Elephants

Yesterday I rode an elephant, went to a beautiful waterfall for a swim and visited a hmong village. The hmong are a mountain people who migrated from mongolia long ago. Today they still live just as they have for hundreds of years.
5 random people bought the tour and by the end of the day we were buying bottles of beer at roadside stands and all having a lot of fun.
I think meeting random groups pf people from different countries and making friends has been the best part of this journey.
I loved the elephants! They are amazing creatures.
They obey voice commands and its funny to watch because every once in a while one try to lumber off into the jungle alone, and the laos would start yelling. Then the elephant would stop look back sheepishly and then try again until someone would run up yelling at which point the elephant would turn around and come back.
At one point the elephant lifted its truck and sprayed a huge amount of watery snot all over me!
Two chinese girls were behind me and it sounded like they had been sprayed with battery acid. Between the screams the only english words I heard were"oh no! Stinky stinky! Dirty dirty!"
Great time.
We also took a boat to a cave filled with millions of small buddha statues.
People carve them and then journey to the cave to leave the statue in hopes of good fortune..