Thailand day 5

We booked an all-day activity with Jumbo trekker today. We left at 8:30 in a large van filled with 6 other people. Two of them were Canadians called Kevin and Kristen.

Our first stop was the 'Long neck village'. Females in this village have been wearing rings around their beck since birth to make them longer. I honstely thought that neck elongation was only an African thing, I guess I was wrong. The price was 500 baht to enter per person so we didn't go in, instead we joined bunch of local children playing soccer with a barely inflated ball and a tyre for the goal. I'm glad we made the decision not to go in though because according to the Canadians it was very fake and an obvious tourist money sinker. Plus the kids were awesome, one of them is going to be the next ronaldo (that's the name of a famous soccer player, right?).

Next we went to see the elephants. You got to go right up close to see them which was awesome. Because there were 9 of us and only 3 elephants two people had to sit on the seat and one person had to sit on the neck per elephant. I was lucky enough to sit on the neck. It looked like I wasn't hurting the elephant, but I couldn't be sure. I tucked my legs behind his ears and we were off. Elephants are really hard to ride - they move a lot and get distracted by everything. I almost fell off a few times. We went on a fairly short ride; only up a gentle dirt incline, down a muddy passage and back up a shallow stream. Afterwards we got to feed them and pat them. Very cool.

Next we went to go for a hike. It was pretty nice and the view was alright but it only lasted 20 minutes and you could tell the path had been walked a million times by tourists before. The waterfall at the end was pretty cool though.

Lastly we went to go white water rafting. I didn't pay any attention to any of the safety instructions before going so that made it even more exciting. Occssionally you'd see giant clumps of elephant poo float by the boat so that gave everyone the motivation they needed to do their job and paddle correctly.

At this point we were pretty good friends with the Canadians so we invited them out to drinks at a recommended pub/ club called Zoe's in yellow. The company was nice, the drinks were good and the hangover was real. There was no bathroom though so you had to walk nextdoor to pay 5b to do your business in a disgusting hole in the ground - it actually would have been cheaper and more enjoyable to crap on the street. On the bright side we got to learn a really cool Canadian drinking game called 'cunty' - it involves flicking a coin between finger goal posts at an empty beer bottle.