Elephant Week

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So this week we were meant to be volunteering at an elephant sanctuary but as you'll soon read that isn't quite how things panned out, the beauty of travelling!

We travelled to the elephant camp on Sunday and it took over 4 hours from Singburi. When we arrived we saw that the accomodation was quite basic, straw huts with just a bed and toilet and a whole host of animals from spiders, to toads and birds!

We spent Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday at the elephant camp which was in the grounds of a 4* hotel, where we had lunch every day. There we would watch, feed, wash and ride the elephants.
I however was given a psycho elephant that had already killed another elephant and also a mahout! I was told this while sat on top, which kind of explained why the elephant was trying to throw me off.

After the first day we decided we would leave after lunch on wednesday, because we weren't really volunteering. It seemed to me that the elephants would have a better quality of life if we weren't there, as they were making them do things they didn't want to do and putting them on really short chains because of us. We knew that back in Singburi the orphanage project really needed volunteers so we came back and spent thursday and friday at the orphanage.

On Thursday we painted the dining hall a horrific orange and blue colour, which was finished off today. Today we did some tiling for the whole day, which is a new skill I have learn't and the floor we did doesn't look too bad. Carole (the french girl) and I were watching a kindergarten class this afternoon and the teacher invited us in, we thought we would just be joining in. Then she turned around and was like you teach! So we cracked out the old favourite, Heads, shoulders, knees and toes! Which was quite fun actually. At the end of the day we were given certificates by the head teacher for our 'expert' construction and class skills!

On the way back to the ecohouse this evening we stopped at the 711 and I had a cookie ice cream/lolly that was pretty good, especially for 16p!

At the same internet cafe as before, so the connection is too slow to upload pictures. Should be heading to Bangkok tommorrow followed by Krabi and then flying to Oz on Tuesday. Crazy that it's xmas in a week!

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