I hope you're comfortable because this one's a long one

So today may or may not have been, but definitely was the best day of my life. Yesterday afternoon Mick and I were chatting and decided the we wanted to do something awesome today. We wanted to ride elephants. And ride elephants we did. But that is not where our story begins. The whole day started at a war cemetery an hour and a half from Bangkok. And to tell you the truth, it was just as depressing as it sounds. Beautiful and everything, but depressing none the less. The cemetery was to commemorate the soldiers who were taken as prisoners of war in the second world war and were forced the build what would later be known as the death railway. It earned it's name from the number of soldiers lives it took to build it. Pretty heavy stuff. As I walked through row upon row of  the graves of boys who were no older than my brother, it made me so thankful to not have lived through a time of war because I don't know what I would do if it had been Eric at war.. So I guess I had a little bit of a belated thanksgiving over here in Thailand. ANYWAYS. I couldn't fit all the graves into one photo because there were so many of them but you get the idea. 

After the cemetery we went to the world war 2 museum by the river kwai. Don't worry friends, it was not nearly as depressing or tragic as the cemetery. In fact. It was the funniest museum I have ever seen in my life. If you could even call it that. I'm not exactly sure what they were trying to achieve with this museum because it literally makes no sense at all. Not even a little. Mick and I made a new friend from England, her name is Emma, and basically we walked around the 'museum' together trying so hard not to laugh. It's almost worth visiting if you are in Thailand just so you can see how ridiculous it is. There were still some cool things to look at though. 

 This is the first man on earth? I seriously don't understand what this was doing in the museum. So irrelevant.

....What?

Yep. This was how the whole museum was laid out. They just painted stuff on the walls and ceilings. 

We got bored of the museum pretty quick and decided to spend the rest of our time walking the bridge of the river kwai/ taking dumb pictures of ourselves with our new friend.

This guy played Bad Romance like a boss. 

We thought we were being really funny...

Yep. That is a leopard. A little baby leopard. In my arms. And I am feeding it. This was the coolest thing I have ever done in my entire life. Riding elephants is a close second. But this takes the cake. Some guy was just hanging out on the street with two leopards letting people feed them for a 100 baht. Best 3 dollars I have ever spent. I fell hard and fast for this jungle cat. He was softer than Lincoln and his paws with sooooo big and sooooo cute. Words cannot even begin to describe how amazing this was. 

I kept making this face because they were just so amazingly adorable. And Mick kept yelling at me to smile and stop making this face so he could get a decent picture. But they were just so cute!!

The jungle kitty liked the milk so much he was holding the bottle himself.

I wasn't allowed to take the kitties home so we moved on.

 We found this super cute little cafe and had a cold drink in the shade. It was a gorgeous sunny day out, but unfortunately that means its also 34 degrees. Yikes.

This is Emma! You can't tell in the picture but she has the gnarliest black eye in the world/the whole half of her face is a bruise. She has been in Thailand for a month training Muay Thai fighting and she had her first fight ever a week ago. She won. But you wouldn't have known from the looks of her eye.

We are such girls and took the flowers from our drinks and put them in our hair

Then we boarded the death train (that's its actual name) which took us over some of the original tracks from the war. It was an hour and a half ride which took us through gorgeous mountains, I have a lot of pictures but this post is already jam packed as it is so I'll work on getting those up on facebook. We sat across from two Thai brothers who were on their way to go bird watching. They shared their homemade sticky rice with me. It was wrapped in palm fronds and everything. They were really impressed that I knew how to say sticky rice in thai (pronounced cow-nee-ow) and we became friends.

After we got off the train we were even further from Bangkok and I couldn't be happier. We were surrounded by tropics and we had lunch in a cute little cafe that used old logs as seats and tables. Very cool. Then we hoped back in our air conditioned van and drove a few minutes to the elephant camp. When we got there we were greeted by two monkeys who wanted to eat our cameras but didn't mind having their pictures taken. One of them assaulted me and grabbed my leg but I'll forgive him.

Here is our elephant! I named him David after this jit from Florida I know. He was huge! And really leathery. Mick and I shared Dave and we went off on a little trail ride to the river. The sun was out, there were palm tree's everywhere, we were riding on elephants. Life could not be better. 

Stopping for a little break after we went down the dodgiest trail ever to get to the water. You should check out the video of us on Mick's blog. We were with two Korean women and their reactions are priceless.

The baby elephant decided it wanted to go for a swim. Have you ever seen a baby elephant play in the water? It's magical.

One of the other elephants in the group decided that it liked us and kept putting it's gross nose near my face but I'm not complaining.

We traded in our elephants for a little more buoyant and took a cruise down the river. Amazing. It kept up with the theme of the day and provided an amazing new experience, and it helped us keep cool for a bit with an awesome patched roof built in.

The fun isn't over yet! We had one last stop on our day trip. A waterfall that looked like something off of a movie. Seriously it seemed like it should have been in some elfin forest in lord of the rings (elfish? elfin? not sure?) Just beautiful and a perfect way to end the day. 

The Thai's do what they want.

The Thai version of a water park. Grab tubes and go down a waterfall in a forest. Works for me!

I'm really sorry this was such a long post, it was just such an amazing day and I made it a LOT shorter than I wanted. I learned a few things today:
                1. I'm pretty sure more than 2 people have died on the death train since the war ended. It's pretty               dodgy.
                2. Everyone should ride an elephant before they die
                3. Thailand is beautiful

I think Bangkok is legitimately flooding tonight. When we went for dinner there was two feet of water in the street and it hasn't let up since. The news said the flood is here so I think Mick and I are going to pull chute and head for the beach tomorrow for a few days. I'll let you guys know where we end up! Sa-wat-di-kha!

"I'm on an elephant" 

I know, lame joke. but I had to.