the show started anyway.

Give me 100 bucks, also I dare not to kiss a copra. Give me 10K bucks, maybe I will think about it seriously. Really money crazy lah, me...

The show last for about 10 min. Surprisingly, I find myself enjoyed it very much. Later on, the trainer took the snake near to us and showed us its teeth. This is the 1st time I got to see the snake's teeth in very short distance, less than 2 ft. It really made all my bulu roma stood up. To be honest, my heart was pounding freakingly fast that I almost pass out.

Some more, the trainer asked if we wanted to touch the snake? Before we respond, he grabbed the smallest snake to the place we sat. OMG!

Only Vincent came forward and touched it. Don't know why, this fella is so brave lately that he dare to touch almost every freaking-scary creatures that used to scare the hell out of him. That includes snail, worm, cockroach, and now snake.

See William, he was so scared. As for KS, he said no-thank-you, cause he didn't want to make his hands dirty wo. Me? I hopped 2 ft away from it. No snake can come near me, not within 2 ft from me, ok.

After the snake show over, the driver drove us to the Chalong Highlands. That only takes about 15 min.

Amazing Bukit Safari is the place where the rest of the programs would be conducted here.

Finally, it's the time to go for a long awaited elephant-trekking-into-the-woods. The boys and I were thrilled about it. I haven't ride on the elephant back my whole life before.

KS and Vincent took off first. William and I followed them right behind.

There we go, trekking on elephant back into the woods. They said the whole journey would take about 40 min.

He really was very excited about it...

There were 3 elephants ahead of us, all moving up and down the slopes very slowly.

The feelings of my body has to move to all dimensions involuntary is weird. You know, right-left, front-back, up-down...It's kind of difficult to estimate when and where my body will move next.

Also, the feelings of putting my legs on top of the elephant's back is weird too. There are times, I scared I have made the elephant feel painful, that it would shrug us off from its back and steped its big giant feet on me. Die lah...

We took a short break in the half way. The trainer was kind enough to offer his help to take a group photo for us.

We continued the trekking after a 5 minutes break.

Almost back to where we've started.

Of course we were so willing to buy them some bananas after they have worked so hard to travel us on its back into the woods just now.

The elephant show was not as good as expected. Only this 5-year-old baby elephant was out to perform. It was asked to perform some very simple tasks, like dancing. Hello, I thought there would be group elephant performance?

Anyway, they allowed every audience to come that near to the elephant for invidiul photo session.

William wanted to pat its head because he said it is such a good elephant.

We bought him some cucumbers too. He deserved it.

It finished up the cucumber very fast. Very hungry??

That's the why the trainer asked the elephant to say good-bye to the audience. Luckily we didn't stand too near to it that time. Otherwise, our shirt would get wet. Of course, that's the parent's opinion. The boys might think what a lost they didn't get it. To them, it could be such an honor to be sprinkled wet by an elephant.

Then, we were brought to a nearby hut for monkey show.

Basically we watched how monkey is trained to pick coconuts and see them in other actions.

Very clear, his name is Diamond. Let's see what he can do?

He climbed up the rope (supposingly a real cocunut tree) to pluck the coconut, then dumped it on the ground.

He openned the coconut. At the same time, he smiled at the camera when he saw someone was taking photo of him. How cute.

Definitely an excellent climber.

Ask him to do pumping, he will do pumping...

Ask him to do sit up, he will do sit up...

KS was invited to take part in the action. The trainer tied his hands. Emm, I start to feel this man and his monkey, Diamond, look pretty alike. Same face, same smile.

Then he asked the monkey to untie him..

Mission accomplished within a min. Cool. KS couldn't said no when the monkey sat on his lap automatically. Haha..

The trainer asked us to pick any number from 1-10. Then, he asked the monkey to guess which slot contains the number we pick. Of course, the monkey got it right 100%.

Time for advertisement and product selling. The monkey asked us to buy tiger palm ointment. It's not expensive, 20B per packet. We happily bought 2 packet. After all the things he've done to amuse us, he deserved some tips.

When the monkey saw Vincent and William were eating biscuit stick, he got off the bicycle quickly and moved to them to ask for some too. Really like a human kid. Vincent gave him 1 stick, but William, felt so reluctant that he only break half a stick to him.

Asked if they want to ride on the back of the buffalo to take a picture. They nodded without any hesitation. When they got off, they asked why don't daddy and mommy ride on it too? I felt so embarassed to tell them that I'm scared. Furthermore, the buffalo smell yucky and looks dirty to me. Mean woman, hehe...

The Ox-cart we rode. They walked at the pace like we walk. Is it suppose to be like that? We asked if they can go faster? The boy shoke his head, said they can only walk a bit faster. Errr...

The last activity was Thai cooking. We watched how a woman casually fried some noddle in Thai style. Nothing fancy about it. They served us with the noddle and after that, some watermelon. We finished it quickly as William had slept just before we started to eat.

The van took us back to the hotel. The time was around 5.30pm by then. They boys were supposingly very tired, but they still want to go swimming in the pool. Kids, sigh.

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We have paid total 4050B for this trip (adult : 155oB, kid : 950B, kid below 4 : FOC).

When we came back that evening, we found out there got a local tour agency, located just opposite the hotel, offer 10% discount for the exactly same package.

Lesson learnt : never book the local tour through the hotel. Actually, we should have know about it. Just that we haven't had enough time to look around for the best deal.

In general, the whole trip and its programs are fun. We all have some good time, so bygone the excess money we paid.

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(To be Continued)