Homestretch

     Immediately after my resolution to faithfully post I stopped immediately posting.  Luckily nothing has happened today except a three hour cramped minivan ride, an awful breakfast, a good lunch, and a quick swim and yesterday was spent on an eleven hour (eleven hour) busride from Chiang Mai to Bangkok.  We stayed in one of the cheapest hotels we could find and as a result the only veggie options for breakfast were the limited salad bar and they had us give a deposit on the plastic keycard. Street food for dinner.
 
    But the day before that was awesome.  My mom went to a cooking class for six and a half hours and my dad and I went zip lining for even longer.  It was really chilly in the morning, dropping to about seventy or seventy five.  I'm NOT looking forward to Olympic peninsula cold and damp.  In these last few days I'm trying to store up on enough vitamin D to get me through highschool.
     In the van that came to pick us up were seven other people and we joined two other vans at the zipline station.  Despite having twenty some people in the group we moved pretty quickly from platform to platform.  Sometimes we were only fifteen or twenty feet above the forest floor and other times upwards of a hundred and forty, but the only really scary parts were the ones where we dropped. Including a hundred and forty foot drop.  Stepping off the platform and free falling for three or five-ish seconds before slowing drastically for the last ten or fifteen feet to the lower platform.  It was... 'exhilarating' (um, terrifying, but in a good way).  We had a few screamers in our group but they seemed to be enjoying themselves anyway.

My dad, on the tallest drop

      Twice the cable was too long for me to have enough momentum to cross.  The first time I was picked up and thrown off the platform but despite going really, really fast for a ways I still had to pull myself hand over hand to reach the other side.  The second time a ranger left a moment behind me and ran into me about halfway across and pushing me far enough to make it.
      Lunch was included, but people just don't understand the concept of vegetarian.  One bowl of raw vegetables in broth for two people?  Act like it's delicious?  Imagine a world where vegetarians ruled and meat eaters were limited to meat options and yu are always getting served spam with white rice once or twice a day for months and having people act like this is a perfectly acceptable and delicious alternative.  Only pretend the spam is completely lacking in protein.  Never having tried spam I can't actually say how accurate the simile is but you get the idea.
      My mom learned how to make panang, green, and red curries as well as springrolls, mango sticky rice, pad Thai, and tom yum soup.  She had very few leftovers to take home and only a bit was left when we got back but it was delicious and she bought certain necessary ingredients so she can make them at home.
      For whatever reason, maybe the constant adrenaline, we were wiped out when we got home and, apart from dinner, didn't leave.  We planned to go back to the second restaurant of the first night, the one with the strange Thai TV show, but the TV looked like it had been practically ripped out of the socket, the lights were out, and all the chairs and tables were shoved to the side of the room.
      It was getting late and as we wandered the streets we found few open restaurants.  Finally we came upon a small one with pictures and enthusiastic notes up on the wall.  Food was amazing.  If I knew the name of it I would give directions to everyone and tell them to go to Chiang Mai just for it.
     Before the zip lining day but after my post before it we walked around the nightmarket for a couple of hours.  It was only open on Sundays or else we might not have felt obligated to see everything.   As it was it still stretched on for blocks when we got burnt out.  There was a section for food, and we sampled many things.  The samosas, banana spring rolls, and eggs and mushrooms cooked in a banana leaf plate were all delicious.
 

      The next morning was our epic busride.  Along the way there were two stops and we got lunch at the second that was typically disappointing.  Bangkok was reached only two hours behind schedule, and despite being seated right beneath the speakers that alternated between blaring Thai pop music (bad pop music is everywhere) and the soundtracks to bad Dwayne Johnson movies we survived.

      The front of the bus was decorated with jasmine and baskets of fake flowers.  An Alice-in-Wonderland-esque cat started at me the whole time.

      I started writing last night, before stopping to take a long walk on the beach and watch The Sixth Sense.  Typical beach day today, lots of swimming, sun, and lounging around reading. 

Can anyone remember the last time I was up to date?

   Muong Khua was bigger, uglier, and noisier than either of our previous two towns.  Not only were there competing karaoke groups at sonic boom levels but there were competing karaoke groups at sonic boom levels on every block.  By ten everybody except for one persistent singer had fallen asleep, so of course said singer was on the corner right outside our hotel.
     There was no room at the seemingly-empty hotel we found so Roger and Jael (a singer/songwriter) stayed elsewhere, but they came up to the communal balcony a few hours after the boat landed to chat.  Later we passed them eating at one of the only two open restaurants, both of which we passed on because of lack of veggie options.  Instead we found Chinese instant soup at a little minimart that was pretty effortlessly prepared using the electric teakettle at our hotel.  Probably it had no less nutritional value than we could have gotten otherwise and definitely it was quicker and more palatable.
      As soon as we could we got on a tuk tuk to the bus station the next morning.   None showed up until eight so we spent thirty minutes or so beforehand looking for a place for my parents to get coffee.  A few blocks away from our hotel we ran into a woman who must have been staff there, as she started screaming at my father in broken English that he hadn't paid. He had, and after walking back to the hotel and proving it she departed sullenly.
      I don't know what I would have done with five more hours on a plastic stool but luckily we arrived early enough to get seats.  Around one we were at the bus station in Oudomxai and got seats on the next bus, too.  Somehow without straying too far from the station my parents scrounged up an egg and noodle takeaway lunch and we ate that and ice cream sandwiches at a plastic table close enough to the bus to prevent anyone from taking our seats.
      Four hours later we were in Luang Namtha.
 
      The tuk tuk into town wasn't long and we came across the rare hotel that has no triple rooms but two doubles in our price range.  The roaches in the sinks were quickly drowned and the golden retriever mix downstairs was greatly appreciated.
      My parents rented bikes the next day and did a loop but I had caught my mother's cold and didn't quite feel up to it.  The town had a couple of good restaurants but it must have been an off night for the much-belove night market because there were only a few stalls selling gimmicky mass-produced chachkas.
     After two nights there we decided to cut out four extra hours on a bus and skip a town notable for its nearby ethnic villages.  Going back to the bus station, we shared a tuk tuk with two girls from Colorado and an old couple who took great pleasure in describing how amazing their trip was and what we should do differently even with limited signs of encouragement.
      The tickets to the Thai border had numbers on them and we assumed they were seat numbers.  14 and 15 were taken and though the bus was still mostly empty the threat of a Plastic Stool hung over us and my dad kicked the people in them out.  They left quickly and obligingly and chose a pair of seats across the aisle.  Of course, we later found out that the numbers on our tickets were merely a tally and it was open seating.  My dad communicated this, along with an apology, and they laughed at us good-naturedly.
     The border crossing went smoothly and I got my last stamp of the trip. Though short, the ride across the river was very cramped and we were glad when we got off.  It was more complicated than it should have been to find customs but once that was taken care of and our visas filled out we found a tuk tuk to take us to a money changer and then to the bus to Chiang Rai.  It was parked near a minimart and my dad ran in to find something to compensate for lack of breakfast and lunch.  With limited options, my new least-nutritious meal is now a sweetened yoghurt, half a Sprite, and three quarters of a chocolate bar.  The sugar rush lasted me the three hours to the city.
     Chiang Rai is mostly a destination for hikers and as we are fairly hiked-out we only stayed one night.  Nevertheless, we found a restaurant that could substitute tofu into amazing curries, walked around the night market (infinitely more interesting than the one in Luang Namtha), went to one phone store three times and another twice in search of a charger (I forgot to mention that my kindle died way back in Siem Reap and left my iPod charger in Muong Ngoi so couldntevenread on that.  Luckily we had a few paperbacks), and got coconut ice cream with fresh coconut and cream and peanuts.
      The Chiang Mai bus didn't leave until early afternoon so we slept in late and then went to Wat Rong Khun.  We took a song theow--the larger relative of the tuk tuk--to the white temple a few kilometers out of town.  It is nearly blinding.  Only one building is nearly finished, elaborately carved and sculpted but in the process of being painted on the inside.  The artist hopes that the complex will be finished in 2070, complete with white koi in the pools outside.
      I completely blanked on temple etiquette but was kindly provided with a white sarong before entering.  Other women, Thai women, even, were wearing them and my mortification was lessened.
 
     Inside the temple pictures weren't allowed.  A golden Buddha presided at the far end of the room and a sculpture of a monk sat in front.  If not for the flaws in his hands he could have been alive but meditating.  The walls were a surreal blend of religion and pop culture.  Worshippers floated on golden poufs of clouds, Batman grasped for his cellphone, a demon wore braces, Elvis floated near one naga-encrusted lintel.  The list goes on.
                                

     Outside the temple we dropped a coin into a wishing well and hung a silver ornament on a treelike sculpture in remembrance of my grandmother.
                                
     Back in town we left our hotel almost immediately to walk to the bus station.  A coffee shop was close enough for us to grab treats and Thai iced coffees before boarding the luxury bus.  Seats for everyone!  Air conditioning!  Non-repellent seat covers!  No blaring music!  An usher to show people to their seats!!!!!  On this delightful ride we made only one stop that lasted for more than a couple of minutes and bought a bag of olive like fruits to try.  They weren't meat, but they were bizarre.
     Our song theow driver in Chiang Mai had no idea where we wanted to go and tried to let us off fifteen minutes away from where we were supposed to be.  Despite gestured encouragement to pay and leave we stayed on and he got directions from a couple of men outside a restaurant. 
     Chiang Mai seems full of good restaurants.  Though our first try last night led us  to a meat-only place we afterwards found a small place with noodles and lots of spicy condiments.  Two shared bowls later my parents were still unsatisfied and we found a third restaurant where we got a green mango salad and red curry.  Things are definitely looking up food wise.
      A Thai TV show playing in the restaurant provided endless speculation on what these anachronistically dressed people were doing. They shouted at eachother a lot and had a chocolate fountain in what appeared to be a European city while ominous music played.  
      The next morning we found a restaurant called Nice Kitchen that has many breakfast options, all veg, and we plan on frequenting it regularly.  We wondered around the old city section until it got absolutely too hot to go anywhere else, when we got iced coffees and hid in a book exchange.  We had to stock up for the plane ride home.  It's coming up so soon!  
     My dad set out again for a camera store and met with success.  The new camera, used only for three weeks before the charger was lost, is back in action.
     My goal for the rest of the trip is to not fall behind in posting again.  We'll see how I do...

Karaoke along the Nam Ou

     The minivan came to pick us up only twenty minutes after it was supposed to.  Aircon had been promised and in a pleasant surprise it actually existed.  Forty five minutes later, after making a few stops to pick up more tourists bound for Nong Khiaw, we reached the bus station and disembarked for a van identical in all respects except for its lack of aircon.  The only windows that opened were at the passenger and driver seats, and the only ventilation system was a line of vents that did little other than clatter noisily.  Not including the long detour the ride was supposed to take from three to four hours, but by speeding through the mountains we made it in two.
      With a multitude of guest houses lining the banks on either side of the river we hadn't made reservations in advance and hauled our bags around for some time before finding the bridge.  I was settled with the bags at a restaurant on the far side of the bridge from the bus station.  Unencumbered, it only took my parents fifteen minutes or so to fill out a survey from a park ranger and find a river view bungalow.
 
      Of the three river towns we went to, Nong Khiaw was by far the most beautiful.  Green carsts rose up from the river on all sides, and though the town was small and the one main street mainly filled with restaurants it didn't feel purely commercial because of the lack of divide between business and home.
 
      We had a late lunch at a fantastic Indian restaurant, and went back for tapioca pudding for dinner which my dad actually sampled.  That night everybody from our bus except one girl was at the restaurant, and we shared a table with English Denise, sat across from Swiss Roger and Jael, and in the general vicinity of the unnamed French couple.  Denise has a very interesting life--for the past ten years she has been travelling almost continuously, going home only once or twice a year for a month or two with her mom.  She's a writer, but explained that it was mostly boring citation-editing stuff that she kept up to fund her travelling.  She mentioned that Bangkok was much nicer than she expected and though the drunk man at the computer nearby loudly demurred we are now considering spending an extra day or two there.
      From various people we got conflicting information about the boat to Muong Khua but in the end it didn't matter because we stayed an extra day for the food.  For a one-street town it sure had a lot of enticing restaurants!  
      My parents roused themselves at the crack of dawn for some hike to some caves which, apparently, was beautiful though the caves were closed.  Breakfast was up the path at Alex's, where the food was salty but plentiful and lived up to the expectations.  The morning was spent sitting on the porch of our bungalow soaking in the scenery before our only disappointing meal in town.  My mom had breakfast leftovers and only went to keep us company, but my dad and I ordered a salad and bland, sweet pasta respectively.  
       In the evening my parents retraced their steps for a half a kilometer or so to let me see their walk, and we ended up at a cafe for iced Lao coffees.  The family who ran it were smiling and chatty, and we communicated names and nationalities through pointing and smiles.  The black-and-white puppy Ee Um couldn't believe my betrayal when I went to sit at the table, but was quickly distracted when she saw a bug in a corner of the room.  The family's youngest daughter Nam Lin came over and began systematically removing everything from the table.  We caught her before she started ripping pages out of the book but not before she realized how fun it was to lift the big waterbottle as high as she could to make a loud noise.
        As we sipped our iced coffees the sun slipped down behind the rocks and we walked home a little briskly so as to still have some light.  The dark didn't prevent us from going out later, back to Alex's, for a banana split to share.  She (the owner) told us that she expected to see us again for breakfast so after packing up and sleeping in the next morning we had to sneak by to go look for bagels.  Many places advertised them but most were either out or closed, so we were about to give up when we found a little restaurant.  I guess it shouldn't have been surprising that the bagel was just thick toast and the creamcheese regular cheese--spreadable, but incomparable. 
 
      Or bags were dragged to the boat with perfect timing.  We were the last people to get seats and didn't have to wait long before it pulled away.  Of course they had to compensate for the peaceful, isolated river with blaring Laotian pop music but it was still a peaceful enough ride because the music was mostly drowned out in the noise of the engine.  It's the dry season, and at one point most of the passengers had to get out and walk for twenty minutes or so.  Both Denise and the Swiss couple were on the boat and we chatted as we followed the old-seeming but quickly-moving woman who knew the way.
     At the villages along the way we passed people bathing and washing clothes in the rivers.  Kids scrambled in and out of half-sunken canoes, women beat their sarongs with sticks.  A few looked for things to shoot with miniature spearguns, and many people had their heads covered in a lather of shampoo.  Makeshift generators worked nearby.
 
      Muong Ngoi was smaller, dingier, and even noisier than Nong Khiaw.  If we hadn't spent the extra night in the first village we would have really regretted moving on so quickly.  Even at noon the Laotian new year was going strong with people standing by the road with buckets of water and the trademark drunk karaoke blaring.  
     I wasn't parked at a restaurant for long before my parents found a place with a double bungalow and a single next door.  Lunch was at one of the few open restaurant and the best that could be said for it was that we could get enough chilis to mask the taste.
       A few hours later none of us were hungry but after my parents napped we went out to get iced coffees.  There was another Indian restaurant in this town and we were just settling down and keeping an eye out for somebody who could take our order when three women walked in, followed by the man from Traditions.  I didn't recognize him at all and I don't think he recognized us (well, why would he) but it was crazy meeting a family of Olympians in a tiny frontier-esque town in Lao.  They said that they had eaten there already and it was amazing, but when we returned that evening it was tasteless mush.  They were heading back to Nong Khiaw but the two adult daughters would be returning to continue up river and we discussed sharing a boat. They expected to be back in Muong Ngoi the morning two days after we talked and that was when we left too, but we missed eachother.
      My mom was feeling restless after we got Indian food and we wandered down the various side streets of the town but most petered out or ended up at somebody's house. 
      Despite the repellent mosquito nets, sinks that drained onto the floor, and half-eaten caterpillar in the bathroom it wasn't an unpleasant room.  Near Muong Ngoi there are a few villages within walking distance and we woke up early to go visit them.  There used to be only a path but very recently a dirt road has been built that detracts from the landscape.  After about an hour of hiking it started getting really hot and we turned off the road onto a path.  Forty five minutes later we crossed a small river and arrived in Huay Sen, the most authentic of the three.  There is a guest house here where we sat for breakfast, but no stores and the stilt houses were rustic and well-kept.  It felt intrusive to walk around the village so apart from a quick loop we left not long after eating.  The walk home seemed to be much quicker but it was nearing the heat of the day when we arrived back at the caves we had bought tickets near.
 
     A woman from new of the other villages, a weaving village, had a stall set up on the side of the road and we stopped in before entering the cave.  Near the entrance we crossed paths with Denise.
    An underground river flour through most of it and we walked in the water.  When the flashlight shone straight down on the water it ws perfectly clear, but change the beam to the slightest angle and you appeared to be standing in pure black ink.  We didn't go in that far.  
                           
     In the last twenty five minutes back to the village we saw a couple of groups of people just setting out and didn't envy them the long hike at noon.  
     My mom was coming down with a cold and had had a much more substantial breakfast than either my dad or I so we left her behind and walked to a restaurant just a few hundred feet from our bungalows.  Same old service, options, etcetera, but even despite the insistent karaoke we had a very pleasant lunch and lingered.  We were  just beginning to look for the waitress when it began to rain and within minutes it turned into a hailing lighting-and-thunder storm, with rain lashing in horizontally and napkins whipped off the table.  The fifteen feet of the openair restaurant nearest the river were soaked within seconds, and we took refuge in the back near the counter where only the occasional drop came.  A man came running in and wrote up our check for us, and we dashed for home.
      Almost as quickly as it had started the rain let up and the karaoke resumed.
      In Lao most people have at best a rudimentary grasp of English--I'm not complaining; it's not like I speak Laotian-- but the cue phrases they know are misleading.  Either people will repeat back a couple words to you and then agree (kettle in the room?  Yes, yes, very soon) or they just agree.  Pizza with no pineapple or green peppers? Yes.  Thirty minutes later-- Excuse me, this has pineapple and green peppers.  Yes.  We asked for this without pineapples and green peppers.  Yes?  OK. (Leaves).
     The pizza was fine.  My parents just got more than their fair share of green peppers and the chickens got more than theirs of pineapple.
     The Olympians had planned to be back in Muong Ngoi by nine thirty in the morning but didn't make it.  Instead we fought our way through the tangle of people trying to sell us boat tickets and met up with our Swiss friends.  The boat was empty except for us and had airplane-style seats and it was shaping up to be a very survivable trip when, an hour and a half in, we stopped at a village and filled up with half a dozen villagers.  They quickly crowded my mother and I out of our seats, and we moved back to the one empty seat and the floor at the back of the boat.  The rumbling motor made sitting in the back a recipe for a headache, and though my mother started back there we traded out quickly.  Luckily all the villagers got off after only forty minutes or so.

  

     Ten minutes from Muong Khua the boat driver stopped to eat something/socialize for what he predicted to be thirty minutes.  Frustrated, we nonetheless took the opportunity to walk around and just as we were away from the boat and happily skipping stones were told it was time to go.

   
      

Luang Prabang, round 2 (The one with pictures)

     Our new hotel in Luang Prabang was a step up from the cramped quarters of the first time, with an amazing hot shower and place enough to put our bags down and walk around.  The doors didn't lock, but we were the only guests and the staff had a spare key anyways.  The door to the balcony didn't even close properly, but it looked out on the same river as before and that was only a problem when we needed the aircon.

     The three of us were filthy and exhausted from the trip and only went out to cross the river and look for the pizza restaurant.  The restaurant was in somebody's backyard, with an oven at one side and a cluster of tiki torches at the other.  There were only three or four tables and one veggie option but two pizzas were perfect for us and they were delicious.

      Unable to sleep, my mom researched elephants.  The mahouts had told us that, contrary to popular belief, elephants only have a memory of two or three minutes but now we hypothesize that they only say that because if the don't pay attention he/she will stop walking and start looking for bamboo.  But come on--it's completely unrelated to memory: if you had a chance to stop hauling trees around and grab a snack wouldn't you take it?  In structure and complexity, elephants' brains are similar to humans', and they are among the most intelligent animals (up there with cetaceans and primates).  Elephants are very altruistic, one account telling of how an elephant refused to lower a log into a pit until the dog, until then unseen, had been lifted out and got out of danger.  
     They will self-medicate, chewing the leaves of a certain tree to induce labor (kenyan women do the same thing).
     In the wild, the whole family will stay together for life and though the elephant center probably doesn't have much of a choice it is amazingly cruel to separate a mother and baby pair after three years.  Bonds between elephants are formed for life.  See the heartbreaking story of Tina (Elephant society section).
     The next morning, after cheese sandwiches at the hotel, we walked to the old royal palace.  Built in 1904 for King Sisavang Vong and his family it was converted to a museum in 1975 when communists overthrew the monarchy.  The walls in many rooms are covered in Japanese glass mosaics.  No pictures were allowed, but you can see some here.  The style is unique because the whole wall isn't tiled; just the figures in mirrored glass on a red background.  Many of the scenes were either bizarre, surreal, or violent, depicting horses with elephant trunks and  tusks and numerous beheaded people.  Some seem to have taken off their heads with their own sword but that's probably a misinterpretation.  
     The royal bedrooms were spartan and huge.  The large beds were dwarfed by the twenty-five-foot ceilings and even longer width, and apart from the bed the room was only filled with a large armoire, an electric fan, and a misshapen portrait.  Maybe the ceilings were to keep the room cool or maybe for grandness, but if the latter it was not effective.

                                    

  In the hallways there were drawings from a Buddhist legend of a prince who was exiled.  He was  hardly a sympathetic character despite (we think) being Buddha's last incarnationwe think) beingBuddhas last incarnation and getting the happy ending of returning to his kingdom and ruling, as he tried to sell his children to a corrupt Brahman.  His mother, upon finding that she was to be the mother of Buddha, got ten wishes form the gods and one of them was for 'Eyebrows as blue as a bumblee's wings'.  I feeling like I'm missing something here... I didn't even know bumblebees had blue wings.  

     The room with the floating Buddha was almost as opulently decorated as the Buddhas in the royal palace in Phnom Penh and the cathedral of the most expensive Virgin Mary in Bolivia.  Horrifyingly, four pairs of elephant tusks in varying sizes made a sort of aisle up to the Buddha.

 

     After a short break back at the hotel room we went out looking for a book exchange and lunch.  Lunch was first, at a restaurant called the Big Tree.  I was having a down day and looking for something really tasty, but the soup was disappointing.  What's new.  
      The points where there is a risk of being splashed with cold water loud music plays as a warning and we were able to avoid it, but then there's the downside of the loud music.  The library/restaurant had only two bookshelves of English non-guidebook books but we managed to find a couple to buy and a couple to put in the library list when we get home.  The coconut chocolate milkshake was tempting, but when we were done browsing we walked to the night market.  
 
       The nightmarket is a little overwhelming and, though it fills only a couple blocks, felt endless.  We only meandered down one of the two aisles the first night before breezing through the food market, ignoring the meat, and picking up some fruit.  On our way home we looked for a milkshake place but the one we had in mind was closed and we decided to go home and eat fruit rather than look for a new one.  As soon as we made it back we decided that milkshakes would really just hit the spot and we set out gain.  Now milkshakes, but we sat down and ordered icecream before deciding that it was a crazy price for one scoop and turning around to go home. 
      The hotel was out of cheese sandwiches the next morning so I settled for the far-less-tasty egg sandwich.  My parents went out and about for bus tickets or to a bank or something in the morning, and we didn't eat lunch so we could have an early dinner at the veggie buffet in the night market.  I wanted to try everything, but all too soon my plate was filled.  Some of the spices on different dishes tasted almost identical, but it was by far the best meal in a long time.
 
     When we were done we walked down the second half of the market, but spent less time there because of the winged insects that swarmed the lamps, landed on our faces, and crawled down our shirts.  
        I've been trying off and on to get the pictures to upload without success, so when we get to Chiang Rai tomorrow I'll update this post with them in their correct places.  Bye bye, Lao!

Happy Pimai Lao (with Elephants)

     Another backlog of posts to write and increasingly short times in which to do so.  We're a few hundred kilometers away from Luang Prabang in a town called Nong Khiaw on the Nam Ou river but are leaving tomorrow for an even more remote village farther downstream that probably doesn't have wifi and may not even have electricity.  This would have been posted late last night if five paragraphs or so hadn't randomly been deleted.
      Being in a bungalow that had less of an 'inside' and 'outside' and more of an 'outside' and 'outside with a few partitions' meant that the light came in and woke me up early.  An unappetizingly eggy breakfast started at seven and at eight fifteen we went with Mae Bou Nam's mahout Pang to find her.  It was a fight through the jungle once we left the dirt road and I didn't see her until she was only a few feet away.  Pang brought her back to the road and cleaned the dirt and leaves from her back with a handful of leafy branches.  Mae Bou Nam was distracted by the bamboo shoots at the side of the road that we couldn't stop picking for her.  My dad rode on her neck for the last fifteen minutes or so before we arrived back at the buildings.
 
      He took her past the buildings to where the boats had pulled up the day before and she walked in for a swim and drink.  The other three joined her, and she and her special friend the twenty-one-year-old trumpeted when they saw eachother.  Her friend loved to swim and they went off a little ways together to duck down under the water and to scoop water into their trunks.  With only the tops of their heads emerging from the water they looked like some prehistoric aquatic animal.

        Too soon for them they were coaxed out of the water to go for a loop around one of the hills.  The path wasn't wide enough to walk two abreast but the elephants walked with exquisite balance, placing each foot directly in front of the last.  Our companions Perrine, Annemarys, and Inara rode at first and then my mother and I traded places with the latter two.  I rode Mae Do again and, once, when she stopped to eat something, I would have slipped had her mahout Sen not been sitting behind me. 
      Lunch was same same no different.  Meals are a bit of an ordeal because Annemarys is the only one of the girls to attempt to make the conversation in English, so much of the time they chatter on while we sit there wishing we had our own private language.  The veggie option was fish soup that became fish soup with most of the fish picked out when we explained that fish is meat to us.  Unfortunately I only discovered this when I reached the bottom of my bowl and found a scale.
     A Danish family arrived that afternoon and they got to spend it with the elephants.  Instead we walked to the nursery and sat on the tilting dock across from the to mother/son pairs on the other side of the inlet.  Both sons are about a year and a half old, and only have as much time again before they are separated from their mothers.  
 
      The mothers can get aggressive with eachother and so were separated by a bit of water and some trees but they didn't seem interested in one another.  After swimming and drinking for some time their mahouts had them come out and, immediately, the pair on the left began rolling in the dirt and spraying dirt over their backs. Soon they were hidden a cloud.  Their mahout apparently decided that they were too dirt and had them go back for another swim, but when they came out again they only repeated the process.  

       Once the dust settled for the last time the elephants snacked from the bamboo and grasses in the  area.  A boat came to take the girls back and then again for us. 
      With the Danes at dinner too the conversation stayed understandable and we found out that Annemarys, Perrine, and Inara are travelling for six months in South-East Asia as part of a project to make a guidebook of Eco-friendly socially-responsible organizations.  They have a list of places they need to visit and make notes about but in between stops they can go wherever they like.  The guidebook will only be written in French and not even started until they get home at the end of June but for these six months they only need to give updates and take notes.
       Another early morning to go get Our Elephant for the last time.  This time I rode her back.  It was a relief not to have to keep my eyes peeled for the teacup-sized daddy longlegs that scurry across the road.  When we emerged from the jungle Pang out his hand on his heart, turned to us, and said,  'Hoi hoc Mae Bou Nam.  That means, I love Mae Bou Nam'.  In the best cases, mahouts are born about the same time as their elephants and they grow up together.  Elephants live about as long as humans and the bond between them can every strong. 
      The Danes got to spend time with the elephants again and we hiked to see the Buddha footprint.  Fifty minutes scrambling through the jungle later we arrived at a clearing with several abandoned structures in it that had once been used for Buddhist monks to stay and pray.  Lah, our guide, chatted with us for a long time about different things in his country.  Weddings and monks were the focus, and he explained how the monks area becoming careful who they accept because many people become a monk for a few months because they want to learn English or study or because there is something going on at home and not because of a devotion to religion.  After some time he cried out that he had forgotten the tea, and pulled out two large thermoses and a half a dozen cups that he had lugged the whole way.
       A cup of tea later two men from the lodge arrived with a boat and we walked to the lake, stopping at the Buddha's footprint.  Under a wooden roof there was a large somewhat foot shaped depression in the ground.  Originally in the stone the edges had been covered in concrete to make it nicer and a lopsided gold Buddha placed on an altar next to it.
 

       Lunch was early and same same.  We spent some time before it in the small museum with posters telling about the differences between Asian and African elephants.  The boat came to take us to the road to meet a tuk tuk a little after noon and Lah hurried us away from our goodbyes with the elephants because 'The tuk tuk was waiting'.  It wasn't.  Afraid we would miss the bus, we tried to communicate to the boat driver to go back to the center and have Lah call and he may have been doing that when the tuk tuk arrived, fifteen minutes late.  We still made it in time and were able to get seats.  This time we could almost have each had our own row.  
       It was even dustier on our way back, and it didn't take long for my black shirt to become reddish brown and my seat to be covered in dirt thick enough for me to write in.  It was too bumpy to read and almost too bumpy to sleep and too noisy to listen to music and we couldn't have arrived soon enough.  In  celebration of the new year a few feet out of town a group of laughing girls threw buckets of water at the bus and with the open windows it was very startling, but probably the one and only highlight of the ride.