Yesterday we woke up and had breakfast at this awesome little cafe/art gallery which is in an old tradtional teak thai house. Pai is extremely laid back and reminds me of Bellingen or some places in the Blue Mountains.
We followed breakfast with an elephant ride through the jungle. At first I thought "through the jungle" was a bit of an exaggerated term for walking on a bitumen road that had trees alongside- but the elephant stayed true to his word and quickly went off road through the wilds of the hills. It was at times extremely frightening as we were riding bareback with Tim up on the elephants neck and our elephant happened to be fairly strong willed and whenever he saw a particular breed of bamboo that he enjoyed he would bound off into the depths of the jungle to pull it out. The small path we were on through the forest was only about half a meter wide (at most) and we climbed up very steep parts- the descent was more frightening than the ascent. But elephants are extremely sure footed creatues- and Tim kept assuring me that the elephant wouldn't want to fall over either. it was such an incredible feeling to feel the strength of his spine beneath us. I have to say my favourite part of the ride was when the elephant let rip with some thunderous farts. A fart never fails to make me laugh- and it appeared that the manhout (the guy leading the elphant) and I shared a similar base sense of humour.
We got some great footage on our video camera- which hopefully we will upload at some point.
The ride lasted about an hour and we saw some spectacular views of Pai and the surrounding country side as we climbed up into the mountains. We also some the greatest arrangement of coloured butterflies- the most beautiful of which had bright tourquoise wings.
After this we went for a more relaxed ride on a bamboo raft. Its amazing tht something that looks so flimsy is so boyant. We cruised around the Pai river for about an hour.
It was a really great day.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment