No, I haven’t landed a lucrative book deal but I have finally gotten round to getting all of my travel snaps and foreign blog entries put into some photobooks. They’ve turned out really well so I thought I’d just recommend www.blurb.com to anyone thinking of doing the same. It’s cheaper than getting two thousand photos printed off down at happy snaps, and saves sticking them all into an album afterwards. I don’t for a second imagine that anyone would want to buy these particular books though, so I won’t bother linking to them.

While I’m blogging about the blog (which is a little broken at the moment because I upgraded to a new version and haven’t gotten around to changing my templates) I’ll just mention something odd. Apparently one of my old b3ta photos was going to be used as a storyboard in a new BBC3 sketch show, and lo and behold I’m in the credits on the website, but I never heard any more about it so I’m going to assume it didn’t make the cut in the end. There’re some b3ta heavyweights involved, the graphics are pretty good and it’s got an all star cast so I’ll probably be tuning in on the web anyway.

(oh man, it looks like my categories are borked too! I’ll put it all back together one day)

The screen is great though, and I think the app I’m getting the most use from is the ebook reader. Now that the wordpress app actually let’s me connect to my blog though I’m hoping it’ll be a handy thing to have on my travels! Right then, let’s see if I can publish with this thing.

Apart from all my elephant adventures I’ve finally made it down to Bangkok after plenty of bus and train journeys. I decided to break the travelling up by going to visit the old ruined city of Sukhothai, which has a nice Indiana Jones feel to it as you walk around the temple walls and look at the Buddha statues. Handily they’ve put in plenty of paths too so it’s easy to cycle around. The most impressive sight there was another enormous statue, this time of a seated Buddha at Wat Si Chum. The statue’s hand was taller than me, and worshippers had mostly covered the fingers in gold leaf as an offering.

And so now here I am in Bangkok, which is typically hot and humid, getting ready to do some last minute shopping before I head back to snowy old England! You can look forward to me sticking several thousand pictures on a website sometime soon!

As it turned out they didn’t mean the city of Chiang Rai, which would have been relatively easy to get to, but rather the region or Chiang Rai, and more specifically the Golden Triangle right up in the north on the border of Myanmar and Laos. This meant an early morning start to catch a rickety, and non-air-conditioned local bus for the 5 hour journey up to Chiang Saen. That got me to the closest town from which I took a cruise along the Mekong river the next morning (with a brief touristy stop in a Laos to send a few postcards) up to Sop Ruak, and the Golden Triangle. The triangle is the center of the former opium fields grown in the three countries, but production has fallen sharply in the last couple of decades reducing the only remnants of opium to the Opium House Museum. The exhibitions there stressed the cultural and historic uses of opium so much I was surprised you couldn’t buy any in the shop at the end! Maybe you could, if you asked the right person…

Anyway, from Sop Ruak I was just a confused walk, followed by a lift on a scooter away from the elephant polo, that was being held at the Anantara resort. The resort is incredibly plush, as you would expect from a hotel that is going to be housing some very posh polo players. One night at the Anantara would cost more than the amount I’ll spend on food and accodomodation in three weeks in Thailand! (I’m not including booze). I arrived in time for the opening parade and was greeted almost immediately by a marching band playing “The Final Countdown”! In front of them thai dancers and another band of drummers were stationed, and bringing up the rear were the elephants!

There were a lot of them, since in Elephant polo each elephant only plays one of the 7 minute chukas (of which there are two in each match). They were all provided by the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre, the charity that the event was supporting. Last year they raised enough money to supply them with an elephant ambulance (a truck) and after the parade down to the pitch all the dancers, bands and elephants lined up for the handover of the keys.

Now, I’d never seen elephant polo before and I have to admit in my head I was expecting it to be ridiculous. Elephants are huge, and putting guys on top of them with very long sticks and then having them all charge around trying to hit a tiny ball seemed absurd. The exhibition match that afternoon though was between two teams of the best players, all of them experienced horse polo players, and it was incredible to watch! The elephants were surprisingly nimble, and their mahouts had them spinning and charging around the pitch like football players! The polo guys were equally impressive, able to hit a polo ball with a two metre long stick dead-on from on top of a moving elephant! There were chips, lobs, huge strikes, shots from between elephants’ legs - it was end to end stuff! Those guys were the best though, and the next day I went back to see the first two matches of the actual championship. In the first match a team of novices were stuffed by the pros 14-4, and the 4 goals had been awarded to them at the start of the game to help out. With less experienced players elephant polo is indeed absurd, and becomes a bit more like elephant rugby, as the massive beasts form a scrum over the ball and the humans desperately wave their sticks around! The second game was much the same, but ended in a 1-1 draw. Even so it was excellent fun to stand on the banks of the Mekong, G&T in hand watching elephants charge around and enjoy themselves.

The feeding was pretty hands (and trunks) on, but the highlight of the day was when we followed all of the elephants down to the river to wash them! We splashed in to where the elephants were lying down, threw buckets of water over them and then started scrubbing them down with brushes. After enjoying that for a while the elephants haul themselves out of the water and back up the banks to get good and dirty again in the mudbath! The mud keeps them cool though, and acts as a sunscreen for them. The younger elephants are just like enormous puppies, jumping on each other and barging their way around the pool. The elephants are so quiet when they’re walking, and we were so close to them, that if you concentrated too much on taking a photo you’d suddenly here someone saying “look out” and turn around to see a one ton elephant about to brush past your shoulder.

Seeing the elephants playing with each other and their mahouts was fantastic, and so much more fun than going on an elephant ride where your only interaction with the elephant is to be sitting on them. Most of the elephants have suffered some major trauma in one way or another, but it’s great that the park’s founder, Lek, has managed to find a place where they can enjoy life and they’re cared for. Visiting for a day was great but I think next time in Thailand I’ll be signing up for a week’s volunteer work! It’s hard to think of a better day out!

(Chang is thai for elephant)

Took the overnight train back down to Sydney and I’ve been betraying my backpacker credentials by staying in a posh hotel on Coogee beach. The beach is lovely - much smaller then Bondi and much more laid back. Nice to get up in the morning, shuffle down to the sea and go for a swim in the rock pool before breakfast. The beach side living has got to be the reason so many people love living in Sydney - I think they built the harbour bridge and the opera house just to keep the tourists off the coast.

Speaking of the opera house I went to a performance of Verdi’s “A Masked Ball”, mainly just so I could get a good look around inside. Of course you can do that if you just go on a tour of the building, but I figure if they went to the trouble of building an opera house then it must be worth seeing some opera inside it! Trouble is, opera is, well… silly! People throwing their arms around and melodramatically glowering at each other while tra-la-la-ing their hearts out. This opera seemed particularly daft, with a plot against the King, a fortune teller, the King’s best friend’s wife trying to find a herb that will make her forget her love for the King. It all ended with some stabbing though, which was VERY DRAMATIC, and the music was good. Being inside the opera house is pretty cool too, sat up high looking down you get the feeling that you’re inside a shell. Why the people sat next to me felt the need to send text messages during the performance is beyond me though! These seats weren’t cheap!!

So that’s pretty much that for Australia - I’m heading for the airport this afternoon, then a flight to Bangkok, a night in an airport hotel, and another flight in the morning to Chiang Mai! I really should pay more attention when I’m booking these things.

The next day I was up at 5am to meet my tour bus for the epic drive out to Uluru. It’s well worth the trip! The rock is just awesome. This enormous boulder just erupts out of the surrounding, flat landscape; so smooth that you’d think it was a sculpture. It curves and flows like it’s melting in the heat, but it is just enormous - and old. At sunset it changes from a brilliant orange to a greyish purple, and standing around watching it do this while drinking champagne was very pleasant!

So after my brief visit it was back on a plane to Sydney, which I can’t quite get a handle on. It’s a beautiful city, the weather is fantastic and everyone is laid back, but I’m not entirely sure what there is to do here when you’re just visiting. It has shops, and art galleries and all that, not to mention the bridge and the opera house, but I’ve seen them before! I have been having fun though. Spent yesterday exploring the graffitied walls of Newtown, followed by a visit to the Sydney Dr Sketchy’s, and today I went to the Archibald prize at the art gallery of New South Wales. The Archibald is the national portrait prize of Australia and on Wednesdays the art gallery is open late, and it’s always nice to see the mixed crowd of art lovers that the offer of late night opening and a bar draws out.

Tomorrow I’m off to the countryside up north for a bit, to a place called Bellingen. Hopefully there are some adventures to be had up that way! see ya.

If you stand still for too long though you might never start moving again, so today I’m going to be flying in to Alice Springs for two nights. Just enough time for a day trip out to Uluru before jumping back onto a plane and flying to Sydney! So, I’ll see you on the other side…