Elephant Trekking

Elephant Trekking
Originally uploaded by .Taylor.

We left Ko Tao and caught a high speed katamaran to Chumphon. Leaving Ko Toa also meant leaving Scott and Dan who were heading Krabbi after we recommended it so highly. After Ricky's emotional departure from Coral Bay this meant our group of 8 was down to 5 with me, Marco, Stevie, Joe and Omar.

On the boat to Chumphon they showed the film Munich. Probably not suitable to be shown on public transport as there were little kids and stuff and this film has really graphic violence - but thats just typical Thailand, anything goes...

From Chumphon we caught the bus to Hua Hin where we stayed the night. We stayed in the weirdest place we have stayed yet. It was called the Kings Home and was run by thsi old ductch fella called Jon. he was pretty cool and had lived in England as he used to play from Grimsby Town in his day!

The Kings Home was a big house with really weird decorations on the wall. Stuffed animal heads, family pictures, rugs etc etc... It was as if they wanted to cover every available piece of wall with something.

Got to say though that Jon and his wife were also the most hopsitable people we have stayed with (and thats saying something in Thailand because everyone is REALLY hospitable). They made us breakfast, gave us free drinking water, showed us the best places to go in Hua Hin and Jon's wife even leant me money to pay for the elephant trekking we did as I didn't have time to go to the ATM.

Elephant Trekking was class! Marco and Stevie had already been on their last trip to Thailand so it was just me, Omar and Joe.

Omar and I got on our elephant (called Pokey) with our driver (he was called Jake). We set off and saw some statues of hindu gods at the temple and loads of monks before heading into the rainforest.

We weren't sure how Pokey was going to handle both me and Omar sitting on her (Omar is a big lad!) but she was totally fine. Jake told us that Pokey weighs over 3 tonnes so I guess that puts mine and Moar's combined weight into perspective.

We saw a baby elephant on the way through the elephant village - it was tied to a post by its foot though which was a bit cruel. You see quite a bit of animal cruelt in thailand. makes me sad but there's not a lot you can do about it I guess.

On the home stretch we trekked through a big pool of water. The water must have been about 10 feet deep because Pokey was almost submerged and had her truck out of the water to breath!

When we got back we checked out the other elephants and ate some fruit and drank from cocnuts before heading back to where we were staying. This was a great day out and Pokey was ace!