Our original plan was to ride on an elephant at Nong Nooch Tropical Garden, but by the time we got around to doing it, the elephant rides had stopped for the day. We did, however, get to see many elephants. Here's Sangho being looked at with suspicion by an elephant.
Then we went to see a show with people doing traditional Thai dances. At the end there was a mock elephant fight.
After the show, we set out to get something to eat. If you're ever in Thailand, you've got to try the famous "green papaya salad." I was looking forward to doing just that. Here's our green papaya salad. To drink, I enjoyed a frosty cold coconut, and Sangho had a "Leo" beer... with ice (they love to put ice in the beer for some reason).
The elephants were very thirsty by the end of the day. Here is a mommy elephant with her son, drinking from a hose. The guy on the tree stump is their trainer.
Then the elephants got a bath.
After that, the trainer got on top of the mommy elephant (she lifts her front leg so he can climb up), and they rode off into the sunset. But um... the mommy elephant made sure to leave behind some presents as she walked away.
This picture demonstrates the size of one of these "presents" in relation to a man's hand (the hand did not touch the ground... it just looks that way in the picture).
There they go...
After Nong Nooch Tropical Garden, we decided to head back to Walking Street. We had only seen about half of it the night before, and we were too tired to enjoy it then. Our first stop was an upstairs restaurant-bar type place where we shared a bowl of green curry soup and had a couple of beers.
Next, we went to one of the many outdoor bars on Walking Street. We chose it because 1) they had live music, and 2) you could get a pina colada in a real coconut! (I know, I'm such a tourist. You should have seen me with my camera and my coconut.)
After I finished my pina-colada-in-a-coconut, I had to get another one. Anyway, we couldn't really leave because it had started pouring down rain during coconut #1. But it was just moments after the waitress set my second coconut down on the table that I saw several of these on somebody else's table:
It was better than a pina-colada-in-a-coconut. It was a maitai-in-a-pineapple... with a FROG on top! I had to have one. Here I am with my maitai-in-a-pineapple-with-a-frog-on-top.
It finally stopped raining, so we set out to do something we had been wanting to do since we arrived: get a massage. We decided we'd each get a one-hour foot massage at a place we had passed earier. On the way there, we heard some firecrackers going off in the street. This was followed by a lot of smoke. Through the smoke, we could see a 150 foot long dragon coming down the street. This was being done to celebrate Chinese New Years day.
The foot massages were GREAT!!! The price was about $5.00 for a ONE HOUR foot massage. The room was long but small, and was lined with about 15 black leather reclining chairs. Facing the row of chairs was a glass wall with water falling down between the panels. It was really nice to listen to the sound of the water while getting my feet massaged. Also, I had a headache at the time, so the woman who gave me the massage threw in a head and neck massage at the end. I just cannot tell you how great it was.
