Just for an update, me and Soph are back together after oe lonely day apart, so no need to worry!

Our elephant photos are now up if you want to have a look, (again no need for a Facebook account, just click the link below)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022141&id=220700053&l=e159c3b23e

Apologies for the lack of blogging but not a lot seems to have happened since our last adventure, mainly due to having to ‘take it easy’ as advised by the doctor. We spent a few days making our way from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to the southern part of central Laos. After a border crossing involving a bus, a stamp, another bus and a tuk tuk we came to the very French looking capital of Vientiane.

In Vientiane we spent a few days sampling the excellent bagels and pizzas and having our first carafe of (nice!) wine in over two months. Sophie recently acquired a new SLR so we many a Wat (temple in the city); “What Wat is this?” So you should be able to see may of the spoils of our photography. Our main aim of our trip to Laos was to visit the tourist destination for Vang Vieng which is well known for its tubing down the river there.

Vang Vieng in one word is… tour! (A few of you will know what I mean!) Tubing is the activity of floating down the river in a large floating doughnut. Along the 4km stretch of river there are a superfluous of bars, rope swings, slides, trapezes and other such delights (and no me and Sophie did not do any other them!) There was body painting, acrobatics and general drunken antics. The river itself is set in beautiful surroundings and at low season (when we were there) it was very slow flowing with few rapids. In high season it takes only 2 hours to do the 4km stretch and with a mixture of alcohol fatalities are unfortunately heard about often. There are people who have arrived to Vang Vieng planning to stay one day and have stayed (the longest record) 3 years!

Our time there was really good fun, (Sophie is still getting the St George’s flag which was spray painted on her back off!) We met a really nice group of Americans who currently teach in Bangkok in our guest house who we stayed with us to our next location of Luang Prabang.
The journey to Luang Prabang was eventful; the journey time was 8 hours so we decided to make this journey overnight, though it wasn’t the sleeper bus with beds like in Vietnam. We were travelling on the ‘newest road’ in Laos but this still included every turn being a hairpin bend so it was the most comfortable of journeys. The entire journey was 180km and took 8 hours so you can guess at the condition of the road.

In Luang Prabang we had the first task of trying to figure out how we were going to make our way back to Chiang Mai for our elephant project which had been delayed by 10 days due to our injuries. Our orginal plan was to go by bus or boat (trains do not exsist in Laos) but the journey by bus was over 20 hours so we wouldn’t get there in time or the boat option was basically a canoe with a large propeller attached which did the journey in 6 hours along the Mekong River! Unhappy at the prospect that we would miss our elephants we paid a substantial amount to fly with Laos airways, (who according to Lonely Planet haven’t released their safety records publicly because of a bad safety record). Our way back to Chiang Mai wasn’t going to be without incident or so we thought! It turned out that Lonely Planet was behind the times and the plane we took was very new and clean and we had a excellent free meal – something very annoying about Airasia!

After a day detoxing in the very scenic Luang Prabang (see picture of Sophie) we said good bye to our American friends and headed to the elephants!

The Thai Conservation Park houses over 60 elephants; some are rescued from circus or donated after being neglected because machines have replaced them in the logging industry, some are orphans or injured, some have been born and raised in the centre. The baby elephant in the picture is the newest newborn the centre has, she’s only 6 months old and very mischievous. The important factor to remember about Asia elephants are that they would have become extinct if they weren’t trained to be used in the forestry business. Unlike their African relations there aren’t large parts of Asia where they could migrate to or even populate. Although we were part of a ‘show’ twice a day it was used to educate the Thai and tourist audience in the past uses of the elephants and how their natural skills and strengths could be put to use. This did not include balancing on one leg on a podium, spinning around, playing football with a monkey etc etc as I saw in Vietnam in the circus.

On our first day we were designated a elephant and a mahout (the elephant trainer, who works with the elephant usually from birth). I was given Pritheeda a 16 year old male, who was bloody massive and a very friendly, very giggly Mahout called John. Sophie’s elephant was a smaller female called Wan NAAAA (emphasis on the Na is very important apparently) and a Mahout called Mao, though Sophie tended to say Meow much to his delight…!

Our time with the elephants consisted of collecting the elephants at 6am from the forest, very early very cold starts but the elephants were always glad to see us especially with a banana or a sugar cane in hand. The centre has massive of forests of their own where the elephants are put every night. Unfortunately they are chained up, but this is for their own benefit to stop over breeding and so they are forced to graze and not walk off. Elephants in the wild eat all day and because these elephants work between 7 and 4 they need to eat the rest of the time. The elephants did have about 20m of chain so they could still wander around (and still leave a wake of destruction!) The picture shows Sophie’s elephant where we left her at the end of the second day.

We rode the elephants back to main area and we would go off and have breakfast and be back in time for the 10am show. These public shows demonstrated all the skills as I mentioned before and we got to take the elephants for a bath in the large lake. This was the favourite part of everyone’s day including the elephants where they splashed and played and sprayed each other and us without encouragement. My elephant was undisputedly the best at water cannoning, as the picture shows; many a mahout cowered in our wake…MWAHAHAHA!

In the show we have to show off our talents as Mahouts by showing how we got on and off the elephants, throwing objects for the elephants to pick up, generally have a bit of fun. The picture is of Sophie demonstrating getting on/off her elephant; you can see Wannalee Leanne’s elephant she had earlier this year in the photo.

This whole process was repeated again after lunch and then we rode the elephants back to the forest. We had great fun over the three days and learnt a lot of non-transferrable skills (it might be a while before we meet Thai speaking Asia elephant that we need to get our flip flops down from a tree!) It was amazing how much they listened to their Mahouts (their real ones not us!) My elephant was a giant beast who could strip a corn on the cob from its leaves faster than I could using only the dexterity of its trunk. The picture is of Wanna lifting up her Mahout.

I am currently sat on an overnight train (with beds, thank goodness,) down to Bangkok to pick up our other rucksack we left there as our original plan was to fly to Sydney from there. Now we are flying from Colombo (Sri Lanka) to Auckland (New Zealand) instead (via Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Brisbane) so I’m heading down by myself (yes me and Sophie have separated ways for the first time since we left!) I will be meeting Sophie in Koh Samui in a few days to start our Christmas festivities.

Hope that these are getting long enough for you Nick Magoo, and you now agree with the colour changes Mr Acarnley! We can’t wait to see the Acarnley’s in just 3 weeks and the Magoolagan clan in just over 5! Please look out for our article in the Craven Herald, they’ve only just contact me after asking them three months ago!