South East Asia is a playground for every kind of tourist. I met Cambodian and Thai backpackers in Laos, and Thailand attracts everything from 18 year old Australians with tiny wallets to Russian mafia with extravagant budgets. I came to Thailand first in 2008 as a broke, newly graduated punk from college, traveling with my Canadian best friend and staying in $1/night bungalows on beaches only accessible by boat. This time around, I had slightly upgraded myself; I was traveling Travr style, with 12 Americans staying in 4 and 5 star hotels and traveling by AC ferries, taxis and domestic flights.

We started in Bangkok at the Grand Swiss Hotel, meeting at the Sky Lounge for introductions. I’d be rooming with Cookie, a nickname that couldn´t have suited her better. We had a welcome dinner at nearby Oskar restaurant, and ended the night at Sky Bar, the 68^th floor rooftop bar made infamous by Hollywood’s Hangover 2.

We visited Bangkok, including the Sunrise temple and Kings Palace, cruising on the Bangkok river and eating our tummies full of pad thai at more delicious restaurants. We enjoyed the mandatory night out at Khao San Road, and most everyone squeezed in a Thai massage or some kind of spa time – I finally got a manicure and pedicure.

The highlight of our first few days was definitely Elephants World. It’s an Elephant sanctuary, where no one rides or beats them but keeps them free roaming and tame to one or two caretakers. We came to spend a day in the life of a caretaker, feeding the toothless old Elephant with some hand mashed bananas and vitamins and the toothless baby elephant hand-peeled bananas. We fed the other elephants hand-picked grass, which was transported by truck it was so tall and plentiful. And then, they put us in a muddy pool and told us to give the elephants a mud bath – we had become the spa! We picked up slimy handfuls of mud, mixed with lots of poopy fiber floating around, and rubbed the parts of the elephant we could reach. Once in a while the elephant would take a trunk full of muddy water and spray it over his back, and all of us, so we all ended up looking like muddy elephants.

We then moved over to the cleaner, flowing river, where we were given buckets and brooms to clean the elephant, and ourselves, swimming around these peaceful giants when it got too deep, and lying on their backs when we got too tired. I’ll never forget the feeling of watching that elephants face watching us – his eyes were really smiling, just as much as we were.

On the way back, we stopped at the Bridge on the River Kwai, which the British & Americans destroyed at the end of WWII . We were nearly pushed off the edge when a train came thru, slowing down but not stopping, assuming the dozens of tourists wouldn’t mind moving over to the tiny spaces we had to avoid getting run over. Looking down was also tricky since the spaces between planks was probably large enough to slip a foot thru, but I was mostly worried if that rickety wooden bridge could really support the whole weight of the train for so long, but then got distracted by all the smiling faces hanging out the open windows and waving at us as they passed.