Elephant & Jungle Trekking!!

Today is our first activity day in Krabi. We are off trekking! First stop was the hot springs. On route we picked up the most annoying Chinese family to join our group then drove through Krabi Town. We saw some primary school kids all dressed up being paraded along - turns out it was their sports day. Puts our opening ceremony to shame!! The hot springs were hot, not as slimy under foot as we thought though.

We then went up the road to the Emerald Pool and this was cool, both literally cooler than the hot springs but also was a cool looking place. Clear glistering water that was a striking blue colour. Shame I couldn't touch the floor, Daniel liked it once he found out he could reach the floor throughout the whole pool! To get to the pool we had to go on a bit of a walk through the jungle. Very tall trees and constant sounds of clicking bugs. The walkway went over the mangrove areas - you don't know what was lurking in there! We had lunch here. There were lines of street vendors on one side and a couple of restaurants on the other. The vendors had some strange items - 3 eggs on s stick with yellow goo seeping out the holes - bleugh! Thankfully we ate at the restaurant. Green Thai curry, chili chicken and stir fry veg, though the Germans only ate a little of the rice and the Chinese ate the funny egg on a stick thing!

We went from here to Tiger Cave Temple - unfortunately no tigers! It seemed like a massive monk complex, a new temple being built, shrines all over and monkeys wandering everywhere. One was drinking water out of a water bottle! We didn't climb the 1247 steps to the top of the mountain as we didn't have time but did climb up and over a smaller mound to the monastery. Crazy to see the monks homes built into the cliff with their washing hung out. We went into the caves there - which looked like they are used for meditation. The trees were huge with massive buttress roots and even though it was shaded on the floor it was extremely hot. We made our way back and went into tiger cave temple, we were invited in by a monk and asked to sign a visitors book and they tide a good luck bracelet to our wrists. Monks were in there chanting and there was not end of the amount of statues of Buddhas. We climbed the stairs to the tiger cave, a tiny space with more shrines. After leaving a donation we made our way back to the bus.

From here we were heading to the elephant trek. Everything has included walking through the jungle I'm glad we didn't get too bitten! We passed a number of rubber and palm plantations before arriving in another area of the jungle. Out of a clearing came the elephants!! Plodding along. We climbed a wooden platform to get onto the elephant which was easier to get on the seat than expected. Ours was called Watna and was the leader of the trek. She occasionally wanted to stray off path but the guide shouted an instruction sort of noise and she was back on track. It was awesome. Up and down, bobbing around but it was something you probably won't get to do again. It wasn't dodgy as you may think, they were well looked after and seemed happy, eating everything they passed almost.

Definitely been an eventful day - with some insight into Thai culture. To end the day we walked into the transvestites from the cabaret show in Krabi, yet another element of Thai culture yet to experience!

Stray dogs #31
Stray cats #5