Elephants, oxen and bamboo rafts.

To the north of Chiang Mai is the elephant camp, and that's today's destination. As we arrived we could see the tourists mounting the elephants, and taking off through the river, which incidentally is the same one that runs through Chang Mai and down to Bangkok, some 500 miles away.

We climbed onto our ride, and made off down to the river,  for about half an hour.

It was a bumpy ride, particularly when we were going downhill when we tended to slip forward off our seats.

Every so often we would approach a small tower at our height where a lady would be holding our a bundle of sugar cane or a bunch of bananas for the elephants, at 20 Baht each. After a couple of these we got fed up and said no, but our elephant was determined not to pass it by! Eventually we arrived at the dismount point, where we were to return to our starting area by Ox cart. Not easy to control these oxen- particularly when the driver gets down to take a photo of us!

It was yet another experience to cross off our list.

Arriving back at the village we stopped for lunch, a Thai buffet, an excellent selection which gave me the opportunity to choose.

Following lunch we were treated to a show by the elephants, they are traned to play football, to bow on demand, and gave us a show of moving large logs, both towing them and rolling them with their trunks and feet. One in particular could  kick a football very acurately into a net, and even back heel it after throwing it into the air with his trunk. But for me the highlight of he show was to see three of the elephants painting pictures- i would not have beleived it had I not seen it with my own eyes. Two even signed them with their own name. Later we spoke to the owner of the camp- a British lady, and questioned her closely as to how they were able to train such an animal to do this. She told us that it could only be done by kindness, it was impossible to beat such a large animal into submission, and as the Mahouts relied totally on the camp for accomodation, schooling for their children and even food they had a great incentive to treat the animals carefully. 

Then came the highlight of the day for me- the bamboo rafting. Big John and Julie shared our raft, and as we made off down the river I was amazed to find how stable they were. Two locals punted us along, steering us down the centre of the river, past small local villages as well as virgin jungle, and in one case, a rope

bridge crossed the river. We were also treated to the sight of some of the locals sliding down a slip rope, which looked very exciting.

All of us took a turn at punting, the pole was surprisingly heavy, and the river was running quite fast, so it was not so easy as we had imagined. Arriving at our debark point, our guide Peter was waiting for us with our bus, and we continued our day with a visit to an orchid farm. I have to say that although there were a few nice flowers there, there was little else to entertain us, and most of the orchids were flowerless.

Never mind- we had had a brilliant morning, and although there was a monkey and a snake show on offer we elected to return to the hotel to relax by the pool, and in my case- to write up this blog. Job done!