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Also in Laos
sorry that I deleted the blog the other day by accident you will have to trust mycousins that it was good whilst i try to retrive it. in the meantime a short update...
Before embarking on our adventures, Kirst and I thought it prudent to visit a travel clinic to see about injections and health issues on our upcoming trip etc. The doctor in question advised us to generally try toavoid sleeping in places near pigs and fowl to minimise the risk of avian and swine flu. I have since concluded that the doctor in question has never in fact been anywhere near rural SE asia as he might as well have said,"i'm sure you will be fine , oh by the way try not to breathe in at all while you are there". Not to worry though as whilst there have been various pigs and fowl around various guesthouses none have as yet sneezed on us!, an elephant nearly did today but i'll come to that.
We have just been staying in Tad Lo on the bolaven plateau in southern laos and this morning we took a trip on the moon. In this case "Moon" was a female elephant who took us/herself on a ride through the forest, sometimes even in the direction requested by her handler/third passenger, though this did depend on the likelyhood of banana leaves in that particular direction. As it was, Moon went roughly where she wanted to with her orbit encorporating all the tastiest shubbery enroute. When the handler got annoyed at this and tried to urge her in a direction she didn't like, she flipped her trunk back over her head in the direction of the passengers and pretended to be about to sneeze, at which point all three passengers assumed a position historically known as 'duck and cover'. Moon then continued in a direction more befitting her status as an independant elephant (though on occasion this included walking along the ridges and edges of large human made excavations, either realising that there were engineers on board or just to scare kirsty).
That all said 'elephant trekking' was a serene experience and I recommend it to all even with the amount of flatulence that results from a 90% banana leaf diet!
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