So, today, as I was riding my elephant and looking into the beautiful hills of Thailand.....wait, what?! Riding an elephant? Yea, today was one of those days, where I actually had to pause and think to myself, 'oh my goodness, this is actually happening.'
Once again, thanks to Melini, we had quite the day planned today because as I mentioned before, nobody works today or tomorrow, so we had some time to do some legit Thailand stuff. The day started with a long drive in the wee hours in the morning (and by wee hours, I mean 8:30am) into the jungle to ride some elephants. We got to sit two to an elephant and with our guide, we trekked up hills and through water on our elephant all whle feeding it bananas and being able to pet it. I know I have been using this phrase a lot in my blogs, but this was UNREAL. The elephants were all so friendly and describing them as 'huge' really does not do them justice. These creatures are GINORMOUS! And the baby elephants were just wondering around and we were totally able to pet them. I wanted to take one home with me so bad! But I doubt I would have been able to sneak that past security...My teammate John and I were on the same elephant and we named ours Tantor (Tarzan reference....anybody?) Melody, if you are reading this, I totally thought of you the ENTIRE time I was doing this. I wish you would have been here with me!!
So after saying farewell to Tantor, we loaded up in the van and headed down to the water for some bamboo rafting. Now this was no easy job. Well, I mostly sat on the raft, but rowing down the rapids was pretty hardcore. We had a guide, but he let each of us take turns rowing and when it came to be my turn, it ended very badly. I ran us into some trees, got us stuck, it was a mess. But luckily, we made it out alive. The best part was that our guide had us stand on the raft when the water wasn't too rough and would yell at us to sit down if we were about to run into something or when going down rapids. Molly (one of the girls in my group, and on my raft) was up in the front steering and we were about to run into the land, yet we were all standing. So our guide tells us (the three not steering) to sit down, and she just plops right down and drops the stick. And our guide starts laughing and at this point we were laughing so hard we were crying. Needless to say, the guide then took over the important job of making sure we didnt run into anything.
After the rafting, we went on a hike through a village and then to the MaeWang Waterfall. We got to go swimming and do some mild cliff jumping.
So here is a classic Becky story. I wanted to jump off the cliff into the water, and so I just climbed my way up the slippery rocks figuring I would be able to catch myself if need be. Now to set the scene, only five of us were brave enough to swim and jump into the cold water. (Tim, John, Khem, Claudio and myself) so the rest of the group were just sitting on rocks watching us make fools of ourselves. So, here I am trying to be all cool and be the first one to jump in, but I slip on the rock and full on slide down on my behind all the way back into the water. And everybody was waiting with their cameras to get a shot of me jumping in, and they are all in tears laughing so hard at the sight of me just sliding down these rocks like an idiot. I tried to play it off like I meant to do it, but it was too late. I am totally fine, not even hurt at all, just a little scratch down my leg. But hey, I provided entertainment, so it was all good.
But there you have it. Our first day off was not wasted here in beautiful Thailand.