Malaysia

Flying out of Lhasa was a nightmare. We needed to go to Laos to collect the car but there are no direct flights and the car wouldn't be at the border for a couple of weeks anyway. We had to fly from Lhasa via Chengdu, Beijing and Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur!

Kuala Lumpur is knock off central, there are more fake Louis Vuitton bags here than any chav could wish for! Rolex watches. Mont Blanc pens, you name it, you can buy it on the market stalls in KL.
I decided to get away from the fake stuff and head out to see the real Malaysia on a day trip to the Elephant sanctuary.

No, thats not rica on the Elephant with me, she didn't make it out of bed in time, it's aussie girl, Nicky who was also on the tour. We were actually the only to people on the tour which was a bit odd.

The Elephant sanctuary was packed with tourists and it felt more like a circus than a sanctuary. The first elephant we saw was stood in a field swaying from side to side, obviously bored. It looked so unhappy that neither of us felt comfortable taking it's picture. The elephants were lined up to walk around in circles with tourists on their backs, they didn't look happy and I didn't take part. The "swimming with elephants experience was a similar affair with tourists getting on the elephants back, it walking a few feet and then dunking them in the river. Knowing how much elephants love water I didn't feel bad about taking part in this and as we were the last 2 people we got a little more time with the elephant.

We stopped at "Deerland" on the way to the elephant sanctuary. To be honest I was expecting this to be a sad affair with bored animals locked in cages but I was pleasantly surprised. The owner himself took us around the park and you could see the animals were well cared for and had a real love for him. Because the owner was with us we were even invited into the enclosures with the animals and fed deer, parrots and yes, even this bear! This was baby bear, he delighted in rolling on his back while being fed condensed milk from a bottle. The owner even put condensed milk on my hand for the bear to lick off which was an incredibly sticky experience! When we were leaving the bear followed the owner, rubbing against him like a pet cat and they then started play fighting or dancing I'm not sure which, judge for yourself in the photo.