Time flies when you're having fun, as I am experiencing right now in Thailand. Next Tuesday will be the day that completes 25% of my journey so far. It's wierd but I don't miss the Netherlands at all. This is such an amazing thing I am doing right now.

On Sunday evening I was picked up from the Twin House in Singburi for a long trip to Umphang. Together with a Belgium family (2 parents and 4 kids from 8 and 10 years old), Fredrik (Sweden), Philipp & Selina (Germany) and 2 Dutch girls (Femke and Britt) we were dropped off at the bus station. We needed to wait for one hour to get picked up by a bus that would take us to Maesot in 6 hours. The bus was late and arrived after 2 hours. I'm already used to the Thai puncuality so we entertained ourselves by playing Yathzee/Kniffel (German name for Yathzee) while waiting.

When the bus arrived Philipp and I got the best seats of the house all the way in front of the bus with the most leg space. The ride was quite comfortable but I wasn't able to catch a lot of sleep during it (we left at 22:00 and arrived somewhere around 05:00). From Maesot we needed to travel by a car that is similar to the taxis in Singburi (and the cars used by Greenway to transport small groups; I have a photo of one of them in my Culture week album with Tosca and Bogdan in it so you can see what it looks like. It was going to be cold since I was sitting in the back of the truck that wasn't covered by a roof or doors so I wore some warm clothes.

The ride was awful. We were warned at the Twin House by people whom had already been to Umphang and back for he curvy road with a lot of height changes along the way. They didn't say a word too much. The four hour drive through the mountains had more curves than straight parts and we were always going either up or down. At first I was doing just fine, but somewhere around the two hour mark I felt I was getting carsick. From that part on, I was focussing on the road to prevent feeling worse and the last part I even slept a bit. I was a bit nautious when we arrived but I was glad it was over.

The nature around Umphang is so beautiful. I'm not easily impressed by nature but over here it is simply stunning. Big mountains everywhere, overgrown with trees and rivers and waterfalls streaming in between. The view I had for the entire week has been amazing. Although I can't capture the beauty of it in one picture, I tried to take some nice pictures to remember this week by and to show to you.

When we arrived at the house, I got a room with a big bed and a musquito net on it so that was a very nice start. We would have 4 hours of time to install ourselves in the house and get some rest before we would go to the elephants at 14:00. Unfortunately, the Belgium kids were running around making a lot of noise which prevented me from getting some sleep. At 13:00 we had lunch and then we left at 14:00 for the elephants.

We first drove up a mountain to cut banana trees that we would feed to the elephants. After 20 minutes we left again to the place where the elephants were waiting for us. There were only 2 elephants today. It was much fun giving the elephants the pieces of banana tree. I was quite surprised by the elephants because of the way they use their proboscis (slurf). They take it out of your hands but before that they feel with it if the banana tree "feels" good. When its dirty or wet, they drop it in front of them to eat it later. They apparently first want to eat the good food. Kind of reminds me of myself, always finishing my meat before I start eating my vegetables haha. On Thursday we gave them some branches from the coconut tree as well and these are very strong. They take the branche from your hand, stick one end in their mouth and snap the branch with their proboscis. When you give them dirty food, it lays on the ground after we cut it and when we chop it into small pieces, they hit it against a piece of wood to clean it and when the piece of food is too big they stand on it with their foot to break it and make it smaller.

After the feeding, took about one hour, we rode on them for 10 minutes. The elephants walked around a field that has the size of half a football field. The skin of the elephant is covered with big, sturdy hairs. We needed to sit on the elephants with two people and I sat with one of the kids on an elephant. The caretakers of the elephants were with them all the time and walking besides them to direct them. The caretakers take care of the elephants from birth and are basically like a parent for them. They would tell the elephant to get down so we could climb on top of them and this was similar for getting of the elephant.

We swam with the elephants afterwards. You could either ride on the back of an elephant or walk into the water yourself to get to the area where we would wash them. We splashed water on their body and would rub them clean in the meantime. It was very nice weather obviously and it was very nice to get into the water with them. The elephants enjoyed it as well since they were spraying water around with their proboscis and kicking water around with their legs. When swimming time was over, we rode out of the water again on the elephants and then we needed to clean the feeding area to stop food that wasn't eaten from rotting.

This was what we did almost every day with the elephants for the rest of the week on a daily basis. We had some afternoon activities since we came back at the house at 14:00. On Tuesday, we went hiking on a mountain to view the sunset. Needless to say that the view was awesome and the sunset stunning. On Wednesday we visited a small waterfall, hidden from the tourist roads. Philipp and I climbed the waterfall, which was divided into small levels, to the part where the waters became to calm and the fun basically ended. There was a platform that was like seven meters high from which we jumped and there was a cave in the rocks that we went into. We needed to swim underneath some rocks to come up at the waterfall again. On Thursday we went to a Thai village to see how the people lived over there. We were allowed to enter some houses and the guide explained how they lived. On Friday we went "rafting" but this was basically a boat ride. It was very beautiful to float underneath and next to rocks that looked as if they were around 100 meter high. After the rafting, we went to Namtok Thi Lo Su, the biggest waterfall in Thailand. This was absolutely amazing. The entire waterfall is between 200 and 300 meter high (very accurate estimation Thailand...) and together with Philipp and Fredrik I climbed all the way too the biggest drop of the waterfall. I think it is like 40 meters high and we swam close to the area where the stream of water collapsed into the water.

Umphang has been absolutely but two weeks would be too much. The work with the elephants is very nice but also very monotone. Therefore I have decided to do a similar project for gibbons (monkeys) in near a big city that lies 3 hours travelling from here. I hope it will be as much fun as this week in Umphang!

The WiFi is terrible at this place and therefore I'm afraid I won't be able to upload pictures now. I will give it a try but if it doesn't work I will try to upload some at the accomodation I will be staying in for the Gibbon project!