Thursday 3rd April - Day 60
It can't be morning already ?
08.04.2008
I'm woken up early in the morning by the mad crowing (or whatever the hell you call it ) of a cockrell. What's more there's two of them in the village. First one calls out and the other one echoes it a few seconds later. I take a look at my watch - it's 3:26 in the morning. If I had a shotgun to hand there would have been two gun blasts at 3:30am and barbecued chicken for breakfast.
At about 7:00 am I get up and take a bath, which is a trip out into the river with my soap and shampoo. I'm feeling quite good after that. Breakfast at 8:00am is tea, toast with jam and fried eggs. That's better than what I normally have at home.
Next we're going on an elephant ride. This is a hairy experience particularly for two of us who have to ride on an elephants neck. The others sit on wooden seats on the back of the elephants. We went up and down steep banks and accoss streams for about an hour and a half. A few times, when the elephant turned it's head, I could feel myself slipping off. That would have been an interesting accident insurance form to fill in. We finally get to our next destination after following a memorable journey.
Now we have to get on bamboo rafts and travel down river. From the photos I had seen previouslyI didn't think this would be particularly testing. It turned out to be quite eventful. We had poles that were used to manoever the raft down stream, missing rocks and guide us over small rapids. I had a few blisters on my hands afterwards. There were three rafts and at some stage of the journey we had all fallen out. After two hours we got to our final destination, a restaurant.
Again we have a nice meal. There's a great sense of comaradery now. I was on the raft with the three German girls and we're all friends now. Everyone agrees it was been a really enjoyable experience over these last two days. It's definitely one of the best things I've done. The only sad part is it's over and we all have to split up as we have different itinerarys.
We're driven back and dropped off at our different hotels.
Posted by rajchopra 7:14 AM
Hi Raj. It sounds like you are having a great time in Thailand. Where are you now - in Khao Yai? Glad you enjoyed rafting, great isn't it! I have returned from Nepal. I vitually made it to Everest Base Camp, the altitude got the better of me in the end but I still made it to 5300m. The jungle was good to, like you I only saw a tiger footprint and not the real thing but we got lots of Rhinos instead and Sloth Bears which made up for it. Loving reading your blog. Keep up the good work.
Kevin
08.04.2008 by verlkd