Day 4: Bamboo Rafting and Animals

After our elephant trek and having some pineapple in the shade and feeding the elephant and buying an overpriced photo of us on the elephant, our driver took us to a river, where we went bamboo rafting. It was pretty cool, but wet. The raft sunk down a couple inches into the water, and we would occasionally go over some minirapids, which got us wetter. Glad I was wearing fisherman's pants.

Here's our river guide, guiding:


Here's Kent on the raft, behind me:


The river:


A hut overlooking the river:


Sometimes it got quite shallow, and there were nice rocks:



After bamboo rafting for maybe like 30-45 minutes, we were taken to a really nice looking outdoor restaurant with tables out on docks, overlooking the water to have curry lunch. I really feel like I took some pictures here. Kent, this would be your cue to send those to me, or any you took yourself. Plus any of my video of the rafting, because I really feel like I took some on the card, and I don't have it on my computer.

When we finished with lunch, we went to a "turtle farm." I was hoping it would be like the one I went to in Kenya, where enormous turtles were walking around a large sanctuary on an island, but this wasn't even close. The turtles were all in tanks, and the biggest ones were only about a foot or a foot and a half long. The ones in Kenya were the size of me.

Here's one of the big guys:



The employee who was walking around with us took one of the bigger turtles out of the tank so we could touch it.



Here are some of the little guys. I liked this one because of the way the middle one rests his flipper atop his back and just floats around.



Some more of the little guys.



The turtle farm was a little boring. We were only there for twenty minutes. Then for some reason we got a bonus trip to a temple (boring), but it had some animals in a yard on the grounds that we got to see.

Here's one of the temple buildings:



Here's me next to one of these island pagoda thingies:



Here's a crocodile. Sucks to be him. Notice my arm shadow, with camera.


A deer:


Pile o' tortoises:


Oddly enough, porcupines:


This scraggly cat was wandering around, screaming about something:


A baboon:


And a bear. He was really hot.


After the temple, back to the hotel for a nice early end to the day. I think we got back at like 2:30, which left enough time for a full day of beach and pool swimming. This was much better than the grueling, yet exciting, Phi Phi Island. When we got back to the pool, the Belgian family, who were the only other guests in the hotel except for the Frat Boys, asked to see our pictures of the elephant trek. One of their twin daughters was much less adventurous than the other, and her parents figured if she could see what went on first, it would be less scary. Kent showed them some pictures while we waited for our food to be served at the restaurant, and he said it worked. So they scheduled their own elephent trek for sometime after we left, which was now feeling very soon. Booo-urns.