Ooh la la

Ko Samui Day 2

So this morning was not the relaxing type of wake up when you're at the beach inThailand that we were hoping for. I looked at my watch and realized I didn't actually know how to set the alarm and we had two minutes to get ready to go on our trek for the day. Then we looked outside and saw that it was raining. We ran outside to our driver, rescheduled and then set up another trek that didn't require good weather.

We ate breakfast at our beach again and met a woman who has been there for five weeks with her husband. She's the director of an international school in Chang Mai. She said she and her husband moved there to retire and then got offered the job to run the school so they took it. How fantastic is that life? If there's something I've learned on this trip it's that there are a lot more people out there doing a lot more different things that I had imagined from my grey desk and my black desk chair in my grey office building in DC.

We sat on the beach for a while and then were picked up by a flatbed rickety truck for our elephant adventure we set up. We held on until our knuckes were white as we watched the villages and countryside fly by. I have to say, one of my favorite parts about traveling is being driven from one place to another. I know I wrote about it Bali too; it's great to see normal life in these areas. No hotels, hostels, restaurants or taxicabs. Just life.

So what we set up was an elephant trek ending at a waterfall. The rain stopped just in time to get on the big, hairy, smelly cute animal. Shannon and I sat on the top and the trainer sat on his big ol' head as we moved slowwwwwllyyyy through the rainforest. The trainer said three things the entire time we rode: 1. Oh my godddd 2. Oooh la la and 3. Hoooaaahhhh!! The first two were said at anything remotely pretty or interesting or any large insect (note that he did not move away from the large spiders in the webs but actually told the elephant to go closer so we could get a better look. We soon learned that the chairs on the elephant can swing all the way onto the other side off his back onto his flank as we scrambled to move as far away from the monsterous spiders as possible. Mister Ooh la la didn't bring us closer to any other spiders after that.

He then let me jump onto his head as the trainer to the ground to lead the elephant from there. Shannon preferred the seat at the top. Pansy. So I sat on the noggin' as he moved along through the rainforest. He blew his nose on me three times throughout the ride. I counted. He brought his nose up, and literately blew stuff out of it onto my arm. Not Ooh la la.

They then let us off at a waterfall that ended in a little pool. I immediately jumped (read: waded carefully) into the water so as to get the elephant boogies off my arm. It felt gooooood. This little 7 year old girl and I jumped off the rocks into the waterfall as soon as we figured out how deep it was.

I had a great time playing with the 7 year old but the time came to ride the truck of death back to our beach. We ate some fried noodles for lunch and slept on the beach the rest of the day.