Elephant Rafting

The third days trekking was much more gentle going, more down hill sections following the course of a small meandering river.

- ahh.. I love the smell of napalm in the morning, smells like...breakfast

- jungle bungalows, compact and bijou, with a pleasing southerly aspect which gets the sun in the late afternoon......

Finally we came to a small clearing with a handful of quaint sleeping huts and best of all an inviting swimming pool with a cascading waterfall. Hopefully the gorgeous semi naked girl in the foreground gives you some sense of scale......

It's hard to explain just how good it feels when you are very hot, grubby and tired to leap into a pool of cool clear water, or to stand under a thundering waterfall.

This then marked the end of our short trek into tribal territory and after a night round the camp fire we headed off in the back of an open pickup truck for some elephant trekking and bamboo rafting.

I love this country, there is no pervasive nanny state. If 8 consenting adults want to travel in the back of an open pickup truck, the government here reasons that they are smart enough to figure out the risks and accept them or reject them. There are no safety harnesess, no helmets, no airbags - and you know what? We all made it safe and alive, and we didn't pay 5x the cost to cover a load of unneccessary safety regulations. While I'm ranting, you can also drive here while (wait for it) talking on your phone! And just like the UK almost no one dies as a result. In fact it so statistically insignificant it is not even recorded!

Down the lazy river in Thailand on a bamboo raft. I can garauntee that you will get wet on these rafts. They ride through the water rather than on it so with ever set of mild rapids you get a good soaking. However it is a tranquil passage through the counry that I could easily have spent the whole day enjoying. Drifting languidly past grazing elephants and wondering at the high water marks some 10 feet above our heads.

Elephant by the river.

After a couple of hours on the river we reboarded "death trap 1" and hurtled off to the nearest Elephant trekking emporium for a couple of hours of altogether different trekking.

Deathtrap 1, reckless transport which um..err..hurts no one....

The Elephant Mafia control this region and their well trained banana pushers are strategically placed throughout the jungle with large bunches available for immediate and insistent purchse, 20 baht, thank you very much. It's a good scam, Elephants love bananas - unfortunately I was on the biggest elephant in the herd and they operate very much like vehicles in terms of Miles per Gallon, although with them its BPM (bananas per metre). My behemouth of an elephant, surely decended directly from a woolly mammoth was working on the basis of 1 banana per metre. Frankly it would be cheaper to drive a Ferrari through the jungle.

charge of the heavy brigade why do cute girls always want pictures of me? I feel invaded.

Ok, that's it for me for another day. Next: Cook Cook, Bang Bang.