Oh we had such a good night sleep last night! The beds are so comfy and I felt extra protected with a decent mosquito net over me to prevent any bugs flying up my nose or in my ear and Gordon the gecko from crawling over my head! It was surprisingly warm as well, the blankets were more like duvets!
Early morning wake up at 6am ready for breakfast at 7! We had pancakes and fruit, with tea and coffee!

So we keep meeting all of these intelligent people with such interesting jobs and who live in these awesome places...
Today we met a physics engineer who has an astronomer as a husband, they're from California but now living in Singapore. ('Yeah well we are lifeguards and plumbers!') okay cool... But then I can imagine if I said this i would have had an awesome comeback from the lady, 'I'm a rocket scientist and I build the data for the Hubble space shuttle.' Haha. Dumb and dumber right here!
And a couple who were born and raise on Manhattan island and the guy collaborates plays and runs a theatre company on Broadway. 'Yeah... Well we were born and raised in pontypool!! ...how exciting.' I mean he just randomly bumped into Bruce Willis in Central Park the other week and it's no biggy; they see celebrities all the time. WHAT! All we get is Derek the weather man demanding more gravy on his Sunday lunch when he's on one of his nature walks! Bloody Derek the weatherman... Pfff! Can't even tell you whether it's going to rain or not.

Volunteering jobs this morning were building a rock bridge for volunteers and villagers to cross but without making a dam and stopping the after from flowing into the elephants bathing area. It was a hard task but fun, it was like being a kid again, moving rocks and making stepping stones, making water channels. Dad's 'treveffinite' outdoor skills he taught us came in handy! Hehe. All we needed was dad with his pocket knife to carve our names in the tree!
Scott went rock crazy and was carrying massive ones everywhere! The majority of us girls but only 2 or three of us got in the water and down and dirty. I had my Jesus sandals on so i didn't mind standing on gross things, and gloves helped when I had to put my hand amongst dirty leaves and twigs. This mammoth task that didn't look so hard but really was didn't take too long so next on the agenda was to try and find a log for people to sit on and watch the elephants bathe. A few of us picked a huge log and carried it over to the sitting area. Scott was too busy getting fun facts from the rocket scientist lady. Haha!
On the way back to base camp we Malot, she was blind in one eye and in really poor condition as she had abscesses from the ropes to tie the carriage on he back with as she was working in tourism. Her spine is also zig zag sort of now because of the carriage. She was happy enough now though as she was munching her way through a lot of trees!

We all grabbed a comfy basket chair or hammock before lunch and chilled out because we were super fast at team work and building our rock bridge we were exhausted. Another group of Trekkers arrived for lunch and joined us in the dining room, today we had veg stew one with tofu and beef. I dodged the tofu! Yuk.
For fruit we had Asian pears which were delicious, but kind of the same as pears at home just more fluffy. Pomegranate seeds that were nice but not pink enough. Clementines and pineapple was yummy though! I quickly grabbed my seat again overlooking the jungle and fell asleep! Food coma.

This afternoon we went out and met moon and Milot who we met from earlier. These elephants don't need help washing themselves; moon was always looked after pretty well, she was used to drag logs and has abscess scares on her back but her owners don't have as much time for her now because the elephants get passed through generations and new generations aren't staying home and farming as much as they do now, they are becoming doctors and teachers etc. also jobs are becoming sparse for the elephants as motorbikes and tractors are used to pull wood and concrete now, yes tourism still happens but in this province it's becoming less and less likely because of these NGO companies opening up.
Malot, the other elephant is a lot younger than moon but looks so much older because she is in the worst condition out of all of them. Because she lost so much weight due to being ill with her abscesses in the rainy season she is finding it difficult to put weight on now because there aren't as much forestry and grassland about the place so she gets fed 5 banana trees and it's bananas per day to try and built her weight up a little and sustain her until rainy season arrived so she can fend for herself a little better.
It was lovely to sit there and be so close to an elephant, Jemma was talking about all the bad tourism companies in Asia and the things hear elephants go through. They aren't suppose to be broken they are wild animals, for hundreds do years dogs and cats etc have been broken in to be domestic animals. Elephants and tigers etc aren't meant for that, they don't want someone sat on their back and stomach in the water being washed, they want to do that themselves. We wouldn't like it. She was making so much sense, and after this experience there is no way we would get on the back of an elephant again. We have learnt how they react to people, what their natural behaviour entails and their gestures and signals they give off when they're happy or sad. It makes you think about all the other elephants you see in these countries tied up, yeah we might think he's okay and getting fed but elephants are emotional creatures and have strong personalities, I can't really say that now I have seen elephants learning how to be themselves again and watching the signals they give off to one another and in general to show their happiness and contentment, it is not what I sore in the elephant tourism sites.
It's going to be an old man on their own situation for me every time I see an elephant chained up... I'm going to want to hug it and cry with it.

Oh, fun fact - elephants sweat from their eyes and two nails; weird!?
Second fun fact - the loud roaring sounds and squeaking sounds that come from the 'real dinosaurs' in Jurassic park are from elephants!

This evening was indeed an Angkor beer day, we chilled out in the lounge area and a few of us played s*** face and bulls*** card games, although for six people we had to use two deck of cards which was proven to be quite difficult!
Dinner was yummy, vegetable stew again and beef cooked with onions and egg plant - that was delicious!
We gossiped a lot after food and were right dirty stop outs staying in the lounge area until 8.50pm, only giving us 10 minutes to brush our teeth before it was time for the lights to go out!

At least the cat didn't follow us tonight, this little black kitten follows us everywhere! Captain meow meow followed us to the rock bride today which was way out into the jungle and sat there and watched us all until we went back to camp, he got s*** scared of the elephant and last night wouldn't stops following us into our bedroom and into the toilet. Aw I am just not a cat person!!
Jack the owner had two dogs, one little gorgeous thing that is bonkers and acts like a proper dog, one that runs around for miles and plays in the forest and jumps around happy all the time and he has a humungous black Great Dane called Jeerax! He is one big guy; again he is a well looked after and well walked dog who is happy all the time. At first it was crazy for us to see these dogs running around as wild as they are because we are now used to dogs in Asia being half dead and not moving much at all and not running anywhere or being treated like a loved pet.