Elephant rides and bamboo rafting

As part of this trip we did bamboo rafting and went for a ride on an elephant.

I thought for the bamboo rafting we would get a raft made from bamboo and an oar and be allowed to 

basically muck about on the river, great fun. No, that is not what happens, you all go on one big raft, a motor boat drags you up the river, the motor boat then drives off and you float back down. Well it was alright, calm and very peaceful once the motor boat had left but it was not what I was expecting. Hey ho! 

David looking down the river. 

One of the bridges we went under. 

The boy in charge of the boat, at times he would slap the water with an oar! I think he was bored.

What the bamboo rafts look like. 

The boats took us down to where we were going for our elephant rides. We both felt uncertain about doing this as you hear so many horrible stories of how the animals are treated. I looked very carefully around the area and although I could not see any signs of cruelty I still felt uneasy.  Some of the elephants were chained up but the chains were really long, our mahout did not use a stick at all, just shouted commands, the two other mahouts had sticks in their hands with a metal spike on but I didn't see them using them. 

We got off the elephant as soon as possible and were back at the starting point well ahead of the others as we declined offers to get photos done etc. Once we were off we had the  option of tipping the elephant,  this I did gladly buying him two baskets of bananas which I fed to her. 

I did not tip the mahout, I do not think he was impressed with us , maybe he could feel our  uneasiness. As we got on, he asked us where we were from we told him Scotland, at that he looked totally confused, one of the other workers there understood and said it again to him and he sort of nodded. Then half way through the trip in which he had ignored us, but played with his phone, he swung around looked at me and said " Where are you from? " I replied "Scotland" he shrugged and turned back, so we said "Joined to England , near Wales, Ireland, Great Britain, United Kingdom, Europe" there was no response, suddenly he turned around to David and said" and you, same same" pointing  between me and David. David said " Yea , Scotland too" at that he just grunted, turned around and the conversation ended. He was not impressed! We just smiled at each other, no tip from us, mate!