Friday started with an elephant ride. We bought bags of bananas and sugar cane and fed them as a treat. The elephants have incredible motor control with their trunks and can gently take a banana out of our hand and put in their mouth (peel and all). These elephants have been rescued. Income from the rides helps to provide for their food and care. We rode two to an elephant except for Kurt and me. We had an elephant to ourselves. Each elephant had a handler riding along.
We took a trail along and above the same river that we had spent the afternoon in playing and tubing in early in the week. At one point we were about 200 feet above the river bank and had nice, but smokey view of it. At the end of the ride we took a cage on a zip line over the river and met Randy and Tom C.
Ben and Ethan. Kurt.
Jessica and Heidi. Tom C. and Anders. Notice how casual the handlers are.
The zip line in the cage was a different experience. We were probably only about 30 feet over the river and about 100 feet across the river. Very exhilarating for a few seconds.
One the way back to camp we stopped at suspension bridge.
Another side trip we took on the way back to camp was to an Akha village. It is the home village to some of the Thai workers at the site and has a church (which I visited the last time I was here).
The village is a bit of a tourist stop and the woman are happy to sell you things. I bought some purses from the woman on the left. We stopped at a store where Randy knew the owners and some of us had a “shaved ice”. Basically a snow cone, but the ice was hand shaved as the woman is doing.
We actually did some work on Friday. The painting in the upstairs room were finished. The flashing was finished around the doors to those rooms. Some painting in the large was room was touched up. Other small tasks were done. And we ate one more lunch of great Thai food.
It is quite apparent that children have the same instincts all over the world. Here are couple of pictures of them testing their limits. I didn’t get a picture but saw a 2 year old girl stomping her feet in a puddle of water. In spite of the language and the culture, we are more alike than we are different.