At 8:30am Alex was waiting in the foyer of our hotel. We piled into the mini van yet again, but this time took a different direction out of the city onto the highway where for the first time, we drove at 70km/ph for a solid five minutes, before hopping back onto a gravel road that led to the foot of a densely jungle’d mountain.

Our driver very slowly wound around each turn, causing a little build up of traffic behind us as we passed small Thai houses in thick bush.

When we arrived at the Mae sae elephant camp, I could hear rushing waterfalls, and not too many footsteps from tourists.

After purchasing our tickets we walked up to the elephant show, where baby elephants with hoola hoops stomped around in front of hundreds of people. Bigger elephants are grass beside the tourists and behind us we could see people hopping onto wooden seats for their elephant jungle ride.

One elephant trainer sat on the forehead, with one leg tossed over his knee he rested his elbow on the elephants ear and puffed away on a cigarette.

As the show went on, elephants played soccer and painted in front of the crowds. But I found it very difficult to enjoy because all I could see was sticks being poked into their ears and jabbed into their heads.

Sometimes doing touristy things can be painful. I love elephants, and it was cute and all, but it makes me wonder about the lucky ones who are still out in the wild.

I sat on a baby elephants knee, and it gave me a big sloppy kiss with its trunk. Mum and Dad didn’t tell me, but I had dirty water all down one side of my face from the kiss.

At 11am mum and I stepped onto the high platform, where we hopped on the back of a 13 year old elephant named, Miguel. I’d never noticed that female elephants had boobs, and never seen an elephant penis. Call me immature, but I could not stop laughing.

The one hour jungle ride took us over a thin gravel clear way that had a steep fall right beside the swaying elephant. A loud thud made me jump, but the gushing sound of water that followed indicated that Miguel was releasing his bowels.

Our elephant trainer needed another ciggy, so he slid off the trunk without telling us, and walked in front of Miguel, puffing away whilst talking to his friend on the elephant behind.

After the ride we got back into the mini van and instead of going back to the hotel, we took a sharp left before leaving the foot of the mountain, where a much slimmer road, with very curvy turns lead us up to our next activity.

Through the gaps of tall jungle trees and vines, we could see some dry rice paddies and skinny grazing horses. Or donkeys. But I’ll stick with horses.

WHAT DID MILDO DO NEXT? Be patient, you’ll see.