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For some vacationers, getting away means visiting remote, rustic places
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Bill Hughes/Las Vegas Review-Journal
Shuffle Master Inc. CEO Gavin Isaacs holds an oversized model of a fishing lure in his company office at 1106 Palms Airport Drive. For several years, Isaacs has gone with college friends on a weeklong summertime camping and fishing trip in parts of Australia where cellphones are useless and lodgings are rustic. » Buy this photo
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Bill Hughes/Las Vegas Review-Journal
Diana Edelman is surrounded by some of her elephant collection in her Las Vegas home. She spent a week in September in a volunteer program at the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand. » Buy this photo
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Courtesy Photo
Gavin Isaacs holds a mackerel he caught while fishing in the Australian waters during a summer excursion.
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Courtesy Photo
Diana Edelman spent a week of her vacation last year working as a volunteer at an elephant refuge in Thailand.
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
When Diana Edelman went on vacation last year, she didn't have to pack a trunk.
It was waiting for her when she arrived.
Ouch, and apologies. But whenever somebody chooses to spend a vacation volunteering at an elephant refuge, a trunk joke must be made.
Anyway, Edelman did spend a week of her vacation last year working as a volunteer at an elephant refuge in Thailand. But if caring for abused elephants doesn't sound like an appealing way to decompress, there's always Gavin Isaacs' annual summer vacation.
For the past several years, Isaacs, CEO of Shuffle Master Inc., has gone on a weeklong camping and fishing trip in parts of Australia where cellphones are useless, crocodiles and sharks aren't far away, and accommodations are rustic enough to be almost nonexistent.
Now, while the year remains young, many of us are thinking about how we might spend our annual summertime getaway from work, school and the routine of everyday life. And if the experiences of Edelman and Isaacs tell us anything, it's this:
We, the resort-booking, beach-lounging, hotel-bound many, have absolutely no imagination.
Edelman is a Las Vegas communications professional and avid traveler who writes about her journeys for various publications and her own travel blog (DTravelsRound.com).
Edelman, 31, calls herself someone who's "prone to do things that are not like the 'spending a week at the beach' kind of thing."
She was intrigued when she learned that Elephant Nature Park, an elephant rescue and rehab organization in northern Thailand, offers tourists the chance to spend a week caring for injured and abused elephants.
The organization purchases and cares for elephants that have been mistreated or abused -- and, in many cases, injured, sometimes permanently -- in Thailand's tourism and illegal logging industries.
Learning about the plight of elephants in Thailand "made me really sad," Edelman says. "I knew I was only going to get a certain amount of time to travel, and I really wanted to go somewhere and do something as opposed to just going to lounge on a beach.
"When I learned you could actually volunteer to work with the elephants, I thought that would be an amazing thing. They're not in captivity. These are wild animals, essentially, and you can go and touch and feel and get to understand them and their dynamics, and it absolutely was something that intrigued me."
In September, two days after arriving in Thailand, Edelman was driven about an hour into the jungle to begin her weeklong stint as an elephant refuge volunteer.
The three-acre park is "pretty remote," says Edelman, and its accommodations pretty basic. The hut she stayed in was "a bed with mosquito netting around it" and restrooms were outdoors.
On the other hand, "you could open the shutters and there's an elephant outside your window," Edelman says. "I was right next to the family shelter, and I could look outside and see a baby with her mother. Very 'Jurassic Park.' "
As a volunteer, Edelman's duties ranged from helping to sort "tons of food" for the refuge's 35 elephants to bathing elephants and helping refuge staffers with routine tasks. And, as to the obvious question: Yes.
"Everybody asks what I did on my vacation," Edelman says. "I shoveled elephant poop."
But, she adds, "being so close to an elephant in the wild, that was amazing."
Potentially dangerous, too, given that each elephant weighs about 6 tons and can fling a human across the compound with its trunk. Edelman says volunteers are warned to not stand in front of elephants and to never allow a hand or limb or their bodies to ever become situated between an elephant and a hard place.
"The last few days, there was an elephant I just adored, and I asked the mahout if I could pet her. He says, 'Of course.' We went down to where she was and I started petting her head, and my hand was between a post and her head.
"She really liked the scratching and put her head into the post, and my hand got wedged a little bit. Fortunately, she moved her head and I didn't get crushed.
"There was always a risk, but I never once felt like I was in danger," Edelman says.
Edelman's weeklong stay cost about $400, excluding airfare and incidentals. And despite the spartan accommodations, "there was actually sort of an amazing buffet every single day," she says. "I give rave reviews to their food.
"They treat (volunteers) with such respect, and they're so grateful to have people come out."
Edelman knew her work at the park "wasn't necessarily going to be a relaxing time, but it was probably one of the most amazing experiences of my life."
Leaving "was so hard. Oh, it was so hard," Edelman says. "I would go back in a heartbeat."
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Isaacs also takes to the wild when vacation time rolls around. But, rather than the jungles of Thailand, his favorite vacation getaway usually lies somewhere around the rugged coast of Australia.
"I go to the wild parts of Australia once a year with six of my friends," he says. "One fellow is from Las Vegas who comes with us, and the rest are all Australian."
Isaacs, 47, and the Australian guys went to university together, and the annual vacation crew includes a few lawyers, a barrister and the CEO of a car business in Australia.
"We go to these isolated outposts," Isaacs says -- one year to the "very, very northern tip of eastern Australia," another year to the far northwest, and last year to Melville Island, off the coast of Australia's Northern Territory.
"We stay out on the side of the coast, usually in a camp of some sort," Isaacs says. "We start out early in the morning and fish all day and have a fire on the beach. As the sun comes down, we eat some fish, drink a lot of wine and beer and we put in at 2 in the morning, get up at 9 and do the same thing for six or seven days."
Given the areas to which they travel, one thing the group doesn't have to do is greet anybody else. For instance, during their trip to the remote Kimberley region in the northern part of western Australia, "the closest person is an hour's seaplane flight away," Isaacs says.
During their vacations, the group also lives -- ideally, peacefully and at a very long arm's length -- with sharks, snakes, crocodiles and "every animal imaginable," Isaacs says.
No problem, he adds. Just keep the sleeping bag zipped up and avoid putting a hand under the boat (crocodiles, he explains, sometimes "will sit under the boat waiting for something to come").
So far, the group has experienced no emergencies or close calls with wildlife, Isaacs says, "touch wood. And, no, we don't really want to. If you're way out there and get bitten by a (venomous) snake, forget about it."
Meanwhile, "we catch some amazing fish and different species," Isaacs says, among them the barramundi.
"It's like a big sea bass," he says. "We catch Spanish mackerel and coral trout. We catch snapper. We catch multiple species, and we only keep what we can eat."
This year's trip will be the group's sixth together, Isaacs says. "When we were at university, we used to go camping or something like that at the end of every summer, and it just evolved."
He tries to coordinate the annual outing with a business trip. Once, he continued on after a business trip to China, "so here I am dragging my fishing rod through Chinese immigration."
What do the outings offer that Isaacs can't find at a luxury resort? The quiet? The inaccessibility? The lack of cellphone service? The reconnecting with longtime buddies?
"All of the above," he says. "The isolation. And the bonding, I guess is how you'd put it. It's just such a wonderful break, such a good way to recharge. There are no distractions.
"There's nothing better. You come back from this and you feel healthy" -- "despite all the drinking," Isaacs jokes, "and all you've done is eat fish and you're out in the outdoors with no pollution. It's just wonderful.
"There are no phones, no distractions, and you can't worry about the computer. You can't worry about anything other than catching up with your mates."
Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.
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