On the other hand I have also learned to be a bit more logical. Coming from Africa I am no stranger to mangy, emaciated dogs, scrawny cats and beasts of burden. Its Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and animals play different roles in different societies. It is heartbreaking often, but just because in the cosseted West we can afford to pamper our pets and be bleeding hearts about everything (me too) one has to accept this is not the norm all over the world.
I had done an elephant safari once at home, with a place I had researched to see if it had acceptable methods, and here the elephants seemed so happy and friendly that I decided to give it a go. They are my favourite animals, these giant, intelligent beasts ( journalists should never use the word Pachyderm... dreadful I have been told).
So we had not gotten around to it anywhere else, and decided that even though the weather was bad, we would go for a trek and swimming with the elephants. We even got a discount because no one else wanted to go on that day.
The walk was wonderful through the jungle and bamboo forests.
The small wizened Mahouts, their skin brown and wrinkly, their gap-toothed smiles and leathery skin, are practically at one with the creature they control.
They clamber over and under and onto the elephants, their muscles moving seemingly in unison as they urge them forward and give subtle nudging directions, sometimes yelling out instructions.
It is indeed a special relationship and appeases me somewhat, that it exists. That even though they would be better off wild, they have been cowed by man, and for centuries have been the worker of people in Asia, but it is often a symbioses between man and beast - even though the initial training methods aren't great!
The mahout lets me "drive'', my thighs were sore for days after this!!After lunch we head off to the river for our much awaited swim with the elephants. We hop on bareback with the mahout and in we go!!
They yell out "bon-bon"which apparently means spray water, and try encourage the reticent animals to get a little playful.
Jolise' elephant plays a long bopping and rolling and splashing and shaking its head around, while Evy's elephant playfully sprayed her in the face.
Mine dipped its head under the water.......
...........
and brought it up again.
Woefully I stared on as my unenthusiastic elephant held its head under water at intervals, refusing to get into the spirit of things.
"Mine is trying to commit suicide,"I yelled out.
No one cared, they were having fun!!
Jolise in the middle, Evy to the right, and poor Fran and her drowning elly in the back left. 
Don't doooooo it........ Fran looks on at the others having fun!Oh well, as we all worked out later - we wouldn''t be overly joyful swimming in that weather either!!!!
For dinner we did a do-it-yourself Lao Barbecue, where you are brought a bucket full of hot coals and a basket of veggies and a plate of raw meat, and you cook your own meal. It was fun, if not the most tasty!
We headed off for some drinks at a local bar. Important to remember in Luang Prabang, and many other places in Laos, is that people go to bed early! Most bars close at around 11pm - so what is a tourist or local who feels the night is but an embryo to do???? Well head off to the bowling alley of course, which is open until 2am!
We moved our party there, and with Maxine breaking her fingernails and making feeble throwing attempts, me - despite a brief streak of brilliance - flirting with the gutter shot after shot and the rest not tooo much better. It was an interesting evening.
Fran aims for the gutter!!
The not so victorious team, Maxine, Evy, Fran, Jolise
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