We Encountered Elephants!

And trained monkeys, too!  Elephants have long been used as work animals in Thailand.  However, the elephants we saw are not native to the island.  Some of the animals are owned by their drivers who bring them from the north of Thailand, a major place for training elephants, to the island for the tourist season.  When the season is over, they go back to northern Thailand to rest... 
The elephants were brought to the island of Koh Samui to help in agriculture, but now are a part of the tourist business, used mainly for elephant rides. We saw the elephants doing tricks and we took a very bumpy ride as the elephants swayed from side to side.

 

The monkeys, however, are vital to the local coconut farming.  These coconut palms grow quite tall and each tree has many coconuts.  It would take quite a while for a man to climb up each tree and cut down the coconuts.  Another problem is that tree climbing snakes love to hide among the coconuts and slither out, scaring the climber.  If one hand is holding on and the other is reaching for a coconut, and a snake jumps out at you, you would probably let go of the tree and make a quick trip to the ground, for a rough landing on the ground and any of the coconuts you had already gotten down.  The monkey, on the other hand, has 4 points of attachment, providing a much more secure environment.
They are trained to scamper up the tree, spin the coconut to loosen it and then push it loose so it drops to the ground.

We also saw some native birds and a very large spider.

In order to make the trip worthwhile, they also included a cooking demonstration and a recipe for Som Tam, Green Papaya Salad.  I doubt that I will ever have the necessary ingredients, but they did suggest alternative ingredients for the green papaya.  Then it would not be Green Papaya Salad, would it?

Finally, we again saw how latex is drained from rubber trees.  This time our guide showed us how the liquid latex is solidified and made into "mats" so it can be sold.  However, the price of rubber is low and will probably go lower since China is getting into rubber farming bigtime.