Koh Phangan

The days are slipping by easily in our tropical paradise. Beautiful warm sunny days, enjoyed from our beach-side bungalow with a coral reef right off the rocks, Ko Phangan is a great place to be right now. We've settled into a quiet little corner of the island with a handful of stilted bungalows on the shore. Our view is straight West and each night we've had quite a show of a sunset, best enjoyed while swinging in the hammock on our deck... It's going to be tough to leave here. So we won't, at least not just yet anyway. We will be here now for almost another week, which has forced us to alter some plans for after we leave here, so that we can stay longer than expected. So, not much to tell really, just a lot of blissful relaxation.....
Oh, but we should mention the Elephants.

A couple of days ago we took a motorbike to the center of the 190 Square Kilometer island to see the Elephants. There are 9 Asian Elephants there, that are fascinating to watch. We realized that other than in Zoo situations, we've never really spent time up close with Elephants, they are amazing animals. You can tell that they are intelligent beasts, the way they use their trunks and feet (which are super cute looking things) is with some real skill. Apparently an elephant can use it's trunk to pick up everything from a small coin to a 600 pound log.

A Thai elephant experience would be complete without riding on one of these huge animals, so we arranged a ride on the back of one of the larger elephants, a 50 year old female from the North of Thailand where she worked in the logging industry, excellent training for carrying both of us on her back with a bag full of camera gear. It's pretty amazing how high up you sit on these elephants, i felt a bit like a character in some fantasy novel, exploring foreign lands on giant mythical beasts. Sadly elephants don't fly, as 'Dumbo' might suggest but none-the-less it was a great experience. Hmmm, actually now I think about it, it was a 'mostly' great experience, there was one unfortunate incident.

On our elephant ride through the jungle we had a Thai elephant driver who spent time walking along side our elephant talking to it and tugging its ears,(i think they like each other). Anyhow, after about 15 minutes on the top of our elephant our Thai guide and driver suggested that we give him the camera so he could take a picture of us on the elephant, what a great idea, I thought. I set up the camera and handed it down to him, he then took his position 10 feet or so in front of us, it looked like he might have gotten a couple of decent photo. He returned to the elephants side and got it moving up a particularly steep section of trail, meanwhile holding onto the camera. While the elephant was working to get up this steep trail our guide had decided to walk a few feet behind the elephant. Now, i am no expert on elephants, but in retrospect, when we are really straining physically it would not be unusual to pass some unexpected wind. Well, keeping in mind that an elephant can consume tones of food a day and the fact that its bowels are surely big enough to house a Thai couple and their child, maybe standing behind it was not such a great idea. So as we were climbing this steep section of trail there was a horrendous sound from the rear of our beast, i turned around to see that our guide/driver was covered in the discharge of a very wet, very large elephant fart. He was trying to wipe the elephant shit off the camera, unaware that we were watching. He held onto the camera for a bit (presumably letting the wet splotches dry in the sun and giving himself time to wipe it off some more). All i could think of was trying to explain this to Canon's service department "...yes, thats right, the substance is elephant shit. Does my warranty happen to cover this? Do many peoples cameras get damaged through elephant shit, or is this an unusual case......yes, uh huh.........I see..." this most certainly wouldn't go down well. Anyhow, all unnecessary worry in the end. Canon has apparently already considered this eventuality and it turns out that the camera is in fact shit proof. fantastic!

Lots of love to our family and friends, wish you were here!!!