Elephants rule

We're in Pai which is awesome. We were only planning to spend one day here, and it looks like it's turning into three. We met two Thai gals from Chiang Mai on the bus to Pai, which turned out to be our great fortune, because the town was all booked up, and we depended on their fluency to help us find a place to crash. So we're in the sweet little bungalow over the river on the other side of town and love it. This is a funny place - about every 2 years the river floods massively and wipes out a huge section of town and many of the tourist bungalows, but then they just rebuild and wait for the next big flood. The woman who runs our place is awesome - her name is Annie, and she's just one of those sweet tough gals who knows how to run the show. We spent yesterday walking all around town, and when my ankle swelled and looked like crap, we decided to head to the local hospital. $7 later, I've seen a doctor and am now on some sort of cillin to kill my unwanted flora. Yay.

Today we told Annie that we wanted to find a nice and humane place where we could ride elephants for awhile, so she called up a friend of hers who came to pick us up and took her back to her elephant camp. They've got two, a big mamma, and her little baby. Well, little by elephant standards at least. Still frickin huge, though. So for an hour, we rode around in the jungle on this bench tied to mamma's back. Then we went back and they took the chair off so that we could ride bare back. It's tough to wrap your legs around one of those behemoths. We rode around over the road, in the valley, past some water buffalo, through some fields, and to the Mae Pai river. We road out into the river for a bit, then one of the guys took my camera and glasses, so I knew something was up. The guy with us on mamma got her to kneel down in the water, then she rolled off onto her side and tossed us into the river. We managed to crawl back up again, and off she tossed again. And again. And again. She seemed to think that this was great fun :) Sweet thing - she kept poking at me with her trunk, and I splashed water in her face. She loved the water. She'd roll off onto her side and submerge her whole head under the river. So that's our big giardia exposure for the trip ;) On the way back to the camp, they had Darren hop off of mamma and jump onto baby. After about 5 attempts, he managed to clamber up onto her, and the two of us rode back sitting up behind our respective elephant's heads. It was cool. Mamma kept whacking me with her big assed ears.

We're going to hop on a little Honda Dream and get some sightseeing done this evening, imbibe some cheap Thai whiskey, then get up in the morning to get ourselves lost in the countryside. Should be lots of fun!!!