never ride an elephant bareback. i'm serious.

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whoever thought riding an elephant bareback was glamorous, was sadly, sadly mistaken. it was one of the most painful experiences of my life. no joke. SO BONEY! it's like the back rises to a point!

we had to climb up the elephant's trunk and face to get on, we have some awesome pictures! will post those later. (who am i kidding, i probably won't. although when we're at the beach i plan to do more internetting and i'll do it then.)

it was really hard to hold on to the elephant too, we just had a rope around him and it kept slipping. kim and i rode on the same elephant. it was fun for about five minutes, and our ride was supposed to be two hours (one in the jungle and one in the river)!!

the scenery was gorgeous, but sometimes it was hard to look at it when we were literally screaming for our lives as the elephant walked down hill and we couldn't hold on and thought we were going to fall off. bit stressful.

when we got to the river, the mahout (elephant caretaker) got me to sit on the elephant's neck so we could be sprayed, and the elephant dumped me off!! i went flying into the river, it was kind of scary! then he did them same to kim, although she tried to hold on and ended up getting a nasty rope burn on her arm. we call it her 'elephant bite'. hehe our elephant didn't spray us like the other one did to the danish couple we were with, he got annoyed and just lay down in the water for a bath and WE had to splash HIM. what cheek! the ride back was so painful, so kim sat on the neck and i lay accross his back because my bits couldn't handle being pummelled by elephant spine any longer.

went back to town and revived ourselves with a bucket cocktail at lunch. (whisky, ice, red bull. magic stuff!) got tipsy and decided we wanted to look like hippies (like everyone else there) and went shopping for hippy clothes.

drank more beer on our deck (by 'more' i mean 8 large bottles.. oops) and befriended the guys in the bungalow accross from us.
they were either the two most awkward people ever, or we were a bit much to take. they were from london, ben and elliott. we convinced them to come drink with us, and we had a good night! ridiculously drunk though... went to ting tong bar and apparently one of us bought a shirt (which i found the next morning) and i don't think we paid our bill. oops!!

before we went to visit ben and elliott, we forded the river (much to the amusement of some thais on the other side) with our new friend kyamim (the guesthouse's dog that has adopted us, she sleeps on our deck every night). we love kyamim! also met a british guy named thaannjo who was floating down the river on a tube. (side note: later ended up befriending him in chiang mai as we were staying in the same guesthouse).

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