last few days in the Surin Elephant Project

Still in Surin, eastern Thailand, with the elephants (if you read the blog you will see that we have one parked under the house). We will be here for about 3 more days then on the bus 7 hours to Bangkok, then who knows how many hours to Ranong then another bus south for a few hours then a boat out to an island off the coast of Thailand and Burma called Ko Surin where there will be some relaxing time, doing some diving. It has been very challenging here and tiring: we wake up at around 5:30 am, breakfast then scooping elephant poop and mucking out their areas, then going to cut elephant grass or sugarcane with machetes, then lunch, a short rest and then on to a school to teach english or to the elephant poop paper factory or taking the elephants for a bath after a 2 mile walk to the river. It was 37 degrees centigrade in the bedroom at 2 pm today. Then it's bucket shower time and then on for dinner, where tonight we had a special treat of fried crickets and super spicey fried pork and some boiled morning glory greens.... all washed down with the local Chang (elephant) beer. I'm "nackered" as the Aussie and English volonteers that are here with me would say, so it's off to bed at 9 pm and up to do it again. Last night was very noisy with growling elephants (that sound just like lions) and fighting wild dogs so I'll sleep well tonite, even though the mattress is as hard as the floor and the geckos are barking