Ok, so I know that I suck at keeping people posted, but I am in the middle of a jungle, and the village is one road!

I got to the elephant sanctuary, and it's called Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand, and there are loads of other animals here as well as elephants. 80 macaques, 80 gibbons, 5 langurs, 20 bears, 20 birds, 2 otters, 15 dogs, 6 cats, a pony, a tiger and a crocodile as well as 6 elephants!!

I got the grand tour when I arrived and saw all the animals, especially being introduced to the elephants. We start work at 6.30am and then have breakfast at 8, work from 9-12, lunch and then work 1-4.30pm. Its a long day but so worth it. We get a nice cold shower at the end of the day.

The first thing I did was pick up elephant poop!! Its not actually that bad, horse manure smells so much worse! We feed the elephants, clean the paddock, take them for walks - which is definitely the best part as we go off into the jungle and the elephants can do pretty much whatever they want!

In my first week I was working on 3 elephants everyday, which is such hard work, but it got better as more people arrived. The people are awesome here, they all have this really laid back attitude but work really hard when they need to, and we can relax in the evening and have a drink and chat in the volunteer house. Everything is outside, and the view is amazing, a lake, 2 gibbon islands and mountains in the background with jungle in between.

Some memorable moments are walking an elephant towards the lake, she got in and swam to an island, went across it, swam to another one, and the mahout had to swim out and go and get her, we got some amazing pictures!! The next day, a macaque got out of its cage and ran around the centre, and they are vicious. One of the leaders started shouting "get out, get out" we all piled out the gate and had to run down the road! The thai people around the lake must have thought we were crazy.

We have had some good nights out, went to a night market in the village, and in the nearest town, which was mental! I spent a lot of money, relatively speaking, and tried loads of street food, which is sooooo good. Everything is so cheap, its awesome!

We had a elephant safari one night to go to the national park and see wild elephants, we saw a couple and one looked really angry, so the driver decided to speed up and run at the angry bull elephant! We were on an open top truck so it scared the s*** out of us, but was funny after!

There are some really random moments, like riding on a tractor full of compost up a hill, driving on a motorway on the back of a truck on top of 2 tonnes of bananas, and harvesting a forest of banana trees and climbing ontop to drive back, just a few of the things I will never forget.

Most of our time is spent with the elephants and I've got to learn all the little personality traits of all the elephants and how they like their food, like the oldest - Bua - flaps her ears loads and always wants attention, but the little baby doesn't really like people, but can move so fast when you're putting food out. I really don't wanna leave! Tomorrow I go back to Bangkok to start my traveling which is so exciting, but I'm really gonna miss the people and the elephants.

Lots of Love M xx