As you can see I am currently in Chiang Mai, and I have now been in Thailand for the past 8 days. It is fair to see I have had a busy week, so please bear with me!

First of all, I survived my long 10 hour bus journey from Luang Nam Tha to the Thai border, although it was as I suspected a very bumpy ride. I believe they were still digging parts of the road, which was quite amusing. At the border I did the most idiotic thing, as I heard that the Mekong River actually separates Laos and Thailand, and in fact you have to cross the river to get to Thailand. Well, I got to the river and asked where I get a boat from and was promptly pushed onto a boat and crossed the river. So when I got to the other side and handed over my passport at the imigration for what I thought was the Laos imigration, I had a very bemused Thai official who told me I had in fact not yet left Laos and I needed to get back over to Laos to get stamped! Well, as you can imagine I felt such an idiot! I don't know maybe I was blonde in my past life of something.

So anyway, I boarded a bus to Chaing Mai, and met a very friendly Australian couple who mentioned that they knew a really nice place, ironically called nice place too! So I decided to go with them, as any recommendation is better than any guidebook right, so upon check in I was more or less told I could only have a room if I signed up for a trek, so before I could say anything I was whisked off to a welcome meeting for the next trek departing the following morning. I did not mind too much though as although I was only just starting to recover from my previous trek just a few days before, I was keen to see how they compared.

Well, as I expected the differences were vast. Whereas my previous trek was excellent for meeting the locals and long walks (funny that), this trek involved no more than 1.5 hours of walking a day and practically no local involvement. However, I had an amazing time as I was with a much better group, all aged in their 20's and now spoilt princesses to grit my teeth over! Anyway, the days were spent doing a bit of walking and an activity like elephant riding and bamboo rafting and the evennings were spent basically getting pissed by a nice big bonfire! What could be better!!!!!!!!

The only activity I perhaps did not enjoy so much was the bamboo rafting. Even though the clue is in the name, I had previous perceptions of a nice gentle float down a river, enjoying the scenery etc. Oh how naive! It actually turned into a full on adrenaline sport, crashing into rocks and trees! I actually fell in about 5 times, and ended up with SOOO many cuts and bruises! So as you can imagine I was quite pleased to get to the end, especially as our raft was rapidly falling apart! Oh well musn't grumble, eh? (oh no I am turning into an Australian)

Anyway, the trek finished on Saturday afternoon and by Monday morning I was checking in at my elephant camp. This was the activity I had been looking forward to for so long, and it certainly did not dissapoint.. to start with I had another good group of 8 with all mixed nationalities which included me, Americans, Canadians and more Ozzies (they are just everywhere). Upon arrival we were each assigned an elephant and a mahout (trainer), my elephant was a giant! Anyway, we spent the first day getting to know our elephants, trying and in my case failing to learn the commands. The commands involved, getting on and off (which I finally mastered today), getting the elephant to pick something up and getting the elephant to sit and lay down! It was hilarious! Anyway, after about 20 minutes on the elephant we were taken to the bathing show, which involved us going into the water with our elephants and bathing them/splashing them and each other in front of an audience of predominantly Japanese tourists! It was so much fun, and we more or less continued with the training for the rest of the day before we take them to the jungle to settle for the night. So for three days, we had to basically collect our elephants very early, and bathe them, feed them, play with them and basically look after them before putting them to bed, which was just awesome!

You may think I am waffling a bit here, but there is no way I can actually sum up the past few days. I have had quite litterally the time of my life, and I was so sad to leave the camp this morning. Elephants are remarkable creatures, very caring and so intelligent and I am so pleased I had the opportunity to be with them! It is certainly true that elephants never forget, and like them I will never forget my time at the camp!

So anyway, before I start welling up again I better sign off! I am now back in Chaing Mai and I will hopefully be boarding a night bus to Bangkok tomorrow evenning, which will allow a bit of time for sightseeing! I have been so busy that I have not really seen anything of this city.

I hope everyone reading this is well and I hope to see you soon!

Thanks

Jon