One of the most fantastic and least expected parts of living in Thailand was the Taweechai Elephant Camp. Its a great place, check it out on Wikitravel for Kanchanaburi.
After I finished working at the Amarin Inn I spent a month living at the elephant camp, ostensibly to help improve their online presence. For some reason (which I honestly don't know) the manager there took an instant dislike to me, so I couldn't use the internet and work my magic. Thus I ended up giving tours to English and Thai-speaking guests, but as most of the visitors were Russian, I spent a lot of time playing with two of the elephants -the baby boy above, and a 7 year old girl.
Playing with the baby could only last about 30 minutes a day as rough-housing with something that weighs 200kg and is covered in dirt is tough at the best of times, let alone in the heat of Thailand. So much of my time was spent with Mali, the girl. She was old enough to have learned not to manhandle people, but not so grown up that all she was interested in doing was eating (like the other elephants). I think that we built a great relationship, I'd always bring her treats and I'm sure she'll remember me.
She did sometimes manhandle me though, she'd pick me up and put me on her back (or insist that I climb up, when she was being lazy) and then try to shake me off. Rinse and repeat. That seemed to be fun for her.
Another good thing about the camp was that the workers there were Burmese, so I got to see another culture and learn some new words. Plus I got to go on the set of the hit Iranian film, The Maritime Silk Road, as they were using one of our elephants.
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