Edd went in search of food early as we were being collected at 8am. I stayed behind to pack our bag, as there was a list of things we needed to take with us for the day. He came back with a croissant and a coffee from the 7/11 as everything was still closed and we munched on our breakfast while we waited to be picked up.

We were collected by an overenthusiastic, young Thai guy. It turned out he had verbal diarrhoea and the hour journey to the elephant camp was going to be a long one. We learned that he like western girls, having never been with a Thai girl before. He had an Australian girlfriend, who was 6 years older than him and he'd cheated on her many times as he liked 'the honeys.' I wanted to punch him in the face, firstly, because he wouldn't shut up and secondly, because he was a cheating scumbag and proud of it. In his defence, he was actually talking to Edd and therefore have a 'man chat' that I was listening to (not by choice).

We got to the elephant camp and saw them all eating breakfast. I was beside myself with excitement and couldn't wait to get to learn how to ride one of these beasts. We were taken to a meeting area and I became well acquainted with the resident cat. I enquired as to why so many cats in Thailand had short tails, thinking they were all docked, and learned that it was probably due to in breeding. Oh delightful. I had noticed that none of the animals I'd seen had been neutered or spayed, so it made sense a bit of incest could/would result.

We waited for another couple to arrive and once they did, we were welcome to the Thailaphent Home (Thai Elephant Home) it was a language issue, but an entertaining shorting of the name, briefed on a range of things about the park, the elephants, etc. Our guide really did like the sound of his own voice and had the same tendency the Lake House guide had - he repeated himself. After hearing him say the same thing about the mahout hooks for the fifth time, I lost interest. Our guide was perceptive, but thought I wasn't happy about the hooks that were used. He enquired and my reply was, 'Can we just get on with it?' Patience was not a virtue today.

We put on clothes that they provided, transferred our belongings to bags they gave us and watched as our guide gave an offering of a coconut and incense to a Buddha with an elephant head, called Ganesh. We then grabbed some bananas and headed down to the camp.

We fed the elephants some bananas and were then taught the different ways of getting on an elephant. We had to shout 'maplong' and they'd kneel down for us to climb up; you had to shout it again for them to stand back up again. We all had a practise and then one by one were allocated an elephant and a mahout. I was allocated Jumper, a male ellie that loved water. (A mahout is an elephant trainer).

We went on quite a long trek up a mountain and one of the other guests managed to fall off his elephant at one point on a steep climb around a sharp corner. The mahouts were very good in helping him off without any issues and I wondered what could have happened if they weren't there, as the left side of us was steep mountain going up and the right side was steep mountain going down. We arrived at an area that they called their 5* restaurant that had a watering hole with a natural spring just underneath it; some of the elephants were taken to it to cool off and have a mud bath. We had some lunch and I had the vegetarian version of Pad Thai, which was really good, but far too much food. It was served in a banana leaf with bamboo used as a ribbon to keep it closed and warm.

We then each got a chance to get a 'kiss' from one of the elephants. I was up first and she sucked my cheek so hard I squealed! It was quite an unreal sensation, a bit like getting your cheek stuck in the nasal of a really big vacuum cleaner.

Once everyone had received their elephant kiss, we got coated in mud. This was really fun and I took great joy in covered Edd from head to toe. We then climbed into the muddy area and Jumper, my elephant, was brought down for us to scrub him with mud.

After this, we all went back up to our elephants, climbed back on and left for the river. My elephant was the one that was chosen for the day to get a mud scrub, and I then had to ride him back to the river, coated in mud. This was a slippery exercise.

We got to the river and washed our elephants, getting soaked ourselves. Jumper was particularly difficult to wash as he had excessive amounts of mountain mud on him! Once we'd given him a good rinse, we left him to play in the water himself. He had a great time shooting water out of his trunk and kicking his legs, like a small child. It was both funny to watch and quite sad, in the wild he'd probably do this a lot, being something he clearly loved; here he was told when he was allowed to play in the river. The whole 'elephant experience' tinkered on the edge for Edd and I. We'd refused to do the Tiger Kingdom as we'd learned the tigers were drugged in the day for tourists and didn't want to pay money to aid in the continuation of that. This elephant business was a grey area for us. No pun intended.

We went back to the camp and said good-bye to our ellies. We were then given towels and went and had a shower. It turned out my Victoria's Secret underwear was probably never going to be the same again, after the mountain mud. We got dressed and sat back at the briefing area to look at our photos. We'd made friends with a German girl that had apparently been there for 3 days and exchanged email, as her camera was also used for pictures, but hadn't been put on the CD we'd been given.

We asked about the 'herbal spa' they'd advertised and were told it wasn't 'on' today. Edd enquired as to why and suddenly they were all rushing around to get things ready. There was no reason why not, other than laziness. We weren't told what to do, just to 'sit.' So we sat. We were given a 10-minute warning by our driver about 20 minutes later and got out of our tea baths.

The drive back to our guesthouse was quiet as everyone was exhausted from the day's activities. We managed to muster up a bit of energy for dinner and a drink, but got an early night as the next day was going to be another action packed day of activities.