The Noble - Jackman adventures

So our adventures continued, as always, when Maddy and Simon gave us a surprise wedding pressie to go elephant trekking whilst we were staying with them in Pai!

You'll remember our fabulous wedding website... well, Maddy set it all up for us. Super talented lady! So it was so special to be able to share and enjoy this extra treat (...what?! A divergence from the list?! Shock horror!) with the Nobles!

Maddy was a little, er, nervous about it all!

But all you need is for your elephant to do a big poo and all the fear goes away! Ha!

We are on an elephant, honest!

So what happened here... well, one minute our guide was saying something to me which I didn't understand and the next he was sliding down the elephant and telling me to go up front to steer! Ha! See those hairs on the elephants head? Yup, they are like bristles, so imagine sitting on a wire brush and you're somewhere near the feeling of sitting on an elephant!!! I couldn't help but have 'Nelly the elephant packed her trunk....' in my head as we trundled along...

Bananas for treats afterwards :) yummy.

Big thumbs up all round! Thanks Maddy and Simon! x x x

With all this strenuous relaxing we thought it only fair to add a little day of intrepid exploring into the mix, so we all ventured to a rather beautiful waterfall en route to a cave... 

The waterfall was just outside of Pai, and after a slight struggle up the rocks to get there (cue awkward moment where Maddy literally caught me by the arse as I slipped... much hilarity, but probably the less said about this the better!), we arrived at these beautiful little natural pools carved into the rocks by the water...

There was some obligatory posing...

...and more 'selfies' (...becoming almost pro at these nowadays... Maddy and I were discussing how it's actually quite difficult to get yourselves and the scenic background in without your heads being in the way / chopped off / caught with stupid grin etc...)

...beautiful as these pools were, yes, bit chilly!

Alex was super happy once he'd discovered the natural water slide feature (video available on return to London...)

...don't worry, no broken bones ;) You should have seen what the crazy locals were doing though... thankfully they didn't tempt any of us to follow suit. Cue: very stern 'don't even think about it' look from me to my husband ;)

Then it was onwards, via some very windy roads (but thankfully we had a few pit stops for piccies...) 

...to the cave! We bamboo rafted along a river which ran through into the caverns...

...and they really were cavernous! We went into 3 different caves, all absolutely huge... the pics really don't do this place justice, it was awe inspiringly massive! Our 'guide' spoke very little English and was, it seemed, merely (but also, very importantly!) there to guide our way with the lantern, oh, and to point out the comedy stalagmites and stalagmites which looked like 'frog' 'elephant' 'crocodile' 'U.F.O' and, I kid you not, 'boobie'... you'll be sorry to hear that at that exact moment was when my camera battery died! Sorry boys ;)

Simon eating the 'popcorn' 

This one sparkled :) 

...ah yes, these are the rather dodgy steps up and down into the caves... sadly you can't see the bat poo all over the hand rails, or smell said bat poo... or hear said bats squealing for that matter... yes, all sorts of horror movies spring to mind!

We hung around at dusk to try to see all the bats leave the cave, but they didn't come out to play sadly. We did however see thousands of swifts - all catching their bug dinners on their way into the caves for the night... which was an amazing sight to see!

So, as you see, adventures all round in the Noble - Jackman households! And such a fun week, we really really did have a fabulous week with Maddy and Simon, and were so sad to wave goodbye back in Chiang Mai :(

Bye bye Maddy & Simon, thanks for having us! x x x