Elephant Trekking And Canoeing In Tropical Rainforest

Good morning, surfers of the world wide web! Well, actually it's amost midday here in Phuket. Maria and I are about to head off down to the beach. But first of all, I thought I'd fire up the old Vaio and write this blog entry.

On the subject of Sony Vaio notebooks, I would just like to say that I have never been a big fan. However, when I was looking for a notebook to take away with me for 1 month to Thailand, I decided that I needed something small and, if possible, something that runs Windows Vista. I decided to buy a Sony Vaio TX5 with Windows Vista Business. It was the smallest notebook I could find with a screen diagonal size of 11.1 inches, screen resolution 1366 x 768 pixels, 2 GB memory and 100 GB harddisc. The really good thing is that it weighs less than 1.3kg. The machine is amazing.

The only criticism I have is that it seems to be quite slow starting up and there are times when there seems to be constant disc activity. Sure, Windows Vista boots up fairly quickly, but it takes minutes once logged on for everything to settle down, all the services to start etc. etc. But I don't blame the notebook for this (which has a Windows Experience rating of 2.0). I am sure this has more to do with Windows Vista. Anyway, the point is, if you're in the market for a small, sleek notebook, then I recommend that you at least consider a Sony Vaio TX5.

Right, back to the holiday! Yesterday Maria and I went on a day's tour around the tropical rain forests of Khao Sok. We were picked up by a coach at 7:30am and driven to Khao Sok. It was quite a long drive from the island of Phuket over to mainland Thailand; the journey took approximately 2 hours. When we arrived, we were given a short talk about the tropical rain forests of Thailand. The day was broken into two halves: during the morning we would go elephant trekking through the forest and in the afternoon we would take a canoe trip down the Sok river.

Khao Sok is one of the best places in Thailand to find small-eared Asian elephants. Only around 2,000 now remain in Thailand.

Couple by couple, we were introduced to the elephants and guide whose job it was to sit at the front of the elephant and control it. We had to climb a scaffold rig to get on top of our elephant. Maria and I sat at the back of the elephant, on a seat attached to its back, whilst the guide sat almost on the head of the elephant. Our guide used a kind of ice pick that he gently tapped on the elephant's head to guide it left, right, backwards or forwards. It felt strange to begin with, but we soon got used to experience. At one point our elephant decided to bend down for some water and it felt like we'd be thrown forwards onto the ground, but we were fine. The elephant also sprayed us with water from its trunk several times, with no warning! During the elephant trek, our guide also ate leaves from trees we passed. He invited us to try some leaves too. I felt it would be rude to say no, so also tried a couple of leaves. They weren't bad. I have since found out that we probably ate cocoa leaves!

After the elephant trek, we were given lunch and after that embarked on a canoe journey down the river Sok. The scenery was breath taking. We saw quite a lot of wildlife on the boat journey including various frogs, lizards and at one point we noticed a snake in a tree. It was very tranquil and relaxing. The water was very calm, so no danger of capsizing.

All in all, it was a very good day!