Today we woke up excited as it was the day of our Mahout elephant experience. We ran out for breakfast next door to our guesthouse so that we could see if our pickup arrived. Just as we'd ordered a van pulled up. We watched for a while and then it drove round the corner…we thought we were going to miss our tour. I went running round and it was our guide, he was early. He said he'd come back for us. We finished our breakfast quickly and then found the van again to be taken to the jungle…

Our guide was really nice, his name was Kian. Graeme got into the van and I legged it quickly to the toilet. While I was in the toilet he asked Graeme his name and then asked him his wife's name hee hee. He then kept telling us throughout the day to come back to Luang Prebang with our kids some day, which was a bit worrying as we both didn't realise we had kids.

It was just the 2 of us we had a private tour (I should think so though as we paid 99 dollars for the trip). On the journey to the elephant village he explained a bit about it and what we'd be doing. The place we were going was like a sanctuary for the elephants, they used to be used for logging and were treated badly, so now they'd been rescued and they are looked after here. We heard about 2 different schemes to save the elephants, the first which was the first phase is the tourism scheme, where instead of logging the elephants are treated a lot better but are used to give tourists trekking rides, however tourists are a lot lighter then logs. This has allowed them to raise money so they can look after the elephants and also open an elephant safari, where the elephants are free and don't have to give tourists rides, which is the better option but they are unable to afford it without the first.

When we arrived it was like a little village and just in the middle was an elephant eating bamboo leaves randomly in the garden, and you could go up close to it and touch it, it didn't mind. There was also some horses scattered around and this cute little monkey who was giving himself a …….. lets just say a good time! We were taken then to a boat which took us across the river where there was a group of elephants. We climbed up onto a platform and we then got on a seat on the back of an elephant with another guide riding the elephant for us. I didn't know if it was cruel still but actually the elephant seemed to enjoy taking us around, and the guy riding him was nice to it. Every now and again the elephant stopped to eat leaves. The elephant took us through the forest going up and down muddy hills (good job we weren't walking). Then the guy said we could have a go at riding the elephant. He hopped off and we took turns in riding the elephant. It was amazing.

We then headed back on the elephant and then took another boat to a waterfall which was lovely. Graeme was brave and dived straight in, it was freezing! He then had a go at this rope swing thing. There were some Chinese guys in the waterfall too they thought he was a legend when he jumped to catch the rope and then swung in! We stayed there for a while before our tour guide wanted to take us on. There were some baby elephants which you could pay extra to wash but we decided not too as we were washing the big elephants next…

We headed back to the elephants again and had to wait until 2 came back. When they returned we hopped onto them with no seats this time just onto their backs. Graeme's elephant made him climb up, but my one kneeled down for me. We had a guy behind us as well directing the elephant. The elephants then went into the river to bathe with us on top of them. It was sooooo cool. We got to clean them with a brush which they liked. Graeme jumped off his into the water. My one kept dunking me in, probably because I wasn't brave enough to jump in. the guy directing my one started getting the elephant to splash water with his trunk. We got soaked. And so did a boat of tourists that had just pulled up!

After washing the elephants we were taken back to the village for a free lunch of curry and rice mmm. We were then driven back to our guesthouse. Our tour guide Kian we were sure wanted to invite us for dinner at his house but said his cousin was visiting or something. We said we'd have to if we ever came back again. Or maybe he was rooting for a big tip hehe. Before being dropped off Kian wished us "good luck, good health, good wealth, good business, good journey, good relationships, etc etc etc". We were then dropped off early (it was supposed to be a day tour) which we should have been annoyed about but actually was nice as we wanted to go round the town a bit as we were only there a day.

We had a quick freshen up to get the mud and elephant poo off us and then went out. We visited a couple of nice temples, and then we decided to try and get to the temple on the hill to watch the sunset. We walked down a long road passing a staircase which we thought may have been an entrance, but I said to Graeme we should maybe try and find the entrance on the map we'd seen earlier. We then ended up walking for ages to find an entrance going up a hill, through alleyways and up some steps. This took us to the start of the temple but we realised we could have gone up the first step entrance - oops poor Graeme was exhausted! And so was I for that matter. We then climbed the 400 and something steps to the top and watched the sunset.

Afterwards, we decided (actually I did) to go to a bar we'd seen advertising a fashion show. We ordered a few cocktails (it was happy hour) and went and got front row seats infront of an outdoor stage. We then watched the fashion show which was all traditional Laos clothes from different villages modelled by some girls and 2 guys. Graeme was strangely more interested in this than me hehe! After the fashion show there was a hip-hop breakdancing show with kids doing different moves. We watched a bit of this but then left to go and get food.

We found a place next door that did bbq food - you order the food (uncooked) and they set up a bbq in the middle of your table for you to cook it yourself. We got to try water buffalo mmmm just like beef. It was quite a cool idea but Graeme was annoyed as he needed to pay to cook his own dinner which he said he could have done at home 