Without grace, I watched the sun gracefully lower itself down the horizon. I was half-running from places to places, looking for a good spot to plant my tripod and trip my camera’s shutter, waiting for that thirty-second interval before rushing to the next one with a good foreground to frame the pastels of the sky. I’m not usually like this on media trips where sunsets occur on restaurants or tour vans heading back to the hotel, or worse, press cons. There were no such distractions here at Sampran Riverside resort—it’s just me, my camera, and the setting sun.

SAMPRAN RIVERSIDE’S SNAZZY LOBBY

Some hours earlier, after doing the circus that is the Samphran Elephant Ground & Zoo, we sat ourselves down at the lobby of the hotel while waiting for our room keys. I asked our guide, Tippie, what we were doing next. Her reply left my jaw open. Nothing, she said.

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Whomp!!! The sound of a jaw filled with massive teeth snapping to a close echoed throughout the wrestling grounds of the Samphran Elephant Ground & Zoo. The crowd cheered and shrieked as, once more, the croc wrestler’s arms avoided being crushed, and possibly dismembered, by the crocodile’s powerful jaws.

THE ZOO’S TREE-LINED MAIN BOULEVARD

It was my first time at Sam Phran, a district in the province of Nakhom Pathom which is about an hour drive west of Bangkok. After having a hearty (and spicy) Thai lunch at JSM Pizzeria (sans the pizza) we dropped our bags at the nearby Sampran Riverside Hotel and proceeded to the Samphran Elephant Ground & Zoo.

► SEE: CHAO PHRAYA RIVER TOUR