Elephants!

Have somehow managed to fit quite a lot in since I last wrote this... After Phuket, we caught a boat across to Ko Phi Phi, a popular island about 40km away. I have to say I was expecting this whole bit to be overrun with tourists, but I was pleasantly surprised! It was absolutely picture postcard stunning, really weird islands and rocks that seem to come straight out the sea, turquoise sea, white sand and long wooden boats. We went snorkelling here - turns out, unsurprisingly, that I wasn't very good at it BUT we really did get to see lots of amazing fish! Mostly stripy yellow and black kind, but a whole mixture, very close. Also a snake thing along the bottom that was black and white that Cat spotted and rather put me off... It was a really relaxing, beautiful place to be and I wish we'd had longer. Only disappointments were the rude Australian who pointed out our sunburn and the lack of nice fresh fish to eat that we were expecting!

From here we flew up to Chiang Mai which is in the north of Thailand. It is quite touristy, but so much less hassly so it feels less so. It is not as cool and misty as we were led to believe, we still feel pretty sticky, but we are enjoying it so far! The first day was spent quite relaxingly after our journey, I am getting somewhere in sorting out school visits for later in the trip and Cat had a Thai massage. We also enjoyed our traditional Thai hotel, where we sleep on mattresses on the floor in a wooden building with lots of birds in cages. It turns out they're quite noisy at sunrise...

 Today, we went and were mahouts for the day! This meant we went a little outside of Chiang Mai and looked after elephants, we fed them (actually a bit daunting, they're quite big), learnt how to ride them, rode them through the jungle and then bathed them! Was really, really good fun, as was the much needed shower afterwards. The cutest was definitely the two year old who was born there and could not stand still! They very much emphasised how they rescued these elephants from abusive captivity and how well they were looked after. We believed this was the case, although we were slightly caught between raising money to look after them through tourists and how much human communication they really benefit from. We hope they're a bit like horses.