Elephants and Good Luck!

The last two days have been INCREDIBLE! Yesterday we drove right around the island to the Big Buddha temple/statue. 

The view was beautiful and it really felt like a sacred place. On one side under the huge Buddha was a smaller Buddha and we rubbed his belly for good luck!

On the other side, a monk was  giving people blessings. We went over with the whole fam and he had us kneel with our hands together as he spoke in Thai and sprinkled holy water over us. He tied a bracelet onto each of our wrists (he particularly liked Will) and said "good luck, good luck, good luck, good luck" before sending us on our way. 

We drove back to a busier area to do some more shopping and happened upon this really cool bridge! It moved with the waves and we had fun running back and forth with Eddie and Will.

Later on we had a really yummy dinner on the beach for Sam's birthday - complete with a major catastrophe when Eddie stubbed her toe on a brick in the sand and tripped over; contrary to how it sounds, the brick was actually highly visible and had a huge flag sticking out of it! Eddie recovered though and dinner was lovely.

Today was the best day yet - and one if the best EVER! We got up early and drove up a mountain to go on an elephant ride!!! Ahh the elephants were absolutely beautiful, gentle giants. The two of us went on with Will and it was just an indescribably awesome experience. We fed our elephant, Pontip, bananas and she snacked on some leaves along the way. We were on the youngest one, 16 years old, Claire and Sir (Claire's dad) were on the 25 year old one, and Dad and Eddie's was 45 with amazing long tusks.

Part way through we were allowed to sit on their necks! We really felt like jungle women then! Ahh it was just incredible. Aaand slightly scary - Pontip seemed to still be in training and decided to tear a branch from a tree while Han was on her neck! She wasn't thrashing around too hard but it was a little reminder of how powerful they are. 

We came to a stop at a waterfall with a lagoon and had a swim! The sitting-under-the-waterfall shots weren't quiiite as glamorous as we'd imagined haha but we managed to get some good ones.

We went back down the mountain, had lunch with mango sticky rice, and wandered through the streets before heading home. 

We chilled out and got Thai takeaway for dinner. While we waited for Dad and Claire to get food, we played sleeping lions with the kiddies - the version where one person has to try to make everyone else laugh - and it was so much fun! They're so sweet. We had dinner, played cards, and are about to call it a night. Such a wonderful day!!