Khelang Nakorn Hotel Lampang

... with wooden seats in the back) I arrived at the Elephant Conservation Centre with a mixed opinion of what this could end up being like. <br>Though caring for mistreated elephants, and running volunteering programs to help these National Animals, the tourist tat in souveneir shops alerted me to the fact that this could be a somewhat 'plastic' in its authenticity. The elephant show complete with elephant drawing, walking, rolling logs ...

... but the piece de la resistance was they set up canvases....and our eleys started to paint. I would have had a hard time believing this unless I saw it with my own eyes....she painted a portrait of a couple of elephants....one carrying a flower in her trunk....so cool.....got video pictures and we bought the portrait also......so cooolllll....others painted waterfalls....flowers etc etc... So at the end we fed em all a bunch of bananas....Princess walked into the ...

... to park our eley's and this time it took everything I had in me to get my one leg around eleys ear to get off....legs are beyond dead...my ass actually pulses at the pace of an elephant walk.......one cheek then the other....and repeat. Bob....yeah he really thinks my pain is funny..... The day is done...so back to the villa for a traditional thai supper. We manage to drag our sorry butts off the scooters and to the villa and change and shower....mucho difficulto ...

... that....so to sit you are supposed to tuck your knees up high over the ears of the eley and park your feet behind the ears....don't know about you but I've never really sat like that for any amount of time...we'll talk about this a bit later.....as it seems to come up still.... So we are trucking along and pop out on a local highway...and start to saunter over to a big lake very picturesque. Ok...we keep walking towards the lake.....then into the lake ha ...

Lampang turned out to be another ghost town during the day. The woman at our guesthouse told us that everyone was resting after their week-long holiday. We managed to find a sawngthaew that was willing to take us out to Wat Phra That Lampang Luang, the oldest wooden building in Thailand, for a price we were actually willing to pay. We dropped off our bags at the local ...

... 11. Tajske zeleznice imajo precej razvejano mrezo in skoraj vsa pomembnejsa mesta je mogoce doseci tudi z vlakom. Cenovno so vlaki nekaj nad avtobusi, a ponujajo tudi nekaj vec udobja. Izbirati je mogoce med pravo mnozico razlicnih razredov, ki se med seboj razlikujejo po udobju in cenah. Pri krajsih potovanjih je obicajno mogoce izbirati med 5. razlicnimi razredi sedezev, pri daljsih potovanjih pa med 4. razlicnimi razredi spalnikov. Podobno kot na medkrajevnih avtobusih ...

... That doctor also offered to sort out Maria's corn/veruca problem which seemed impervious to all other treatment. Unfortunately this required cutting away the affected parts and she ended up with 11 stitches. Would you believe that this restricted her movements for a few days? Comical is the wrong word but you should have seen her hobbling down the street with her face swollen from the extractions and limping badly wearing one of her own shoes and one of my big awkward shower ...

... ask the elephant to pick it up, make the elephant sit and pick up the hoop, make the elephant lie down on her belly and pick up the hoop, make the elephant stand up, make the elephant lie down all the way on her side (including pause for ground-level dismount), pat the elephant, tell the elephant to get up on her belly, climb onto the elephant from ground level, tell the elephant to stand up, make the elephant walk. Once the elephant was walking, Mahout ...

... of the elephant in front of them, and marched to the parade ground. To the tourists it must have seemed like we were controlling the elephants. But I knew differently. For all intents and purposes, I was a hood ornament. It turns out that "watching" the show meant "being in" the show. We all lined up and were introduced, paraded around the grounds, and then were asked to show the tourists how we had trained our elephants. So we ran ...

... course, a Muay Thai Boxing course, and a Meditation Course if you are so inclined. People get addicted to Chiang Mai. I got addicted to Chiang Mai. Actually it was more of a co-addiction. The staring into space thing was a big part of it. I did not take a class to better myself or trek into the hills to bond with the long necks or go rock climbing on the limestone cliffs. It is not what you can do in chiang mai that makes you fall in ...