THAILAND - Sangkalaburi (3)

28/11/05 - Today we got up nice and early and had six hours of travelling to do to get to Sangkalaburi the first stop on our trip! The journey wasnt to bad but we were all knackered once we got to our guest house! We stayed at the P. Guest house in the most amazing location I have ever seen! We stayed in wooden lodges that were sitauted on a stunning lake it was so picturesque! We had to share cold showers! and toilets and there were insects, frogs and geckos everywhere!Quite an experience!Steve keeps on getting bitten by the mosiqutoes they love him!its funny!

29/11/05 - Today got up early and went on and hour and a half long tail speed boad through the lake to get to the jungle!Where we were going elephant riding and bamboo rafting! it was such a nice journey and the scenery was absoluetly stunning!ive taken loads of photos! Once we arrived in the jungle there were all the elephants waiting for us, we had the little elephant because i was a bit scared they are so big, there beautiful animals but enormous! We rode on the elephants through the jungle for around an hour and went through many rivers.it was a really wicked experience which i would do again and it was surprisingly very comfortable. Once we had finished the elephant ride we went on to do some bamboo rafting! There was four of us on a bamboo raft and and we had to go down this river, some of the river was nice and slow, but then all of a sudden we'd hit these rapids and have to work really hard not to hit into trees and rocks it was so funny!After bamboo rafting we went and had lunch in the karen village these are minority people that live in Thailand in the jungle.They have such a completley different way of life it was very interesting.
We then took the longtail speed boat back to our guest house and went onto see some beautfiul temples and then to an orphange!The orphange was very sad there were over 100 children. Their ages ranged from 3 months old up to 15.As soon as the kids saw us they all ran over and jumped on us and would not leave us alone you could tell they were so excited. We played wiv the kids and they performed two shows for us, which were really good. The lady that ran the orphange was Italian and came to Thailand fifteen years ago. She just starting looking after one child as the mother couldnt cope and then the orphange grew from there, She was an amazing women with so much patience. There was kids and dogs running round everyone and she seemed so relaxed!It was very sad seeing the kids, they were all so lovely and to think they had been abandoned was awful. Went back to the guest house all itchy because it was untill after we'd been holding and playing with the kids that our Leader Jane told us most of them properly have head lice!nice! Had a really good day today saw loads of amazing things.