Million Years Stone Park has some HUGE Asian catfish stocked in its fishpond—more like a small lake actually. There at the fishpond, just like at every animal station in the park, visitors can spend a bit more money to feed the animals they are “experiencing,” in this case what appears to be the Mekong Giant Catfish. I’m not so sure that such willy-nilly feeding of their animals by tourists is such a great thing for the animals, but it sure was fun for us.
Researching those giant Mekong catfish, it’s a sad thing to consider that their days may be nearing an end. The ones at Stone Park seem pretty big but in their natural riverine environment they are known to grow more than 10 feet in length reaching almost 700 lbs in weight. That makes them the world’s largest freshwater fish. In the US we hear about 5 foot catfish occasionally caught, mostly in our southern rivers, and we marvel; yet there in that Thai zoo lake are probably thirty or more 5 footers (and longer) all in one place and quite willing to reveal themselves for a few food pellets. Unfortunately, these monsters cannot breed in lakes and ponds, only in rivers, so stocking them in ponds will not preserve the species.
There is a host of other fish to see as well, many fairly large in their own right; but they don’t generate much interest and even less excitement compared to the real celebrities of the lake. The stars of course being the mass of crowding giant catfish with their massive upturned heads and gaping mouths.
In observation mode, I noticed that there are two distinct “shifts” of fish consisting of “the giants” and “all others.” The giants (the catfish) come to the surface anytime pellets are thrown into the water, at which time “the others” in the interest of self-preservation either remove themselves or are forced to the perimeter of the mass of catfish giants.
Among “the others” are much smaller fish, some even fingerling sized, which I presume must be very quick, because once those catfish open their gaping maws to vacuum up the floating pellets there’s probably a pretty good chance that one of the fingerlings can get sucked down too. I kept watching to see if that would happen, but I never witnessed such a thing. I suppose all the stupid smaller ones get sucked down pretty quick—so it’s a question of survival of the fast and the smart when it comes to those little ones.
After watching crocs and elephants for a couple hours we moved on to see what other animal gems were available for us to see and experience. The Thais are big on the experience part. They’ve figured out that they can make a lot of extra baht by providing “up close and personal” with their critters. Like I said in an earlier post, there’s nothing remotely like it back in “Litigation USA,” unless you want the thrills of scratching lambs and ponies behind their fuzzy ears in a kiddy petting zoo.
Million Years Stone Park has an old fashioned zoo set up with caged animals just like zoos used to have in the states back in the bad old ugly days. I’m glad those are mostly gone. I admit that I wasn’t very comfortable seeing animals in cages. Truthfully, I can’t even stand to go into pet shops as the sight of animals stacked up in tiny cages nauseates and saddens me—sympathetic reaction I guess.
In the same zoo area are several animals with handlers where for a fee a visitor can pose with full sized fully toothed tigers (not sure if they let them keep their claws). There is an Asian bear as well, but that poor thing is so neurotic that I couldn’t stand to be around it. It constantly rocks and twitches like a mad man in an asylum. I felt horrible for it. I hurried by it hardly looking up, sort of like passing the bum on the street with puke on his shoes.
But then there is the white tiger, the star of the zoo and the primary subject of this post; well, him and my daughter Janine. At first I thought the huge white reclining tiger was just a stuffed display, it was deathly still, not moving a muscle. Then the handler poked the giant white beauty into elegant motion, which I think startled us more than it did the tiger. Impressed, we immediately decided to hang out there for a while. It’s not every day you get to see something so special.
Soon we began daring and prodding Janine to go up and pose with “tiger white, burning bright.” She was torn, torn between self-preservation and the intense need to take advantage of a super photo opp. I laughed; knowing full well that these days, with her, the photo opp side of her brain ALWAYS wins out; but this time, not quite. She was very willing at first, but as she approached and got the full effect of how truly enormous that cat is, fear began to get the better of her.
The handler is a hoot. In the video he plays off her terror, going out of his way to make it even worse by poking some skin-crawling toothy growls from that gigantic head. My daughter wasn’t impressed in the least at his attempts at mirth, but the rest of us thought it was hilarious. I love it when Janine smacks the handler like he is her misbehaving big brother.
Our very own Cynthia, obviously a naturally intrepid soul, goes first to show her “little sister” the way. Once her older gritty buddy does it and survives unscathed, Janine decides that she too can manage it.
Her first time modeling with “Big White” was nice but I wanted something more dramatic, something that included those huge meat rending teeth. So, for an extra 3 bucks, the comical handler with his continuously pushy manhandling manner, agrees to make it happen.
Until a few moments ago I didn’t realize how scared to death Janine must have been the entire time. I thought perhaps she had come to grips with the idea of being so close to the tiger, because in the moments that she smiles so wonderfully for the photo taking no one would believe she is anything but relaxed and happy to be there. But looking again at the video, I discover a look of sheer terror that pops out from behind the brave façade. So determined is she to make the pictures happen with the tiger that she is able to conquer that visceral fear and go through with the ordeal. Thus, I suppose the moral of her story would be, “if you want an act of courage from Janine, point a camera at her!”
Janine’s intense fear aside, I’m sure that tiger is about as safe as a tiger CAN be in that situation. For one thing the chain holding it to the platform is short enough to keep the animal from easily spinning around at the person sitting in a pose at its rear haunch, especially with it strategically forced to lay with its back to the posing person. I notice too that just like with the elephants, the handler is ready to instantly intercede if need be.
I’m sure also that the tigers, especially those used for picture taking, are all born in captivity and have been around humans for their entire existence. In fact, breeding tigers for zoos and shows throughout Thailand and even throughout the world is an industry in that country.
In fact I got to see an example of a “tiger cub mill” a few days later when we visited another zoo park called Tiger Park. There they have an entire building devoted to displaying their cubs where you can pay to bottle feed and cuddle tiger “kittens.” I didn’t do that but I have some awesome footage of a young but very aggressive tiger cub trying to attack me through its cage bars. One look at those bared claws and I was grateful as can be to have that cage between us. Check out the video below. Imagine a full sized hungry or angry one coming at you!
A half hour after first discovering the elephant yard way in the back left corner of The Million Years Stone Park, the sound of traditional Thai music began to play loudly from loud speakers behind us. We knew from the schedule that it meant that the next crocodile show was about to begin. Not about to miss the show we immediately answered the call and headed to the indoor crocodile arena immediately abutting the elephant yard.
The crocodile show arena is basically a long shallow swimming pool with a smoothly tiled irregularly shaped island barely rising above the water level in the middle. Our first goal upon entering was to get into some seats that would provide the most complete view, preferably high and in the middle; being some of the first ones in there, that was not a problem.
Essentially, the show consists of a young strapping local lad having his way with several crocs for about 25 minutes. He manhandles them, pulling the larger ones around by their tails with one smaller one he actually picks up, cradling it in his arms.
He continually splashes water up on the central island making it easier to slide the huge reptiles around on it. It also needed to be slippery when wet to allow his body to easily slide on it during portions of the performance.
He starts out at the far end with a medium sized croc, arranging it so that it faces down the middle by pulling its tail around. The brave Thai, dressed in what looks to me like orange pajamas, demonstrates throughout the show his indifference to any threat posed by the crocodiles, even when he does death defying things like putting various body parts in the reptiles’ wide-open mouths.
I know there must be some kind of technique to keep from being chomped on by those things. I mean I SAW what one was able to do to the half a chicken that I dangled on a rope only a short time before. That time I knew its intentions but still I wasn’t fast enough to keep it from happening. Yet somehow this guy is able to place his hands, and even his whole head, deep into those gaping mouths rimmed with menacing teeth and every time retrieves hands and head without harm.
It probably has something to do with keeping the show crocs so well fed so as to prevent them from unauthorized feeding, but I have to believe there’s more to it than that. Surely a crocodile’s instinct to bite down is overpowering when tempting bits of body are dangled right inside its mouth? It seems self preservation instincts alone would surely dictate biting behavior of any wild animal and you cannot get any wilder than a pea-brained crocodilian.
One deed performed by the death defying fellow was extremely fun to watch. First he arranges one of the big crocs at one end and somehow makes the animal hold its mouth wide open. The guy then goes all the way to the other end of the island, and after plenty of dramatic buildup backed up by the proper stage music and remarks (in Thai) by the emcee, he runs at the gape mouthed critter full speed. After five or six sprinting steps he drops to his stomach and goes into a spine-tingling seemingly out of control slide into apparent certain mayhem.
Another act of daring do is when he performs the old tried-and-true head fully into the crocodile’s wide-open mouth bit. I don’t care how many times I see that; I get chills, especially when he does it with the monster croc. The danged thing is a giant. On the second time he yanks his head out from between all those teeth lined up in those bone crushing jaws and as he does so the croc actually seems to try to snap his jaws together. Holy mackerel but that IS a good trick.
Later in the week we went to another park that also had a crocodile show and it pretty much went the same way as at Stone Park. The one notable difference though is the addition of a beautiful young lady who also has the nerve to place her pretty little head between jaws of a giant croc. What a gal!
I have video of much of this but YouTube is loaded with clips of Thailand crocodile shows I see. Check them out. I see there are even some showing the crocodile actually biting the performer. I think I'll skip those.
I don’t want to overdo the whole elephant thing so I’ll let this be my last on elephants for a while, at least for the ones I met at The Million Years Stone Park. Be warned though, I’m not completely done with them. A few days before our departure from Thailand I had another very personal encounter with a couple more. That was an incredible one-of-a-kind experience but we’ll save that for another day.
Janine, my lovely stepdaughter, had the adventure of her young life during our trip to Thailand. For her, as for all of us, it was more like a series of adventures. She surprised me in that I never would have given her credit for having the guts to do and try some of the things we put in front of her, but every single time she rose to the challenge.
For instance, I would have bet that she’d never go for allowing herself to be lifted from the ground by an elephant in its trunk, but she did it as you can well see in the first embedded video. Still, I’m not sure if she did all the adventurous things that she did because she wanted to try them or because she saw them as really cool photo opps for her Facebook page. That girl DOES like to be on camera. Proof of that is the ferocious white lion she modeled with less than an hour after she let that huge elephant boost her up.
I’ve watched the video of the elephant lifting my girl up at least a dozen times, not so much to watch Janine, although there is that, but to see how cautious that huge animal is around her, how totally self-aware it is. I mean look at how careful it moves around her. Sure, the trainer is there, but in reality he is only serving as a reminder to his huge protégé to watch his step. One lapsing moment with one of those giant feet, one careless swipe with that monstrous proboscis and my girl is either dead or horribly injured. Yet that was never going to happen. The animal was obviously enjoying himself and completely conscientious in controlling his giant parts around her. The more I consider it the more amazing I find it.
The second video “Elephants being Elephants” is a compilation of clips that I took there at The Stone Park Elephant Area. At the start you can see all of us just chilling out on the picnic tables completely content with just watching and observing.
In the far background are a couple of elephants with huge top mounted passenger seating. I was interested in giving that a try until I learned they wanted over $15 per rider. That seemed a bit steep to do something that didn’t look all that thrilling.
In video #2 I wander over to the far group of elephants when it seems they are becoming oddly active, or how about “active in an odd way.” The big one is rubbing his chin and tusks on the adolescent’s back and hindquarters. At first I think the two of them are doing some strange affection ritual and then much later, after I view the video about a dozen times, I realize that the small one’s back right leg is caught in the larger one’s chain. The big guy is so intent on getting the smaller one to stop yanking on the chain around his leg that he even ends up pushing one of his tusks up the little guy’s butt. If you listen carefully you can hear me giggling because it looks so weird to see that. At the time I didn’t notice that the little one’s leg was caught and I thought it was some strange sexual thing or something. But no, there’s no odd hanky-panky going on, they are simply trying to disentangle themselves.
At about 1.30 into the video one of the mature ones is entertaining himself by standing on a relatively tiny performing platform on all four legs. I have a bad habit of prattling on as I observe what I’m recording so pay no attention to my remarks as you watch, okay? In fact, go ahead and turn off the sound!
The one balancing up on the circus platform, even with one leg trapped to the ground by a chain, does a pretty good job up there. He changes position and when he decides to go to three legs he even alternates which of his three legs to stand on. It’s impressive to see this animal do this behavior with no apparent prompting from a handler or trainer. He just seems to be having fun, perhaps killing time like any human might. He even does something I’ve never noticed elephants do before on TV or film when he seems to be kicking his own swinging trunk with a foreleg. Now THAT is funny. His two companions to his front and back are both very interested in watching him perform and seem to be encouraging him as they reach out with their trunks and heads to touch him.
At just over 3.0 the smaller very active one appears to be purposely trapping the big one’s rear leg to the ground with one of his own rear legs, almost as if they are doing some kind of elephant Indian foot wrestling like we used to do as kids in the yard.
I pan back to the right where the one on the platform is still up there, but now he’s got just his rear legs on it putting his massive butt high in the air. The other one with his head in the sun facing away takes a moment to throw a chunk of pineapple plant over his shoulder at his buddy on the platform and hits him right on the tail. It’s a great no-look shot and right on target. Amazing.
At 3.40 the little one in the middle decides to sit down on his haunches, sort of rolling over on the side of one rear leg while the two bigger ones at his sides come over and butt him gently with their heads. You can hear me marveling at the silliness of it. Then he completely rolls back so that he’s sitting on the ground fully on his butt propped up on only his two front legs, at which point I exclaim, “What! What is he doing?” Evidently this action is forbidden and causes one of the seated handlers to get out of his chair and come over to put an end to the peculiar behavior. At the Thai man’s approach the little fella immediately gets back up on all fours.
Is there any wonder I’m so captivated by elephants? I wish they came in much smaller sizes. I’d LOVE to have one!
I love this video of The Stone Park elephants feeding. We had just finished spectating at one of the many crocodile shows in the croc arena just up from the elephant grounds. It was later in the afternoon; most of the other visiting tourists had moved on to other parts of the park. We were happy to just sit rest and enjoy watching our big buddies as they ate and socialized in the shade of their supersized umbrellas. My up close and personal introduction to elephants has caused me to look into them more closely. One of the things I learned is how different Indian elephants are from their African cousins. They are so distant on the taxonomic scale that they are actually classified into two different families.
Asian elephant species have the most variation within the order, Thai elephants basically coming from the Indian elephant species. Asian elephants are decidedly smaller than African elephants. Asian elephants’ ears are about half the size of their African counterparts. And one difference I learned about between them that I certainly captured in my videos is the Asian elephants’ greater penchant for making more use of their feet. I definitely saw an example of their deft footwork while observing them using their tootsies to dexterously tear apart whole pineapple plants into bite sized pieces.
factoid about elephants is that they can and will eat just about any plant. It makes sense that the park would feed them the pineapple plants. Once the fruit is harvested, what else could such a substantial farm waste product be used for other than as a very difficult to compost item? Making them into elephant food is perfect.
If you’ve ever seen a pineapple plant you’ll know how tough and stringy the long leaves are. These leaves also have sharp serrated edges leading up to a hard needlelike point at the end. I certainly wouldn’t want to work in a field of them without some long protective gloves, yet the elephants tore into them as if munching on soft mouthfuls of clover.
Notice in the YouTube clip the way they nimbly use the very ends of their toes at times to hold the tough plants down to the concrete floor as they use their proboscis to tear off individual leaves. As I said above, Asian elephants have a remarkable predilection for using their feet.
But the reason I love this short clip so much is the interplay between two of them especially--the large one on the left and the smaller happy-go-lucky one in the middle. I just showed it again to my wife using the following narrative:
Grumpily, the large elephant on the far left complains to any who will listen, “Hey! Why am I the ONLY one out here without a pineapple plant to munch on? Come on! I’m HUNGRY! Gimme some! Someone, ANY one!”
The large hungry fellow walks over to the little one, bumps him on the hindquarters and asks, “Hey little man, you gonna eat all that?”
All the elephants ignore the big one and continue to tear apart their pineapple plants. Some of them like to tear one, two or three leaves off at once, and then wave them around, sometimes slapping the hard long leaves against the top of their head or flapping them against their sides before popping them into their mouth.
The big hungry guy is beside himself in frustration. He paces about, crosses his legs once, backs up as far as his chain will allow before approaching the smaller elephant again, continuing to ask for some afternoon “roughage,” “So dude, come on man, I KNOW you can’t eat ALL of that. Give me SOME! Please?”
The big fella reaches out as far as he can with his trunk but cannot quite reach the plant. The smaller one is obviously younger but he’s not stupid; he keeps the plant just out of reach.
The hungry one backs off and tries to talk the far elephant into giving up some plantage but to no avail. That one completely ignores the request and blithely continues to tear and munch away at his plant.
Aggravated and obsessed, the big fellow continually jabbers away at his companions, asking them to share. FINALLY, the smaller one takes pity on his big brother, grabs his own plant by a single leaf and lifts it high. He waves it side to side in front of him and releases it just at the right moment so that it flies behind him up the left side of his body toward his famished friend. The little guy finishes up his little act of mercy by trying to use his left hind foot to push the plant backwards toward the larger elephant who immediately takes the opportunity to reach out and grab the object of his desire.
With great gusto he puts one foot on the plant and ravenously begins to pull it apart and devour the individual leaves. At this, the charitable little guy goes over to the even larger elephant to the right and tries to socialize with him, but the bigger one is not interested. In fact, so determined NOT to socialize he even walks away from his own pineapple plant rather than submit to the advances of the playful adolescent.
While that is going on to the left, the far elephant, failing to pay attention, allows his plant to get too close to the supposedly hungry big one, who sneaks over and snatches away the unattended plant. Evidently he thinks that the pineapple plant is greener on the other side of the concrete! Now, he has TWO pineapple plants. That'll show em.
Like I said, I never got tired of watching them. Who would have thought that elephants have the same foibles as we do!
Reluctantly, we moved on from the crocodiles. Continuing up the walkway, soon all thoughts of the scarily cool reptiles behind us vanished, instantly replaced with the remarkable sight of a yard full of pachyderms of the elephant variety, in this case the Asian elephant.
I have never been close to an elephant before and certainly have never touched one, but there below us at the bottom of some concrete steps through a gate I could see people, other tourists, being allowed to touch and interact with elephants as if at a child’s petting zoo. Yes! I couldn’t wait to get closer to check it out. The excitement generated by seeing the elephants completely took my mind off the aching in my feet, for by then, I was feeling a bit foot weary due to my chronically bad “dogs.”
With eyes wide we enter the gate at the bottom of the steps to be among the elephants.
I don’t think anyone there could take their eyes off the elephants. Truly, they have to be one of the most intriguing animals alive; and it’s more than about their gigantic size, they have so much personality, obvious intelligence and natural charisma. How can you not be drawn to them?
The younger ones always seem to be smiling, but all of them have an air of playfulness.
Near the bottom of the stairs I put my cam on video and moved to get some closer shots of the awesome animals before me. It was hard to believe that the park would allow visitors to get so close to such potentially dangerous critters. I know from reading that all elephants are wild no matter how trained and tamed they might seem. I’ve also seen tape of captive elephants suddenly going rogue, attacking people and so forcing authorities to destroy them.
Yet here in front of me were ordinary people walking right up to them, touching them, feeding them, and interacting with them. I’m sure no park, circus or zoo in the US would ever allow the public to do anything similar; their corporate lawyers would never allow it, afraid of some stupid bit of litigation. No, you have to go to places like Thailand to have these kinds of experiences these days. In many ways, some of the best aspects of life in the US, the exciting adventurous ones, have been destroyed by lawyers, legislators and litigation.
Hot chick, VERY hot, offering her fruit to Jumbo.
Then again, looking at the video again (for like the 20th time), I notice that all the elephants are made completely safe by two things. There is the constant presence of handlers for one thing; the other safety device being the strategically placed leg chains that allow an elephant to get no closer to people than their trunks will reach. Of course that doesn’t stop people from getting close to the elephants.
One of the steely-eyed handlers
In the first video notice the stern faced handler in the pink shirt. He is in charge of one of the larger elephants, I believe the same one that they use to make posed shots of people being lifted high in his trunk and standing under his whiskery chin. The second embedded video shows my girl Janine bravely doing exactly that. I’m glad not all the other trainers act like this pink shirted guy. To me, he just seemed to be meaner than necessary. About 1.40 into the movie he roughly pokes his large charge in the leg with his heavy wooden stick and then acts like he’s about to take a big swing at the big fellow.
Pink Shirt gruffly poking with his stick.
I was disappointed to see him do that. But, I’m not an elephant guy, so maybe that kind of apparently severe handling is necessary to keep them in line. And it’s true that as I observed them, many of the elephants seemed to get fidgety and even edgy. I can’t really blame them though, being all locked up like that by a short chain to the ground. I’m sure I would act up a heck of a lot more than what I was seeing THEM do.
The elephant wasn't eating the bananas immediately offered by people which made the handler angry.
Just over 2 minutes into the first YouTube vid Divine shows up with a basket of little bananas she purchased for us to feed to the elephants. She hands it to Janine who stands there until the handler in the green shirt—who, by the way, seems a lot kinder than pink shirt, much to my delight—subtly prompts his moderately sized elephant to come on over and have some of our bananas.
My wife shows up with a basket of bananas
Janine at this early stage in her association with the huge animals is too timid to try it, so, once again, just like at the crocodiles, she hands off to me and takes the camera instead. After watching me feed him a banana or two she got up the gumption to give it a try. I can’t blame her for being timid; the first time that proboscis comes at you it’s an eerie thing, kind of made me want to back up.
Strange to have that thing coming at you, like its got a mind of its own.
There is obvious communication driven by a high level of “smarts” going on in that giant brain. Watch ours as Janine nervously approaches him. He WANTS those bananas and signals that desire by repeatedly pointing his trunk at them followed by pointing at his mouth. Being near them, you can “feel” their intelligence, it’s hard to explain. It must be how the Green Peace folks feel after being around whales. Come in contact with them, feel their astuteness and you want to protect them. How anyone could kill one for “sport,” or even for food, is beyond me. We might as well be harvesting each other. I’m just glad the Japanese never developed a taste for elephant meat!
Elephants have to be one of the weirdest and coolest animals on earth.
Our elephant did something strange with the bananas we gave him, although I didn’t pick up on it immediately. He takes each one, crushes them by curling his trunk around it before popping it into his mouth, I think as a way of pre-chewing them. At first I thought he was just playing with his food before I figured out why he didn’t simply pop each one directly into his mouth.
I let him go for it and he tried to pick up every one in one try. Funny thing.
I spent a lot of time with the elephants. I literally could not get enough of them. I have more I want to talk about when it comes to these amazing beings but I don’t want this post to run on and on, sooooo… I think I’ll post in two or three parts. I’ll post the next one in a day or two with more pics and video. See you then.
The handler/trainer suddenly signalled these two pose like this. Pretty cool.
It was nice just sitting back and watching them while having cold drinks.
Read the previous post about our introduction to Pattaya’s Million Years Stone Park and you’ll know that we were immediately enchanted by everything around us. Crazily taking pictures or posing in them, the three of us in our little family group—my wife our teenage daughter and I—unconsciously veered up a path to the left, while Cynthia and Al evidently drifted off into some other direction. In Stone Park, the way the paths quickly meander around corners, it’s easy to lose sight of your fellow sightseeing comrades.
We noticed a small unassuming sign informing us that to continue would mean we’d soon be among crocodiles. Yes! Wanting to immediately press ahead, I paused instead, realizing that we had lost Al and Cynthia. At that point I was torn—should we reverse course to find them, or, should we continue forward and see crocodiles. What to do?
It wasn’t one of my finer moments. Instead of going back I pressed ahead. I figured we could just go a little further to check out how far the crocs were, and then we could always go back for our lost companions, after doing our part reconnoitering for crocodiles of course.
Well, I never did get around to going back after our lost people. Once catching sight of the ominously swampy green water and then all those crocs, I completely forgot about Al and Cynthia. I’m sorry; just lost my mind I guess.
I’ve seen crocodiles and alligators before in several zoos, mostly in the US and here in the Philippines, and every time I’m absolutely thrilled at the sight of them. The ones at Stone Park are the saltwater variety, the largest of all the world’s crocodilians. They have bodies as fat and rotund as turtles, their snouts are blunt, like battering rams concealing rows of teeth; but what really creeps me out are their super-sized eyebrow ridges. These vertical ridges make them look like malicious man-eating devils. Awesome!
There’s something about seeing a fellow apex predator up close that always reminds me of our original place in the food pyramid—eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. I know if I were down there with them that there’s a chance that they would make a meal out of me, and that, for me, always makes for a deliciously spine chilling realization. But what the sight of them really brought to mind was happiness, happiness that they were down there and I wasn’t.
Janine wanted to feed them a chunk of chicken tied to a rope hanging off of a pole. For a couple bucks the lady at the counter handed over the goods. In the video my girl seems okay with doing it, but then the sight of the monsters only a few feet below is more than she can handle. So, I take over.
Apparently sluggish and mostly unmoving while resting in the sun, you’d never suppose that they might be fast on the attack. Actually, I did know how fast they are, having seen them in action on TV; even so, dangling my chicken cutlet over the rail just above the noses of my new reptilian friends, I was unable to accomplish what I wanted to. I had envisioned getting my money’s worth by spending at least five or ten minutes popping the meat up and down just out of their reach. But no, the very first croc that snapped at the chicken GOT the chicken. I give the thumbs up on the video but I wasn’t feeling it. Oh well.
Stand by for more on the other awesome stuff we saw at The Million Years Stone Park, like the elephant park for instance—my favorite!
With Don and I good to go on our Thai drivers licenses it was time to do our first expedition with our 7 person group from the Philippines. We consisted of three couples along with my stepdaughter, Janine, her being the proverbial odd-girl-out; better yet, our 7th wheel so to speak.
Last thing first, concerning that initial trip with the entire group—our day trip that day turned out to be amazing, a fantastic way to officially kick off our Pattaya visit. Once again Don's choice of venue was right on the mark. He took us to a theme park (and zoo) out on the outskirts of Pattaya called “The Million Years Stone Park.” That foray took up most of the entire day with every second being absolutely glorious. If you are going to visit Pattaya then “The Stone Park” is a must see.
But getting there was not so easy. In fact, for us, it was a bit of a Keystone Cops operation. We were on three scooters, two to a bike. Don with my stepdaughter led the way of course since he was the only one who knew how to get there, mostly. He ended up making a wrong turn that caused us to loop around in a giant circle, but that was but a minor issue all told. I doubt if his wrong turn caused us any more than an extra 15 minutes on the road. During all that scootering, initially I followed directly behind him with my wife seated behind me, followed by the third couple, Al and Cynthia.
Al, a 65 year old Vietnam era veteran, served near Pattaya during the Vietnam War a few miles down the coast at U-tapao Royal Thai Air Base. He doesn’t drive anymore, so his wife drove the two of them around with him tucked in behind her. I really don’t know how she managed it with him so much heavier, but she mostly did okay, that is until my right forearm and wrist went into spasms and I lost the ability to turn the accelerator. With my physical problem slowing me down considerably, Cynthia, afraid of losing sight of Don, sped around me while I did my best to follow.
Unfortunately, Cynthia lost sight of Don. She mistakenly ended up following another scooter into a gated subdivision with me right behind her. I knew something was wrong right away, knowing that Don would never take us that way. Luckily, by the time we got back out to the main road, Don had turned around looking for us. Right as we exited the gate there he was. I got back in behind him, shook much of the stiffness out of my hand and forearm and we made it the rest of the way no problem; although Don then had to go all the way back to the hotel to pick up his girlfriend, Jenny. Of course, he managed that in no time flat since he was able to do his normal bat-out-hell speed, not having to worry about sheparding two weak-ass amateur bikers.
All the logistical fun of getting there aside, the moment we entered The Stone Park we were all absolutely enchanted, no, we were stunned by what we saw around us. Seriously, I have never been in such a large park setting where virtually every direction of sight compels that pictures be taken. There really is no choice; it MUST be done. Do not go to that place without a camera.
Probably most folks who enter The Stone Park end up strolling straight ahead up the wide cobblestone central lane. There are other paths to take but straight ahead is the mesmerizing sight of a fairy lake and waterfall and any normal person is naturally drawn to it. I think aside from its obvious beauty of rock, falling water and greenery, there is something about water in the distance that draws all life forms to it. In our case, it was instinctive, like moths to a flame. No that sounds ominous, so how about like fish to water?
Immediately, even as we began to stroll ahead, we all began snapping pictures and taking video. Everyone that is with the exception of my pretty stepdaughter who was in hog heaven since I kept asking her to be in most of the pictures I was taking. (I keep screwing up the metaphors as there is nothing hoggish about Janine at all!) Although she did have a camera, I’m certain that she took the fewest shots of us all since she was in most of mine. She didn’t mind; she loves having her photo taken, and loves being asked to pose for them.
And we weren’t the only ones almost frantically taking pictures. I would chuckle when at times I'd come to my senses momentarily to pause from my own feverish picture taking to take a moment to look around. Everywhere I looked I'd see almost everyone around me busily aiming cameras while ordering people around in front of their view finders like a gaggle of would be Hollywood directors—hilarious. Of course after these moments of reverie I'd succomb once again and go right back to doing the same thing myself.
THE most unique of all the many features of The Stone Park, as you might suspect from its title, are the stones. They call them stones but some of these behemoths are more like gigantic boulders or Miniature Mountains even.
Don and I began trying to figure out exactly what these features were actually made of. Many of them just seemed too perfectly fanciful to be anything but manmade. I thought at first that they might be constructed of some special concrete substance or something. But no, all of the stones are natural and solid through and through; although its obvious that they have been shaped and perhaps smoothed, especially the ones resembling giant art deco animals, like kangaroos and horses.
Obviously they were brought in from some other location, I would imagine from some place within Thailand, but who knows? I have not been able to find anything online yet that tells where the stones come from or the method of their artful placement. Whoever did it though, they definitely knew what they were doing. The place is essentially a rock garden put together on a super grand scale.
As I write this I'm also going through and editing the scores of photos and video I took of that incredible place. When I say incredible I mean unbelievable. In photo after photo I keep seeing some new aspect of oddly shaped placement of rock and stone juxtaposed among some of the most inventively shaped trees and shrubs imaginable. Many of the shots remind me of artwork seen on the pages of Doctor Zeuss books.
But there is more, much more—crocodiles, elephants, tigers, giant catfish, and many other exotic animals native to the tropics. There are also some amazing specimens of shrubs, bonzais, trees and a host of flowering plants, all beautifully placed among the rocks and water. It is a veritable Asian Garden of Eden.
More on the non-garden stuff located in The Stone Garden in my next post or two, or three… Enjoy the pics. I highly suggest you click on them to get the full effect.
