Janet is around at the massage parlour at the moment. I had an hour-long massage at 5pm after coming back from the elephants so, on my recommendation, Janet unsprawled herself from the king-size bed and moved a tonne of newspapers, books, fruit knives and magazines, and meekly went around with me a short while ago to get herself oiled up.
Today, most of our energy returned. After buying some clothes this morning, we purchased some durian fruit, ate a bit when back at the guest house and threw out the rest. It's an acquired taste, somewhat like heavy metal music, but just as unwelcome to us both.
The elephant's show was scheduled for 1:30 pm so we hired a driver and car for the afternoon for $14. It's the guest-house owner's son-in-law, and he was very patient with our dawdling with the elephants, even denying himself a sigh of exasperation when we went for a 30-minute ride on the back of an old female elephant after the show.
The path taken by the mahout was frightening and involved really steep climbs in a narrow jungle path where the mud was up to half a metre deep. The lead elephants had squashed huge footprints way down into the mud and I think our elephant just used the same footholes. The slopes were at least 30 degrees, if not more. We were in danger of sliding out of our little seats and under the safety bar, with the mahout thinking this was all wonderful fun. In fact, it was.
I practically exhausted the battery on the camera (Clem shouted me a long-life battery for the trip) and some great footage was taken, the highlights being the soccer match, the elephants doing their paintings and the intial exposure to them when they were wallowing in the nearby running river.
On the way back, our driver took us to an orchid farm and we took more pictures and talked to a Chinese photographer who spoke excellent English (self-taught, he said) who was from UN and up for the weekend from Bangkok. As light was fading, we pulled ourselves away from his interesting conversation because he had thousands of dollars worth of camera gear and professional tripod and talking instead of indulging in his hobby.
Now, Janet should be back in 30 minutes and then we'll get a tuk-tuk to the night markets to an Indian restaurant, recommended by our masseur. All dishes, he said, were exquisite (I've forgotten the Thai word) and each was around 40 B - maybe $1.20. Everywhere, there is cheap food - just point in any direction and there's something to eat for sale.
