It was difficult to sleep at night at the lodge because the electricity kept going out, and I was used to the white noise from the fan to put me to sleep. There were lots of insects making noises since we were in the middle of the forest, and the geckos especially made funny sounds that woke me, along with the rats crawling on the roof. I tried to light the citronella coils, but they would go out after 10 minutes. I slept in the net bedding, which is also hard for me to do. The last time I slept in one was at a homestay where I ended up getting a ton of bites on my feet.
Luckily when I woke up, there weren't too many new bites. We headed to the forest to walk our elephants to the river so that we could wash them. We had to share elephants because there weren't enough, and I rode behind someone, which is a lot scarier because there is less to grab onto than if you were in the front.
We got to the river and I was able to switch elephants. We rode them into the river and used brushes to help clean the dirt off their skin and hair. My elephant kept submerging herself completely underwater and I got soaked because of it. It was fun, and of course the mahouts made sure to have them splash water on all of us while we were cleaning them. While I was washing my elephant, I noticed some red marks near her ear that I suspected was blood, but when I washed it, nothing came out, so it was like a stain on her ear...It was probably due to the mahouts using their hooks to stab them when they weren't behaving... I'm not sure what I think about this. Reading the pahmplet, they tried to reassure us that the mahouts only used it when necessary, and for the safety of everyone around them, and for the safety of the elephant herself...and that elephants are just like humans, and sometimes we can react to things in irrational or dangerous ways...It doesn't seem like the mahouts use their weapons ONLY under these circumstances, but I don't know enough to really decide...
After the bathing session, we packed and headed back to the village to grab breakfast before getting transported back to Luang Prabang. Agoes told me that his bus ride to Thailand was horrible and it was impossible to get sleep because the bus felt like it was going to tip over every minute that it tried to get over the muddy dirt roads... I planned on getting a flight to Chiang Mai, but flights were booked for 3 days, so I had to take the bus today... With no hotel room, I had to plan my day so that I could be fresh and clean for the bus ride at 7PM...
I decided to get my laundry done, chill around a bar with wifi, and go to a sauna so that I could use their showers to wash before leaving the town. I rented a bike to do all this, and everything bad just happened in the span of around 2 hours! Some parts of the bicycle fell off while I was riding it...The sauna was a bad idea, because even though I got to shower afterwards, I continued to sweat for the next hour...and when I picked up my laundry, it wasn't ready, and I had to pick it all up semi-wet still... Hopefully the bus ride will be better than what Agoes said since it doesn't seem to be raining as much as when he left...
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