After a whirlwind trip through Vietnam and Cambodia, our family arrived for a few days of relaxation in Thailand. We’d deliberately structured the trip this way, with our intense sightseeing and city-hopping packed into the start of the trip, and the final few days set aside for some pool lounging and beach bumming.

It worked pretty much as planned.

We spent our mornings at the pool, then ventured out into the beach town of Phuket for lunch and to experience the infamous Thai beach life, which also did not disappoint.

After a few days spent by the water, we were ready to adventure once more. We’d arranged an early morning visit to an elephant sanctuary in the middle of the jungle. This was – by far – the adventure of our trip I’d looked forward to the most. I’ve wanted to visit elephants in the wild for as long as I can recall, although as I learned more about how they are often treated, it was important to me to find a place that was ethical and humane. While the elephants were treated wonderfully from everything we saw, we’ve since heard the place we visited chains the elephants at night. On our next visit, we hope to visit a sanctuary where the elephants aren’t confined physically, and are allowed to roam.

We fed the elephants.

And played with the elephants.

And took a mud bath, a pond rinse, and a shower & scrub with the elephants, but I’ll spare you the photos of those.

We wore amazing grass crowns.

And a jungle shirt that *some* of us still wear to this day.

Our trip would not have been possible without the expertise of Indochina Pioneer travel company. They arranged our hotel stays in every city and had excellent guides in every place we visited. I would highly recommend Indochina Pioneer if you’re planning any time in Southeast Asia – we loved our time in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand and hope to be back soon! While I’m so thrilled that elephant sanctuaries are becoming more and more popular, we’ve since found out that the place we visited chains the elephants at night. We will be researching other sanctuaries for our next visit to Thailand.