My Life is Nearly Complete

Now, I've done some pretty cool things in the last year or so, but even cooler than holding a live, full grown tiger's head in my lap, was my trip to the elephant rescue and rehabilitation center outside KL yesterday.

A girl I met in Singapore saw a show about it on TV one night in the hostel and put the idea in my head. She was determined to visit herself (and did) and upon hearing of her success, I decided to set out and do it myself. The center is about two hours away from KL but an easy day trip for the dedicated.

Nothing invokes more joy than the beautiful love and touch of an elephant.

While at the center, we had the fun chance to sit, touch, feed, and oogle at the elephants. All of the elephants at this center were rescued from the jungles of Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia where the logging industry is steadily shrinking their terrain and forcing the elephants into close proximity with farmers and small communities. They are all captured and then released into a national reserve park in Malaysia where they have a lot more room to roam free. But the ones who have been injured come to the center. One of the babies had no tail because he was attacked my a tiger!

We also got to watch some of them be hosed off right before lunch time. They were so cute and it seemed that they really did enjoy the cooling water.

But the best part (the life completing part!) was actually swimming with the elephants! We would ride one of the big ones out into the water where it would flop over on it's side, dumping the whole load of people, and then we could swim over to where the babies where and play with them. It really was awe inspiring. They were so fun, so gentle and SO excited to be touched and played with by so many people! It's hard to imagine something topping this experience.

This guy was doing a dance and trying to reach the food while the workers were cutting up papaya and watermelon for their lunches. :)

Even the big elephants loved the sport of dumping and swiming with us all in the water.

There I am, splashing and swimming with the babies. I can't believe how awesome that was. A once in a life time experience. Shortly after I kind of evacuated the water for a bit... Floating elephant dung the size of logs. lol.