The Land of Thai

greetings from Thailand. We got to Bangkok in the evening and found a pretty cool guesthouse- the owner was Australian so we could actually understand him. The first night we left the guesthouse to get some food we walked out straight in to the path of an elephant! Now Bangkok reminds me a lot any dirty American city you can imagine, say Baltimore. So imagine an elephant walking down the street in Baltimore. It was awesome. At the same time though, Bangkok is like any American city, just dirtier. So we quickly got tired of it. The people are so friendly, especially the ones who are trying to rip you off.

Now we're in a town called Ayuthaya, a few hours north of Bangkok by train. There are temple ruins all over the place here. Also, probably the coolest thing yet, we got to play with baby elephants! We found this thing called an "elephant kraal" pretty far out of town. It's basically an elephant farm- some of the elephants work on the farm and some give elephant rides during the day. The babies are completely free to roam and are extremely affectionate.

We leave for Chang Mai this evening. This town is in the northern territory of Thailand. Here we plan to trek through the jungle- hopefully on the backs of elephants. We'll keep you posted. Much love.