Elephant riding: wear a helmet

If you ever plan on bathing an elephant, wear a helmet.

Elephant riding is a big tourist attraction in Thailand and with good reason--it's a lot of fun. When else can you snuggle with giant sesame street characters? The actual riding of the elephant isn't so much fun. There's a reason nobody actually uses them for transportation. The males are apparently extremely territorial and trample humans...oops. Females are more sedate but even they have thick, spiny hair all over. Riding an elephant is a lot like sitting on your aunt's pin cushion that happens to weigh 2,000 pounds as it romps through the jungle.

Our guide, Boy, had more fun than we did. We went into the river to "bath with the elephant" which I pictured as soft and bubbly. No sooner had we entered the water than the guide immediately began chanting, "Bon bon. Bon bon". Ham Noi, our romping pin cushion, responded by shaking herself like a dog trying to get dry. We tumbled 12 feet into the shallow river below. Boy, a plumb 30-something Thai, laughed like a small child at his own joke. The whiplash in my neck did not laugh back. We jumped back on to our moving boulder and were soaked yet again by water from her trunk. Over the next 45 minutes, I heard those awful words, "Bon bon", at least 8 times before I visited the river head first once again. The next day, I heard somebody mention eating bon-bons--a chocolate snack--and immediately covered my head in fear. No bon-bons for me, thank you.