After killing time, by walking to a
nearby waterfall, which was more like a waterstand, with its
collection of stagnant looking pools and getting a drink, it was time
to take to the elephants and fly away, or something.
Climbing up some concrete stairs to
reach the heigh of the elephant, I gingerly put my foot on the
elephant's back, which was a little weird with its mixture of firm,
soft and loose feeling underfoot and sat down on the basket which
felt as secure as leaving your bike near a gypsy camp site.
We were escorted through this
well-beaten jungle track, as the elephant with a sense of slow
majestic boredom, idly followed his trainer as it swayed and jolted
from side-to-side, forward-and-backward as it negotiated the terrain.
Halfway through the trek we were
allowed to sit on the elephant's neck, which can only be described as
riding a freakishly tall saddle-less horse and you could feel the
muscles of his neck and every heavy footstep reverberate up through
your body.
There wasn't much scenery to be seen,
except when it was time to turn around and we had a great view
looking over the top of the jungle canopy down into the water in the
far distance, though most of the time we were all fooling around;
singing 'I'm on an elephant muthaf-ker' and acting like rappers,
doing child-safe elephant impressions and being an unamused
emotionless sultan, looking back on it now, it seemed like a good
idea at the time that you had to be there for. Highlight would be
laughing at a set of friends that got the renegade baby elephant and
spent the whole time looking frightened and struggling to stay on,
essentially fighting for their lives.
As we were returning back to base, our
elephant trainer stopped us and enthusiastically pointed and told us
to look left, at which point I did.
It took me a while to adjust and see
what I was actually looking at, until my friend next to me pointed
out this huge spider, it was about that exact point when I completely
lost my cool and freaked out to the Nth degree, from memory, this
thing had a body the size of a tiger's head, legs as thick as an
octopus's with a white skull marking on its back, it then scuttle off
up its web, which was even more disturbing cause I knew it was real.
It then, seemed to point at me and say 'you're next Rupert'.
Well that's ridiculous, it obviously
didn't say that, spiders can't speak English. He telepathically sent
it to me in Thai.
People laughed at my disgrace and
karma's a bitch.
...
Later on, We grabbed a late lunch and I
calmed down from my brush with death with another beach massage where
all my knots from yesterday's massage had magically reappeared.
It was turning out to be another
amazing sunset so a friend and I hired kayaks and took to the water
paddling out into the calm bay, to get another perspective of Smile
Beach and watch the sun slowly fall behind some distant clouds and
smashed into the horizon.
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