Daily Archives: June 21, 2008

SATURDAY 21st June (Day)

Holy crap. Is that the alarm? Bloody hell. 5am??? Screw this for a joke!

Once we were all up and ready to go it felt better to be awake. We were all excited about the day ahead. Since Pilly had a very limited Thailand experience due to work commitments in Korea we had to get a hell of a lot done in a few short days. How much can you possibly achieve in one day? That’s easy. Book a super filled tour.

The first stop was a coconut farm. They explained everything about the use of coconuts, the growing of coconuts, the burning of coconuts and a crazy amount of other coconut stuff all the way down to the buying of coconut stuff. I was quickly getting tired of coconuts but it didn’t last forever. Just as it was getting really stale we were back on the road.

Somewhere along the way we stopped at a hand carving wood place. This was really interesting seeing HUGE carving that can take 6-8 months to do, hand carved furniture that weighed about a million tons, paper making by hand techniques and again a shop to help you drop a few more dollars.

I think one of the highlights of the day was the Floating Market. This place rocks! It is quite organized the way you get a boat and get driven or paddled or whatever around the market in this maze of canals. There is the whole barter thing going on, the consumption of kewl Thai soup, sunburn and the possibility of spending more money. I think I picked up a few interesting things but really it was so that I can say I went shopping on a floating market. Great fun!

After the Floating Market we made a stop at a massive crocodile farm that had elephant shows etc etc. We then found out that this stop wasn’t ours and we were in fact booked to go to some Rose Garden and watch some cultural stuff and have have some fancy lunch and watch some more shows. We had to set this straight. I jumped out the van and spoke to our tour guide and arranged that we get off here and they come back and fetch us later to which he agreed. It didn’t take him long to arrange tickets for entrance and lunch. He’s good!

We were just in time for the first show which was some silly magic show so we didn’t bother. Instead we took pictures of the 3 of us with fully grown twin tigers. That was awesome! The second show was an elephant show which was spectacular and funny. I was in mixed minds at times about the training of the elephants etc but still I couldn’t help being marveled at the skills these elephants have learnt. They play football and act really cute and cuddly. It is all very entertaining with a show of history and a big battle with explosions and sword fights. Deeds and Pilly then climbed up on an elli and took a quick trip around the arena. They loved it.

There was also a crocodile show with the usual “stick your head in the crocs mouth” act. Not like I would stupid enough to try that mind you. After 30 minutes of walking around the croc farm and feeding the killers, we walked to the gate so that we were not late for our pickup. On the way out we took more pics of some tuskers and checked out the tigers again.

Back in the van and after a short stop at another temple we were all asleep for the long journey back to the hotel. We dropped off the days loot that we had picked up at the hotel and prepped for another night of drinking. It was Pilly’s last night so was expected to be a big one!

God help us all…