Monkeys, Elephants, Buddhist Caves oh my!

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From Bangkok we took an early morning flight to Phuket. We heard there was potentially good kitesurfing there and were immediately interested. We decided to stay in Patong where all the craziness is, to get the full Phuket experience. We ended up however being a bit frustrated with the rather tourist vibe and tried to keep the fun going by taking a two day rafting adventure. When we got to the rafting destination we began by taking a tuk tuk to the beginning of the river, which was actually a dam that the locals open to create rapids to raft in. It's a free for all, tons of people and rafts. The guides look like they have a lot of fun and by the time everyone is on a raft it became more about splashing the people in the next raft than about paddling. After rafting we took a break and ate lunch, which is where I discovered Mangostein. If you aren't familiar with this fruit it's a purple ball that you push on until you see the fruit inside. White and sweet. So tasty. They were in season and the locals picked tons of them YUM!! I ate them like crazy while were on this trip. After lunch we were taken to a waterfall. When we got there a guide swam back into the waterfall and challenged us to get back there. After a few tries in freezing cold water, we succeeded, and stood where the water was violently beating on us, success! After the waterfall we were taken to our bungalow on the river to rest for a few hours before going sight seeing. The bungalow was right on the roaring river, we had a big bed, bamboo cold shower geckos that make kissy noises and a spider that I took a while to warm up to. 2 hours later it's time for sightseeing. We rode in the back of a tuk tuk for quite some time until we came to MONKEYS!!! tons and tons of Monkeys. The locals were there selling Rambutain and bananas to feed them. We bought a bag and took our time feeding them and taking pictures. There was a method to feeding them, we had to constantly feed the dominate big monkeys to get them distracted in order to feed the smaller ones. Next to all the monkey craziness was a cave I was rather curious about. Right before the entrance there was a staircase that lead to a sitting buddha statue, We went in and it turned out to be a buddha temple inside a cave. There were beautiful lying and sitting buddha statues, wandering further back there was an opening to the outside, and further back bats! A truly remarkable place I hope I get the pleasure to visit again in my life. No picture could ever do it justice. After that we weren't expecting to be transformed into Dante's Inferno. We were shown around another temple that had heaven and hell. Hell was various acts of violence being carried out depending on the sin, it was quite graphic and if you sick a coin in some of the statues they move, AH! After hell, we walked through a huge dragon statue, while walking a bat flew over our head, and we eventually came out of the dragons mouth. Then we were lead to stairs that seemed to climb forever to a beautiful view of the whole island...heaven. Great view. After that our tummys were grumbling and we were off to our dinner. At some point we realized that we might indeed be the only ones there for dinner, turns out we were right. we were given a Seafood BBQ feast! Probably one of the best meals i've ever had. The locals were so kind in preparing all of this food, There was squid, prawns, chicken and a whole fish, with rice. I was drawn to the chicken to be safe, but quickly stopped eating it after trying all of the other flavorful items. MMMMmmmm YUM! With full bellies we went back to our bungalow and went to sleep. The next morning we woke at 8am and were told we would be taking a bath with the elephants, whatever that meant. We quickly discovered exactly what that meant when we were handed brushes and told to get in the water with elephants laying down waiting to be washed. WHAT!?!? We get to do WHAT?!? I was scrubbing really soft afraid i'd hurt them, but wait they are huge and have tough skin, they probably barely felt what I was doing. While we washed them they made bubbling grumbling sounds underwater with their trunks it was such a cool sound, I failed to capture on my recorder ah! . After we washed them we got to ride them around the jungle for a while. Taking turns Brad and I got to sit on their back and on their head, it was a pretty cool experience. After elephants we were heading back into the water for more rafting, this time for longer and down a harder path. We met a guy from Australia who was really cool and traveled with his sons, we were all in the raft together, and almost flipped several times. After rafting this time we went back to the waterfall. I wasn't too excited since we had already done it but...to my suprise we ended up having a different experience. This time instead of climbing back into the waterfall we didi a bit of cliff jumping. There was a tour already there coaxing people to jump and cheering them on so i figured what the heck, I'll go! So Brad and I went and got our new Australian friend to take pictures of us jumping....3...2...1.. GO!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! and then a jolt of cold water, woo hoo what a rush! Post waterfall was lunch and sauna, relaxing. Shortly thereafter time to go back to our hotel. We had an awesome time. Then, to end out our time in Phuket we decided to give in to the endless ads "tonight, tonight tonight" Thai boxing. We bough tickets and went. There were 7 fights total, the first being very little kids, I had a hard time watching that, but they were good! They got bigger and bigger, one fight was 2 girls, Thai and an Aussy Aussy Aussy as they repeated. The music during the fights was done on the spot which was cool. We were anxious for the last fight of the night..which was over in 10 seconds. Pretty cool experience overall. Next stop Railay for Rock Climbing Paradise.

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