There was no rest for us as we had booked in to do the one day elephant Mahout training at the elephant village....first we got an introduction to elephants and what the project here is doing. The situation there is that once the elephants aren't being used for logging anymore they are abandoned and as they don't know how to fend for themselves or get enough food to survive they die...so this project aims to rescue them and lightly use them for tourism as a way to help this now endangered species and stop these ones dying. Our elephants only work 4 hours a day and are taken into the jungle in the afternoons, so it's a good environment for them to be in.

Our next part was to learn the commands for the elephant in Laos, as the elephants don't speak English, and then to get up on the neck of the elephant to go for a small ride....this part is actually quite scary at first...these are big animals and you feel like you want something to hold onto...but once the initial fear is gone you really enjoy it! We then had a ride with the 2 of us on one elephant, where we took it in turns to sit one on the seat the other on the neck....after lunch was the funniest part, as we took an elephant each to bathe....Shane had bonded over Lao Lao with the mahout we had earlier so they happily lead the way to the river....watching these animals going up and down the banks is amazing...being on the back of them while they are doing this is terrifying!!! How they keep their balance is a miracle....once we were in the water we had a great time giving them a good scrub and making sure they got a good cool down....Shane def had the best time in the water as his elephant wouldn't stop spraying the water backwards over him....not sure who was wetter by the end!!

We finished the day off with a trip to a waterfall, not the most amazing one that we have seen, but what is surprising is that it's a wet season waterfall only! This massive waterfall runs dry for 5 months of the year, which is really hard to believe when you see it.

Following on from all our activities we decided to have a day checking out the town itself and then get the slow boat up to the border with Thailand. All was going according to plan until 2 different ATMs swallowed 2 of our bank cards!!! Which meant paying to delay the boat, cancelling one card, and sitting around on the street for 2 hours to get the other one back!!! After all that we set off on our way to Thailand...your options are either a bus journey which is known to take 24 hours longer than the 14 hours you are told, a 'speedboat' where they wear motorbike helmets and 'deaths are not uncommon' or the 2 day slow boat...so our choice was made for us!!! What followed are 2 long, but enjoyable days travelling up the Mekong river, taking in the spectacular scenery....large limestone cliffs and fields scratched out of cliff sides...and seeing the local people trying to make a living out of the river...not a bad way to end our amazing and memorable time in Laos....back to Thailand next