Elephant Fest Pt 2

So to continue with the Elephant Festival, the next day, we went to the show. It took us a while to find our seats & things were pretty crazy around the arena...elephants were everywhere! Here's a baby with pigtails.

Maria did an awesome job in getting us seats...front row! It started with an elephant emerging from the smoke.
Then it was elephants everywhere!

They also had a tug-of-war...people v elephant. The elephant won. A couple of our guys went out to give it a try.
They also had a ton of dancers.


After the elephants put on a performance, they would come over to the stands for tips. And they were quite aggressive and very close!

They also had a mock battle to show you how they used the elephants way-back-when. I felt so sorry for the guys in the costumes...it was at least 95 degrees out there!

The finale was a ceremony to honor the King. There was a baby elephant standing right in front of me & it kept sneezing - which normally wouldn't be a problem, but it was sneezing all over me!!! I was covered in elephant goo by the end. I don't know if you can see it, but here's a pic.

Right after the show, we had to get on a bus to Bangkok so Maria could run in the Bangkok Marathon that night (they start it at 2:00am here so they can finish before rush hour traffic). We went to cheer her & Jeremy on at the finish line. There were some interesting costumes for the fun run!

And some interesting characters running the marathon!

Jeremy had an EXCELLENT time!

Here's Jeremy & Guy. Jeremy barely worked up a sweat!

Maria did great too (her time was actually on another clock).

And the two runners...we're all so proud of them!