theelephants

that's right, the elephants. among many other things we did in
Thailand, a couple of days into the trip we took off on a tour into
the jungles of the country and rode some very large Indian elephants.
pretty much only the pictures do that experience any justice, but it
will be a while before i can get those up here, so you'll have to
imagine. the people are all pretty relaxed about stuff out here, so
we even got to ride on the necks of the creatures, which is really
weird since you can feel their haunches going up and down right
underneath your buttocks, which makes you feel like you'll be thrown a
long way every time they step. then we fed them bananas--boy can they
eat a lot! long story short: it was pretty cool--the best of
Thailand.

then on Friday we boarded a train for our 22 hour overnight journey to
Northern Malaysia, where we waited and looked around a little in what
felt like hot fiery hell for our next train down to Kuala Lumpur.
that one was only 10 hours overnight, putting us here just a few hours
ago, but take a look at a map and try to figure out how the journey
from Butterworth to KL could possibly take so long. i think they
waited till we were all asleep and then stopped the train and took a
nap themselves. honestly.

in general and so far, i have found Malaysia to be much dirtier both
than Thailand and than i had expected it to be. KL is pretty nice,
and we are currently just outside the Petronas Towers, which are a
much more amazing sight in person than in pictures, but the whole trip
is quite different than i had imagined. out of Bangkok, Thailand was
quite beautiful and looked something like i imagine the plains of
Africa to look like. unexpectedly, i quite liked Thailand, but
Malaysia has yet to win me over completely. perhaps it will soon; we
are on our way out of KL to a small resort that specializes in short
cruises to watch fireflies. check out www.fireflypark.com if you want
to see what thejayfather is in for.