Yesterday, Mum Dad and I decided to go on one more tour before we left Khao Lak, and out of the list of different tours, we chose Elephant Trekking and Bamboo Rafting, because it looked quite enjoyable. At around 10 o’clock, we got on the tour van and discovered that we were the only ones going on the tour! Our driver was called Tips, and the tour guide was Wat, which he said meant ‘temple’ in Thai.
I couldn’t help worrying and being nervous about the Elephant Trekking and Dad wasn’t making it better, because he kept on talking about this crazy elephant that killed its master. Finally we got to the Khao Lak Trekking Safari place. Wat said that they had some ‘lady boy’ elephants which were the same size of a male elephant but didn’t have any tusks.
To get on the elephant, we had to climb a massive wooden stand. Dad got on the elephant first, I was in the middle, and Mum was on the right hand side. Mum was so nervous and as usual Dad was making annoying noises. I just sat there, trying to relax and enjoy the view, and ignoring Dad’s pestering sounds. In what I thought seemed to be a second, we arrived. Our elephant’s master came off and found ourselves in a rain forest kind of environment. He lead us to a gigantic waterfall that’s water was very clear.
Later on we visited another waterfall where Mum, Dad and I spotted a lobster changing its skin, a few fish, and bizarrely enough, an octopus!
Afterwards we got back to the van and Tips drove us to a Thai seafood restaurant set in the middle of a mangrove swamp. We had Tom Yum Goong (really spicy soup with prawns, mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes), stir-fried vegetables, and chicken with cashew nuts and dried chilies. I didn’t eat much because I got a bit carsick. Anyway, Dad had most of the food (as usual!).
We soon arrived at our Bamboo Rafting venue. The bamboo raft was terribly narrow so Mum and I sat in the middle and Dad sat at the back. It was alright when Mum and I got on, but as soon as Dad got on, we nearly capsized! The paddler laughed and shouted “Titanic! Titanic!”. Our journey started alright, even though we were half under water, but when we had to maneuver down a rapid, our raft lurched onto one side and became stuck on the rocks. Mum was up to her waist in water, I was clinging onto the raft for my life, and Dad was telling me not to panic. In the end we managed to balance our raft out a bit and were soon moving again.
We saw a couple of snakes, one green and one black. The paddler told us that they were sleeping and that the darker colour they were, the more poisonous they were. We had a little swim in the mangrove swamp, and noticed that there were no fish in the water. We got to the bottom of the river after about ten minutes, and as Dad got off the raft, it was like a high speed submarine surfacing and Mum and I were above water level. That just shows how heavy Dad is!!
Afterwards we went to see this police boat that was washed in 1 kilometre inland, which really made me feel the power of the tsunami.
Patrick
