Elephant sanctuary and last day in Thailand

Today was our elephant trip!!! I was so excited and it didn't disappoint. We got picked up around 9 by the funniest guide, James, who kept saying weird little English phrases; our favourites being 'i'm cream crackers after getting absolutely plastered', 'let's hit the fucking town' and 'scrumdiddilyumptious'. What a babe. We drove for around an hour in a minibus- initially i thought i didn't have a seat and was going to have to hover on the floor but thankfully this wasn't the case. The people with us were all really nice; a couple of eastern European guys, an Australian couple (who were really funny but also told us a worrying story about a friend in Australia who had his ear bitten off by a guy in a bar- made me a tad nervous to visit lol) and a nice middle aged English couple who we talked to later.

We arrived at the elephant sanctuary and James explained our itinerary and gave us clothes to change into and food for the elephants, as well as telling us about the history of elephants here, how many are in the wild etc, and we could have tea or coffee while we listened.

Afterwards we walked over to them. There were 4 big ones and a baby who was a year old and we were earned that he's very naughty, but he was sooo cute!!

We stood feeding them and then climbed up  a hill where we made special organic medicine for the elephants. We all took it in turns to mash the mixture (made of bananas, tumeric, salt, sugar cane, some seeds etc) and then fed it straight into the elephant's mouths (apart from the baby who doesn't like it).

After that we walked down to have lunch and on the way we saw a tiny beagle puppy called Sophia which we got to hold !!! It was so small aww

Lunch was really yummy, we had egg and vegetable fried rice, stir fried vegetables and a yellow curry with pineapple for dessert, all of which was delicious.

We sat and talked for a while, then walked down to a big pool of water where the elephants swim. We all went in with them, using brushes to scrub them and stroke them. It was a bit scary at times as they made the water muddy so you couldn't always see where their massive limbs were, but fortunately all was fine! I couldn't take my camera in, fortunately there was a group photographer following us round and we were given a disc of photos at the end which I'm looking forward to seeing.

We got the minibus back, went to our room for a bit then ventured out. We went to a restaurant where the others got pizza and i had garlic bread. We hadn't been to the part of the city and it was nice and busier than where we are. We also exchanged some of our baht for Thai currency as that's where we're going tomorrow. Then we headed back to the hostel as the sun began to set.

Later Molly and i went to 7/11 to send postcards and stock up on snacks for the bus tomorrow, walking through a nightly market we found near our hostel. Currently trying to download plenty of music to listen to as i accidentally deleted my downloads and the Wi-Fi isn't great so that's annoying, but hey, it's worth it.

Laura x