pad thai, riverside bamboo bungalows, and motorbikes

Heyyyyyyyy,
I'm currently sitting in Bangkok after taking a bus from Pai to Chiang Mai yesterday and the night but from Chiang Mai to Bangkok today.  Tonight i will leave Bangkok and take the night bus down to Krabi and then a ferry over to Koh Phi Phi, an island in southern thailand.  After my thai cooking class in Chiang Mai i went out to the Maesa Elephant Sanctuary the next day where i got to play with some elephants, ride an elephant, get cuddled by elephants, etc.  All in all, i LOVE elephants.  They're just so darn intelligent.  The Maesa elephant sanctuary was definitely better than the tiger temple, but i'm not quite sure by how much.  All in all, i'm not too stoked on the use of animals for tourism.  I much preferred the giraffe sanctuary in Kenya where the rescued giraffes were free to range over large large large areas and land but could come to elevated huts where visitors could feed them, touch them, kiss them (gross but i did it) and learn about them.  Anyway, the next day i took off to Pai, an amazing little music hippie town with a river running through it (a la missoula, montana).  I stayed in an elevated bamboo bungalow on the river and spent much of my first day walking around, reading the hobbit in a hammock by the river and getting a feel for the town.  That night i met some guys from the same guesthouse and spent the evening at a big bonfire on the river with fire dancers socializing with other travellers.  The next day the guys i met and i rented some motor scooters (soooooo fun) and travelled around the countryside checking out small villages, canyons, waterfalls, etc.  All in all we motorbiked around for 8 hours in beautiful northern thailand.  Unfortunately, on a dirt road, my motorbike skid out and the exhaust pipe burned (realllllllllly burned) the back of my leg.  I currently have a pretty large and pretty ugly burn wound complete with black skin on the back of my leg.  At this point i'm mostly just trying to fight off infection until i get home and hoping it grows at LEAST a thin layer of skin back before i go diving in the next few days (salt water... bummer!).  Anyway, after spending 3-4 days in Pai, i headed out yesterday and have arrived in Bangkok today.  I'm not really sure as to my plan as of right now.  I was going to go spend two weeks down south in the sun scuba diving off a few of the islands but a cyclone has come through and brought some clouds and rain.  It'll be a bummer for visibilities sake when i'm diving but you can't feel the rain 75 feet under the water eh?  Anyway, that's all for now, sorry about the scatter blogpost, those night busses lead to some haggard days!  More soon!
<3<3<3
Ella