after getting off the songthai we arrived at the Elephant Conservation Centre (ECC) it was the first one in thialand to have govenment funding for rehabiliating elephants. some they can set back out into the wild others thay'll keep becasue they may be too injured or become too acustomed to being hand fed and not having to forage.

as soon as you see them up close you really notice how chuffing big and how strong they are. one mangaed to grab hold of my wrist while i was feeding it and it bloody hurt!

we stood round for a while and watched school kids riding on the backs of a couple of elephants they manged to get 4 kids on one elephant! eventually the elephant washing began and about 20 elephants came walking down the hill towards the watering hole. put it this way they wernt scared in the slightest in getting wet and didnt hesitate to jump right in! oh did i forget to mention that they had their keepers on their backs and some volunteers that pay to look after thenm for a week. anyway this swimming session was chaotic there were 20 elephants and 30 people that were on the backs of the elephants and they ended up having a missive water fight. this happened by one elephant dipping its trunk in the water and sucking as much as posible up then while its still in its trunk lifting it up to tyhe keeper on its back and the keeper aims the trunk for the elephant while it fires as hard as possible. it was quite entertaining!

any way after they all finnished messing about we walked with them up to the performance area where they all joined in a line and walked tail in trunk all the way. it was like off dumbo!

the performance area showed us what they are capable of and how they were used for logging in the rainforest. and chuffing hell they are so strong! one elephant mangaged to kick a tree trunk about 10-20 meters. it was incredible. they showed us how dextrous they are in two ways; one was to show us how it could walk across a horizontal tree trunk that was about 30-40cm wide and then turn on the spot on it. and the other way was to get an eizel out and let the elephant paint. to our amazement it managed to paint an elephant stood under a tree with a keep on its back! and honestly it had no help what so ever! Fiona decided she wanted it and asked to buy it for her house! it was amazing though.

after that we made our way back towards the watering hole becasue it was our turn to ride the elephants! josh and jen had dissapeared so me and mick decided to jump on one of these monstreous beasts! you had to climb a ladder then go across a platform to the elephant. i was first in and i didnt know where to put my feet so i was abit nervous about standing on his head! anyway i did and it was perculiar it was like standing on a bag of half cooked rice! it was squidgy yet hard! really weird. anyway i sat in my seat and mick was to follow. this thing felt bloody unsafe we were literally hanging over the side of the elephant. and you must be about 10ft in the air and swinging side to side as it walked. as we set off Scottish (Braveheart) Mick started to have a panick attack! he was screamng "Oh my God, we're gonna die, We're gonna die!". this amused me for about 5 minutes as it bloody was abit sketchy!

eventually we calmed down and started to enjoy it! we were all in a line walking through the undergrowth in the rainforest. this took about 20 mins then we came out into the open, and saw a huge lake, our elephant being 60 years old couldn't handle alot of the terrain and decided to go down a nice steep bank and wade through 6ft worth of water. he was quite intelligent becasue he wanted to have a drink and diddnt want to drink from the muddy part that other eleephants had stirred up. so he started slurping and aimed his trunk into his mouth and fire. and i was like pouring a huge bucket into a half full bath tub. it sounded exaclty the same! he must have been thirsty becasue it went on for about 5 minutes! eventually he had enough so he walked on through deep water to the other side. the next obstical was a gorge that was about one and a half meters wide that our arthritic 60 year old elephant had to cross with three people on his back! eventually after negotiaing his way upto the side of the ledge he basically jumped! it was scary i will admit that. we made our way back round and had our photo taken before we got off. Mick being Mick made us both have a Magnum Steel pose (see Zoolander for details). anyway i had to buy one (not an elephant, the photo)

that was basically the end of that day, but we did go back to the homestay and have to kick some little kids! it was a ritual or something. god knows they kicked us back if thats any constolation! we had some more dancing and music and stuff but nothing really toppedd it off but a small hot balloon thing (they're on The Beach (the film)) with a paraffin covered dish and one of the kids attached firecrackers to it as it went up. that was quite nice.

anyway tomorrow we're going to pick mushrooms and teach some kids!