Nick and I stayed up late last night spiraling about the special visit to an elephant sanctuary that we had booked. First, we worried it was a scam because no one had contacted us about the promised pick-up. We worried they would just take the money they had charged us and run off with it. Then, when we googled enough to realize it wasn’t a scam, we worried about the ethics of what we had signed up for. The website said all the right things, but when we did more digging and read reviews, we learned otherwise. Ultimately, at midnight, we decided to move forward with the plan. We set our alarms for 6AM to give time for present opening ahead of our 7:30 pickup time.

Millie came into our room at 6 nearly in tears saying “I’m so sorry but I just can’t sleep, I’m too excited for my birthday”. Sweet girl thought it was still night time. She was relieved when I told her she could open her gifts. She got a lot of small things and her “big” gift was a digital camera. She dressed herself and we went down to the coffee shop to wait for our ride.

When we got to the sanctuary we changed into clothes that they provided. Millie did not love having to give up her pink and glitter, but we thought she looked pretty cute. We walked out to see the elephants.

We booked a full day tour. It consisted of mostly of feeding the elephants and watching them. Millie was terrified of getting too close to them (understandably) and grew bored after about an hour.

I spent much of the time internally debating the ethics (still unsure) and calculating how much the sanctuary was making based on the number of visitors (a lot).

Millie took lots of photos with her new camera. I can already feel this becoming something I regret. She would take photos and then scroll through her photos instead of being present. She kept calling it “my phone” – ugh. Hopefully the novelty will wear off.

Her favorite activity of the day was making “vitamin balls” for the elephants and carrying the buckets down to feed them. But she never wanted to get close enough to feed them.

In the afternoon while we were sitting, a few of them came up to eat from our hands. They got very close and she had a big screaming moment of terror. I felt awful for her, and for the elephants.

We opted against the “bathing the elephants” part of the day. Partially because I read too much about it last night, and also because the water was full of poop. We sat and watched.

When the full day was done, we were dropped off back at our Airbnb. She slept for almost the whole ride.

We got changed and headed out to Millie’s requested dinner. Pizza, of course.

We walked through a market home. When we got back, the plan was to have her birthday cake. I got her a single slice and a candle last night. Unfortunately we didn’t have a way to make fire, and failed at our very dumb attempts to light paper with the electric stove. She didn’t mind and pretended to blow out an unlit candle.

Her last request was a movie night, so we watched half of Spirited Away before the WiFi crapped out.

A five year old! I can’t believe it. We said it so many times today that she got annoyed and told us “stop saying I’m five!”. Sorry, but it’s our job to be sentimental and annoying.