Must confess to a slight sense of humour failure last night when we checked in and found our roof was way up at the top end of the hotel complex (and it certainly wasn’t full) up quite a steep hill. However when I woke and went out on to the balcony at 6 am I discovered we had been blessed with a wonderful view across the jungle padang and as the mists cleared I realized I could see 4, no 5 – eventually 9 elephants! At about 7am the mahouts came to round them up and take them off to the river to be washed:
Then Mina came to say hello to us at breakfast..
We went for a poke around the padang later and also encountered two buffalo with the longest horns:
Our next stop was a small hill that gives a good outlook over the 3 countries of the Golden Triangle – Thailand, Laos and Burma
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Hall of Opium, a wonderful Museum dedicated to the history and horrors of Opium and its many derivatives. No photos allowed, but I snuck a couple.Really fascinating to see how Opium trading was a cornerstone of the British Empire and more recently a key component of the CIA efforts to support corrupt regimes in the deadly game of dominoes being played out all over Asia.
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