Parade and Elephant Festival

The elephant parade was absolutely amazing, we truly felt like Princesses!

We were up really early to go and get professionally made up at a local salon which was awesome, I've always wanted to have professional hair and make-up (2 of them had to do 14 of us in 4 hours!). After doing our nails and make-up, I had a ladyboy dressing me and doing my hair - she was so talented at doing different hairstyles and kept calling me a princess! We then got blinged out with loads of shiny jewellery and even had people putting whitening cream all over us to make us look like porcelain dolls - apparently they don't like tans!

Once a group of us were ready we were taken to the parade to get a million photos taken for newspapers etc. We were told that we were the first foreigners EVER to be in the parade, and that it was a huge honour, and we even had people coming up to us asking why we were in it as they've never seen farangs dressed as Thais before!

For the actual parade, we were very near the front and some of us were carrying signs. Luckily we only had to walk for an hour and we had people waiting on us handing us water and vicks to give us energy! By the end of it we'd had thousands (literally!) of photos taken and were constantly being stopped in the street by Thais saying we were beautiful and wanted a photo with us. People were more interested in us than they were by the hundreds of beautiful elephants that were brought especially to Surin for the parade. I've definately experienced what it's like to be famous, I think we're actually famous in Surin now!!

The rest of the weekend consisted of elephant watching, shopping, drinking and sunbathing - awesome! The town has been full of elephants and foreigners (it's weird having other foreigners here, we're supposed to be the only ones!) We went to see the elephant show which involved hundreds of elephants playing football, doing tug of war, acting in a circus, traditional thai elephant dances and a reinactment of a famous war.

It was mad to see how many people come to Surin just for the elephant festival, and how famous it really is. I can't believe we were actually asked to be in it! I've been told there is footage on youtube so I'll get hold of a link for that so you can all see me being a real Thai Princess!

We've booked our tickets down to the South Islands now and leave on Friday. I can't believe how quickly it's gone and it'll be so sad to leave Surin! This truly is like a home to me now, and I've made so many amazing friends here. I'll definately be coming back to visit next time I can!

Next update will probably from a beach in the South! Sawadee-ka xxx