last day in thailand... and 4 months down

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hi everybody! so this is it, its our last day in thailand and we are moving on to laos tommorrow (on a bus, and then a boat and we will hopefully get over the boarder before it closes if everything goes as planned). right now there are 7 of us travelling together, and we have been together for the past week or so, and its been nice to have other people to talk to. we wont be 7 for very long though, as some people have little time left, and others are running out of money (sorry grandma, neither of those apply to me 😉 .

so after grandpa left us in bangkok (and after a couple days of touring around the city with him) me and steve went on a day trip to see a floating market, the bridge over the river kwai, and a tiger temple. the floating market was cool to see, but mainly tourist kinda stuff. the tiger temple was something else though. i wasnt too impressed with how they kept the tigers (about 7 of them were in this valley, chained and sedated i would think). you line up, and one worked takes your hand, the other takes your camera and yor are led around the tigers and get to go right up to them and pet them. it was an interesting experince to say the least.

from bangkok we went to chang mai, where we met up with some friends whom we had been travelling with in southern thailand (and who we will now go to laos with) . its been really good to see them and hang out with them. me and steve had a look around the sunday market when we got here, which was pretty cool, and then we did a thai cooking class the next day. the food we ate was some of the tasties ive had soo far in thailand and i made it myself! i only hope i will be able to re-create it.

we all then moved up to a little town called pai which was really relaxed and there werent very many people there at all. after a couple days there we came back to chang mai yesterday, (a day earlier than our other friends) so we could go see this elephant sanctuary, which we did today. it was such an awesome day! when you first come to chang mai, you hear lots about trekking and riding elephants, which many tourists like to do, but them i heard about this place and decided to go there instead. there we learned how riding elephants really harms them, and that their keepers often use really harmful tactics to get them to obey them. in the santuary, we just got to interact with the elephants while they were behaving normally (not being made to do tricks), and we got to feed them and go right into the river and wash them. it really was a cool experince and im soo glad we got to do it. anyway its getting late, and i have to get up to pack for laos tommorrow. its a lot to read, but i figured its been a while! haha. hope everybody is well at home! bye for now

ps. i keep hearing stories from mom and dad about who reads this blog, so im glad you all are having fun following along! im not really sure how to respond to messages... i should sit down and figure that out, but i'll just resond here:
heidi and nathaniel, im glad you are reading! it was really good to see grandpa
steph, i cant wait till folk fest! we keep reminding our parents when the tickets go on sale
whitney i miss you!
bruce, thaliand has been awesome and we've taken more pictures than i know what to do with! its nice to hear from you!
the rest of you, thanx for reading, i hope you are having fun following our adventures. there are tons more stories i will have to tell when we get home

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