you can call me rambo

Sorry its taken me a while to write another post, i have been in really remote villages and hilltribes for the last 3 weeks so its been a bit of a struggle to get time to sit down on a computer for more than about 15 minutes. but i have had the most AMAZING 3 weeks. its been unreal. i spent 2 weeks in the elephant village which i completely fell in love with, it was so nice to spend so much time them and also doing a lot of labour to help conserve the camp itself. we did a lot of planting and ploughing in the fields and then msot days we got to go down to the mudbath or the river and get in and wash the elephants and swim with them. by the end of the 2 weeks i felt completely at home and wouldnt even blink if an elephant herd casually strolled past my window. we lived in really simple conditions which i also loved. and it was good to spend time with the mahouts although there was quite a language barrier, but we gave them all engilsh lessons which was a good laugh. ive also learnt a little bit of thai although not much, it is a very confusing language! so after we waved quite a tearful goodbye to our elephants and mahouts and homestay families, we headed up to chiang mai for 3 days of trekking and bamboo rafting in the jungle. this was also absolutely incredible. really hard work but very satisfying at the end. on the first day we did a 3 hour trek up a mountain and back down the other side into a hilltribe village. now, as you probably guessed i am not a natural trekker, and one of the trekking guides, nooka (we called him nougat) decided within the first 5 minutes of trekking that i shouldnt be trusted ot be left alone so he accompanied me for monst of it, cacthing me when i almost slipped down the side of the mountain, carrying my bag for me up the realy steep bits, and tying various leaves and shrubbery around my head because he thought it was hilarious. that prompted the whole group to re-name me rambo. we stayed in bamboo huts overnight and had some amazing real thai food. then the next morning we were woekn at the crack of dawn by the cockerel and did another 5 hours of trekking through the jungle to an elephant camp situated right in the middle of the jungle. it was a lovely camp anda really nice habitat for the elephants with a stream running thorugh the middle and lotfs of grass and bamboo for the to eat. we then rode the elephants for another hour through the jungle and i am definitley glad we had already had experience riding elephants because otherwise i deifnitley would have fallen off. i was sat on the neck and we were going up and down really steep hills but thankfully i was quite comfortable with riding them although i did have to hold on quite tight in some parts. they took us to our next village which was a little bit bigger, there we had a tour round the village school and we fed the fish in the river and then had another amazing dinner, followed by a traditional karen tribe massage to soothe our sore legs and then another night in a bamboo hut. i dont know why but i actually really love living the simple life in tiny little remote villages like that andbeing completely cut off. we washed in the river and went to the toilet in a hole in the ground, we slept on mats on a wooden floor with a blanket and had no electricity and there were loads of different animals just casually wandering around the village. it was great! anyway on the 3rd day we did something like 9km of bamboo raftnig which was bloody tiring! i was not a natural bamboo rafter but i gave it a go, and then there was one part where we had to get in the river and swim down because the raft could fit through the rocks and i got dragged off by the current which was quite funny. we finally made it to the end of the trek by lunchtime and i ate laods of fresh pineapple which was soooo nice. so in general a really grat experience! and my hiking boots did my proud thankyou mama hinson! i am hoping to do something similar to that when i get back from the islands. so now i am back in bangkok for a few days and on monday night i head down to koh phangan for the full moon party for a night of good old civilised fun (cough cough) and then travelling over to krabi and koh phi phi on the other side of the peninsula. will update again soon. miss you all and thinking of you. loads of love xx

Sa Wa Dee Ca

So i have now spent a week with the elephants. Sorry for not being in contact for such a long time, there is no internet where i am staying, its a really remote rural village about an hours drive from the nearest town. i met the group back in bangkok and then we headed out to surin on a night bus. we are staying in homestay with a local family who are so sweet and friendly but speak absolutely no english so we have to speak thai to them which is interesting! i have been living off rice and noodles all week, it is nice but gets a bit samey, but its inclusive in the price i paid for the project so i cant complain. on the first day we were introduced to our elephants, we have one between 2.. except me and ryan have 2 because our 2 elephants (thai thai and leo) are inseperable. its so cute. we thought they were father and son at first because thai thai is the smallest in the herd and leo is the biggest, but turns out they are just best mates! they look so funny next to eachother. we have been riding them and have washed them in the river which was absolutely amazing, they all have such big personalities and i could just watch them for hours. we have also been doing general maintenance work around the camp, stripping sugar cane and then cutting it with a machete, ploughing the fields and planting, and then feeding and cleaning out the elephants. everyone in the group gets along really well which is good. and unbelievably, we happen to have come to the village on the weekend that our group leaders brother is getting married, so we are all invited to the wedding! that starts tonight and goes on all day sunday so i cant wait for that. a few nights ago we went camping by the river with the mahouts which was amazing. oh i havent explained about the mahouts, basically they are the elephant trainers and there is one per elephant so we all have a mahout sort of teaching us about the elephants and looking after our safety and stuff. so yeah we went camping with them, had a huge camp fire and cooked corn and had sticky rice and loads of samsun which is the rum they drink out here. and they caught fish in the river and cooked them on the fire. it was so fun. had one scary moment the other day when the elephants got a bit overexcited and a few of them started stampeeding along the road, including the one i was sitting on! my face must have been a treat. but anyway the mahouts got control of them and it was all fine, no need to worry. the village is really religious so we have seen a few buddhist ceremonies, one was a sort of funeral but for a monk and a year after he had been buried, they dig him up and have a ceremony and everyone stands around his bones and then they burn him. i didnt really enjoy that one to be honest. but we also had this really nice forgiveness ceremony where the mahouts tied these orange bracelets around our wrists and said anything they were sorry for (kind of like catholic confessions) and then they threw all the flowers into the river to symbolise getting rid of all the bad spirits. we have the weekend off this weekend to go to the wedding so we are staying in a guesthouse in the centre of surin, air conditioning and a proper shower is a bit of a treat! back in our homestay there is just a massive water resevoir and you use a bucket and pour the water over your head, which is nice and refreshing after a long morning in the fields! so anyway, theres a brief outline of all the stuff i have been getting up to in the past week. i'm having an amazing time. but miss you all lots and lots. love to everyone x

"whatever lessens suffering in yourself and others, that is right. We cannot give up on any person. Never Abandon Anyone"

Evening all, i am now back in thailand which will be my home for the next 3 months. the blog title was just a quote that was on a menu in Lao Lao gardens which i quite liked. anyway, crossed the border earlier today, it seemed like my time in Laos flew by but it was really good. so i did my last post from.... Vientiane? i think? thats the capital of Laos which was really nice i loved it there. one particular highlight was a bakery called Joma which we pretty much lived in for the duration of our stay. It had amazing food. then when we got to Laung Prabang we discovered there was a Joma there aswell! but anyway back to Vientiane, we went out after dinner to a bar and then our tour leader took us to this gay bar which was so funny, there was a lady boy show (nothing dodgy, just lagre men in dresses miming horrendously to songs they didnt know the words of.) i got a few amusing pictures from that night! the next day we headed to Vang Vieng. for those who dont know, this is the place where people go tubing. tubing basically consists of free shots, lots of beer, sunshine, a big river, people jumping into river, people going on rope swings into the river, and about 50 bars dotted all the way up the 4km river where they write all over you and spray paint stuff on you and give you booze buckets. so that was good fun! we met lots of travellers and i had a full english the next morning... so good! i never thought id be so relieved to see baked beans. so after that we travelled to Luang Prabang. here i FINALLY got to see my babies.... we went on an elephant ride! it was amazing. my elephant (Camde) had a slight wind issue but that was nothing compared to another poor girls elephant who clearly had an itchy belly so kept collapsing its legs so it could rub itself against the ground. seeing elephants poo is also quite an experience. so yes anyway we did that for about an hour and a half, Camde was a bit of a naughty elephant and kept going in different directions and wandering off with me and riana sitting on its head, it was weird you kind of have to get past the fact you could quite easily fall off and injure yourself and just go with it...you gotta trust your elephant! so that was a nice taster of things to come, i will be heading to the elephant village in Surin on saturday to start my work there. in Luang prabang we also went to the waterfalls. as usual everyone let me be the test dummy and try the water, and then once i had frozen my bottom off everyone else decided they could aswell! then i tried the rope swing, now for people who know me, you will know that rocks, heights, and anything involving any kind of adrenaline/thrill doesnt really work with me. but i did it, i was about as graceful as a rhinocerous but i did it and i have pictures to prove it! sort of. there are pictures of me before and after but because i kind of just flopped into the water like a dead fish they didnt get a chance to photograph it.
the next morning me and riana got up at 5 to watch the monks collecting alms (got the wrong day on the last blog). it was a really strange experience, we had been told that giving alms when youre not a buddhist is seen as offensive and we can take photos but not go up close to the monks so we stayed back and just watched, but there were some stupid tourists who just looked ridiculous in their chinos and polo shirts and a weird scarf wrapped around their middle to try and disguise themselves as buddhists, going up to the monks and taking photos as if its some sort of tourist attraction. it was so rude but the monks seemed used to it, which is a shame in a way. other than that annoying disturbance, it was actually a really nice calm and serene atmosphere, it was like a sea of orange there must of been about 100 monks at least, and it wasnt completely light so their robes were really striking. after that we got on the slow boat towards the border (10hours) and spent the night in a tiny village called pakbeng. we went for dinner and then afterwarsds as we were walking home these locals invited us into their party, very surreal experience. it was like an abandoned bar and a dj had set up all these disco lights and a smoke machine and a bubble machine and stuff but it was completely empty... kind of like the first hour of a school disco. but then some more people turned up and we had some drinks and a bit of a boogy which was fun, and definitley not what we expected to be doing that night. this morning we got up and had 6 hr bus journey to the border and what must be the most dangerous road in the world. most raods in Laos are pretty dodgy as its all mountains but this was like a dust road with no railings seperating you between the mountain and a sheer drop. they were really narrow aswell and there were loads of blind corners and really really steep slopes. but we managed! then croseed the river to thailand which is where i am now, Chiang Kong i think? another stop off as we are going to Chaing mai tomorrow and then Bangkok. its the 1st today, so i have been here for a month now! crikey. not much else to update on, good to hear youre all enjoying the old blog, keep your emails coming tale care lots of love xx