Friday, July 30th: Elephants!

Susanni:

I am sitting on the 2nd floor (only one with wifi access) in PJ`s and a chang beer by my side chatting away with some other travelers passing though on the way to their rooms.  My gosh, life is different here than at home.  Dual life Susanne.....

Today was elephant riding day. We were picked up at our hotel and driven about 3o minutes into a more forested area...well, jungle, I guess.  Some elephants were ready for us and we hopped on into the little cabin thing on top. we had asked if we could ride bare back and were told that we could not, but once we were about 20 minutes into our rides (Chelsea and Michelle on one and I was on the other), our guides hopped off the necks of the elephants and asked us to take our seat belts off (yes, actual car seat belts with a buckle) and to hop onto the necks.  Wow, that was pretty cool. You really have to hang on as it is quite bouncy and they the guides walked along the elephants and have some commands while we enjoyed the view. They also took our cameras and took pics.  very fun. It was all over in an hour.  we got to also play with some young, 10 month old elephants for a bit, as well.

What magnificent powerful animals..... (Carol, I thought about you today....)

The whole thing was done in an hour or so and we got ready for the beach.  We got a couple of good hours before rain came in again and we spent the afternoon in our bathing suits and sarongs wandering around shopping, having coffee at a sidewalk cafe (it was actually the one from the hotel where we would have stayed if we had done our Thailand R&R here if the Thailand trip had happened versus Cambodia).  A lazy but nice afternoon with a beer on the beach and some more swimming for Michelle and myself.

Our 4th visit to our favorite restaurant tonight and ready to get up at 4:30 a.m. or so to make the one hour ride to the airport to catch our 8 a.m. flight.

We avoided naked beach guy as well as demon dog today...so pretty safe day today :)