Safari - Ox Carting

Short Note: No time to blog!! Apart from few hours sleep, the rest of time is spent at work, in the office and at home. Luckily I have some drafts written earlier. Again I've a boss that would ask me to go to bed instead of working too late. He's efficient!! I sent him something to review before I left office. When I reached home, his reply was already in the mailbox. Such a no-day-no-night life might last till next week. Hopefully, ONLY till next week.

...previous

Ox-carting comes together with the safari tour although elephant riding is the main course.

Actually there's nothing much to talk about but some photos can be shown.

We were just on the earliest/oldest type of transport.

Hmm.. to make the post more meaningful, perhaps we can take a look into the Bovine animals: cattle, bull, cow, ox, oxen.

What are the differences between them?

According to Dictionary.com,

• Cattle: Any of various chiefly domesticated mammals of the genus Bos, including cows, steers, bulls, and oxen, often raised for meat and dairy products.


• Bull:
  1. The male of a bovine animal, esp. of the genus Bos, with sexual organs intact and capable of reproduction.
  2. The male of certain other animals, as the elephant and moose.
  
  
• Cow:
  1. The mature female of a bovine animal, esp. of the genus Bos.
  2. The mature female of other large animals, such as whales, elephants, or moose.
  
  
• Ox:
  1. The adult castrated male of the genus Bos, especially B. taurus, used chiefly as a draft animal.
  2. A castrated bull used (formerly in Britain and still in some countries) to pull carts, ploughs etc.
  
  
• Oxen: A plural of ox.

I think the definitions are pretty clear now. Basically they are just similar to human vs. male vs. female vs. eunuch.

Your fate is not in your hand foot, it's a sad thing, right?


Roles exchanged. He took pictures for us. We steered the ox-cart.


Most of them working at the Maetang Elephant Park are employed from the local Thai population and the indigenous Karen Hill Tribe people.


During the ride, we were just shooting the bull (talk aimlessly), until the cows come home (for a long time).


Passing by paddy fields.


They stay here, somewhere near to their place of work?


A nice place to chill out?

When doing my trip search, I got to know about a weekly cattle market at San Pa Tong, somewhere that is completely off the Thai tourists' beaten track.

Joan and I planned to visit it. However we finally couldn't make it due to time limitation (once a week) and the unexpected weather.

Anyway, there are lotsa cattle in Malaysia too. I'm absolutely okay with the plan which couldn't be carried out.

The cart we rode on through the rural farmland was pulled by the endangered Lampoon Ox, known as the Rolls Royce of Oxen.

Compared to elephant riding, ox-carting is faster, but bumpier. The oxen just proceeded, moved steps forward without think about us. We felt like "our" nuts and bolts were getting apart :)

However, the entire ox-cart session lasted for only 15 minutes.