Apparently there are about 300 monkeys living on the edge of the mountain on which the walk way has been constructed.  They only come down when they are hungry, so the amount of monkeys you see depends on how many visitors have been each day.

It was amazing to see the little monkeys take an unpeeled banana out of our hands, peel it, chuck the skin away and chew on the banana like it was a corn on the cob.  It was initially a little scary to be surrounded by monkeys, especially when thoughts of the ‘Outbreak’ movie popped in to my head, however they were very friendly and the only thing they were interested in biting were our (slightly mouldy) bananas.

I got some fantastic video of Ali feeding monkeys, including some tiny babies who could not even carry the banana unless we broke it in half.  Very cute   I will upload the videos when I get home, but for now here are some ‘aaaw’ photos for you…

In the Khao Sok jungle on Monday, after lunch, we had the fantastic opportunity to take part in a 1.5 hour jungle trek, on the back of an elephant!  I have never even touched an elephant before, so sitting on the back of one with a Thai ‘driver’ sat in front of me was a pretty exciting experience.

We were taken on the trek by the Elephant Hills elephant school, which looks after the elephants, runs guided tours through the jungle and provides food for visiting tourists.  The school is literally in the middle of nowhere and consists of a collection of small huts where the staff live, a ‘restaurant’ where the tourist food is cooked and the elephant living area where the animals live whist they wait to be ridden.

The school had a special mounting platform which was used to get everyone in to the seats, so getting on their backs was as easy as getting on a ride at the fun fair.

The trek itself was amazing.  We did not see any other animals, however, we wondered through some amazing scenery in a convoy of elephants.  Our particular elephant must have been very hungry as he stopped for food every 5 minutes, however it was funny to watch the driver unsuccessfully struggling with it and trying to get it to stroll forward.

After a nice round trip we arrived back at the elephant school where we given a bowl of (slightly rotten) fruit to feed to the elephants.  It was great fun to have a banana sucked out of our hands by which ever trunk managed to reach it first!