Zip-a-Dee-Doo-What?

Wednesday 26th January

As I write this we are sitting on a heavily oversubscribed night bus on our way to Lauang Prabang in Laos.
Initisally we had completely written off coming to Laos at all, however as soon as we booked onward tickets for our next destination, everyone that we spoke to told us what fools we had been to have missed out on it.

This basically left us with somewhat of a dilemma, do we stick to our original plans and have a leisurely stroll back through Thailand or do we hastily change everything and go to Laos.

Well you can already guess the answer and whilst I am sure it is going to be a great place, the 14 hours that we will have to spend cramped onto this metallic monstrosity will be a prioving time.

So with so many hours to kill I thought that I may as well crank up the notepad and reflect on the past week in Chang Mai.

As Chang Mai accomodation was considerably cheaper than Bangkok we decided to splash out a little and booked ourselves into a pretty decent hotel for 5 days, apparently this is termed to be "Flashpacking" but I dont care what they call it, it felt good!

There seems to be a trend forming whereby we spend a whole day travelling and then a whole day recovering and this was no different, I litterally didnt move from our room other than to restock the fridge from 7-11.

In fact it felt so good that the next day we decided to do pretty much the same thing, although we did manage to sneak out and book a tour for the following day so at least it felt as though we had accomplished something.

Unfortunately this meant that we all had to be up and ready to go by 08:00 a horrible prospect and one that proved to be incredibly difficult to meet, but somehow we all managed to drag our arses downstairs and meet our smiling tour guide.

We were off to spend a day at the Elephant Nature Park, a place that Lek (the owner) has built up over the years to house rescued elephants and provide a safe haven that is as close as possible to their natural habitat.
It was absolutely incredible being so close to these magnificant creatures, yet alone being able to feed and bathe them.

They were incredibly well looked after and whilst they had been trained to tolerate human interaction the elephants were definately in charge and allowed to roam free.

Tyler was in his element in the water with them and where most people would be intimidated by being around something so large he wasted no time jumping in and getting up close and personal.

Later on one of the elephants kissed him on the cheek as if to say thank you for the shower....

Sorry for the interuption but I thought that it would be interesting to give you a bit of an update on the bus journey thus far.

We seem to have aquired an additional random who has squatted in the space between our seats, we will affectionatly refer to him going forward as Aisle Guy.

Anyway Aisle Guy was looking at my packet of crisps longingly so I thought I would do the honourable thing and open them and offer him one as perhaps he had never tried Thai crisps before.

That was the last I saw of them, he snatched them from my hand looked up with a complete lack of comprehension and then proceeded to devour the contents as if he had never had food yet alone Mr Spiky BBQ crispy potato snacks.

To compensate for this obvious misdemenour he then proceeded to jab me continaully in the ribs with his elbow whilst at the same time trying to manouver his head onto my cushion and comandeer my arm rest.

What ensued was an almighty battle of wits as each of us tried in vain to forcefully remove the others limbs from various parts of the chair.

Luckily just as we were about to reach the levels of strangle holds and full nelsons the coach stopped for a loo break and that was the last I ever saw of little Aisle Guy, I would like to think that my prowess of the armchair had sent him running but if I am being realistic it was probably just his stop.

I have now well and truly given up on the prospect of sleep and I am reduced instead to watching the children sat behind Pauline and Tyler sneeze on their heads and pour the contents of their crisps over their seats.

So with this in mind I may as well continue with the story at hand as the chance of normality on this journey seems a distant fantasy.

The following day in Chang Mai we decided to throw caution to the wind and have yet another duvet day, we seem to be getting better and better at these but its always good to get some practice in.

As we had been unbelieveably lazy for much of our stay we decided to try to compensate by booking an adrenelin day which had 4 activities guarenteed to make us feel energetic again.

Firstly we went on a zip wire course through the jungles of northern Thailand which was totally awsome, the guides taught you how to hang upside down and trust in the wire which, having seen Thailands health and safety in practice, was a little daughnting to say the least.

The longest line was about 500 meters across a raging river and I figured what the hell, if you are gonna die you may as well make it somewhere beautiful, any birds that happened to be passing at that moment in time will be having nighmares for weeks.

From their vantage point it must have been quite disconcerting to think that something as unaerodynamic as me could somehow grasp the principals of flight.

Not only that but they could do so with their legs akimbo, without flapping any part of their anatomy, whilst maintaining a crazy dememnted look in their eyes and screaming like a lunatic.

We somehow all managed to survive without even the slightest injury so not content we headed to our next activity, an elephant trek through the jungle.

To be honest after the Elephant sactuary none of us were looking forward to the prospect of getting on an elephant, especially as we had seen how cruelly their Mahouts treat them, but it was included in the day and you never know, it could be nice.

Nope, we sould have gone with our initial insticnts as all of us detested the journey and wanted to get off as soon as possible.

The mahouts carried large sticks with sharp metal points in order to coherce the elephants in the right direction and wouldnt even allow them the opportunity to stop and graze without tugging on their ears or prodding them.

Its incredible how a single day at a sanctury can alter your perspective on these things, however both Pauline and I agreed that we would never do anything like this again and hope that these elephant manage to find a better home soon.

After this we were to go white water rafting down the same river we had zipped over earlier in the day, only there was an added adrenelin activity to complete before we could get over to the rafts.

We were taken down to the rivers edge by an ancient old guy who was wheezing his way down the path where he showed us how we would be getting across.

Hastily errected above the river was a cage on a line that the man now shoved Tyler and Pauline into.
Before they could ask any questions he released a catch and they shot off into the adjacent river bank, almost losing tylers arms in the process as he had been told to grasp the rope which didnt move.

Those that remained then had the opportunity to watch the man cough up a lung as he struggled to pull the enclosure back across the river so that he could herd the next unfortunate victim into the cage of misery.

Even though I had witnessed its initial departure, nothing had prepared me for just how fast this thing shot off into the ether and in the time it had taken me to grab my camera, smash my elbow and cut my foot we were on the other side.

Once all of us had made it to the other side relatively unscathed we proceeded to be suited up in life preservers and hard hats and pushed into a raft that had had its hay day back in the 70s.

We had been told to listen to the instructor carefully as his instructions could have a dramatic effect on our life expectancy, however what they didnt mention was that he didnt speak english that well.

From my position at the front I heard muffled noises that seemed to indicate that I was doing something wrong or muffled noises that seemed to indicate I should stop doing something but that was about it.

I fell arse over tit at the first rapid and went hurtling into the back of the boat much to Paulines pleasure as she had been filming it at the time.

Still somehow we managed to survive all the way to the end and then it was on to the final activity of the day, the bamboo rafts.

I am not sure how, what we were presented with, can exactly qualify for rafts, in fact I am amazed that the word submerged was not in there somewhere as practically every square inch of the "vessel" was under a few inches of water.

Still, we diligently jumped aboard and proceeded to drag along the bottom of the river at speeds similar to the stationary algae that had formed on every surface.

After it became blindingly apparent that we wouldnt be getting anywhere fast, we decided to get out and push the boat all of the way down the river, not exactly an "as described" activity but by the end of it my heart was pumping extremely quickly regardless.

Right, I am going to try to flick something at the annoying kids heads to amuse myself for the next 8 hours, I have a feeling that another duvet day beckons tomorrow.