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Hello everyone,
sorry its been so long since we last wrote.It takes hours to put the photos on the blogg and then we either do not have time to write or can not be bothered.We are both well, although a little sun burnt today.
Since we last wrote so much has happened, I do not know where to start.In the south of Vietnam we spent some time on the Mekong Delta which is a very long river, travelling around on various boats.The way of life on the river is amazing, very basic and quite poor but something very beautiful about it.
Then we got a boat up the Mekong to Phnom Penh the capital of Cambodia.We made friends with some buddhist monks and even got to see their bedrooms.They loved talking to us so they could practice their English and we spent many hours in their company.The next stage of our journey was a boat which we think was a converted airoplane with the wings chopped off which took us to Siem Reap.Again we made some more monk friends and spent an afternoon teaching English which was an excellent experience although a little scary.We visited some of the temples in the area which were very impressive, shame about the ammount of tourists there spoiling the view though.Our favourite was Ta Prohm ,the one set in the jungle with incredible root systems growing in and out of the temples. Siem Reap was a nice town with lots of places to eat and massages on offer everywhere.Lucynda got her first illness of the trip there, but luckily it was nothing serious and passed in a few days.Emma met a nice young man,who was a tuk tuk driver but we had to leave him behind.
From there we had a rather horrible,hot and dusty bus journey to bangkok.Bangkok was very different from what we were expecting, very built up with lots of load music and people drinking on the streets which was not our scene.Huge ammounts of fake dreadlocks for sale so the youngsters can turn themselves into hippies overnight.
We then arrived at the wildlife centre it was very different from what we'd expected. It's much bigger than Matang with around 25 volunteers to get to know, all coming and going at different times. Most of them work with the other animals at the wildlife centre and we work with around 4 other volunteers and some mahouts (elephant carers) looking after the elephants. We are not actually neeede as the mahouts can manage perfectly well without us, so it's more of an 'elephant experience'. It's very cushy work. We start at 06.30, walking 1/2 hour ro collect the elephants from the forest where they have been over night. We bring them back to the centre and give them some pineapple leaves and that's our work done til 10.00. We then clean up their poo and give them some more leaves, which takes about 1/2 hour and then we're off again til 13.00 or 14.00. In the afternoon we take them to the lake or the river for a swim and leave them to graze while we relax before taking them around 16.30 to their overnight spot in the forest. It would havebeen quite mundane except for the fact that we managed to severly upset a few people. We basically saw a mahout treating his elephant in what we saw as an unecessarily cruel way and we reported it to the boss. We thought they might just get a bit of a talking too, but much to out horror the boy in question was sacked. Needless to say we weren't very popular for a while and were extremely upset but thankfully it has all died down now and are even being treated better than we were before.
We've only got 2 days left and then we are going south to some islands to do some more relaxing and hopefully some snorkelling or diving.
Hope you're all well and still enjoying the blog. Thanks again for all the emails.
Miss you all.
Love Emma and Lucynda xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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