Chiang Mai - Thailand at it's Best

We rolled into Chiang Mai, Thailand on the 13th of August via a bus from Chiang Rai. The trip aboard the Green Bus Thailand bus was 3 hours long and cost us 263 baht each (8.75 USD). Once in Chiang Mai we caught a songthaew taxi (60 baht or 2 USD) from the bus terminal to the Imperial Mae Ping Hotel where we stayed for six nights.

Getting Around Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai isn't a huge city but the different sites and activities are all very spread out so you really need to rely on some type of transportation other than your two feet. We used a Tuk-Tuk driven by Mr. Bin just about the whole time we were in Chiang Mai. Mr. Bin was great, he would drive us wherever we needed to go, wait for us at the place and then drive us to the next place. It was like having our own personal tour guide, all for very reasonable prices. If anyone is making a trip to Chiang Mai I would definitely recommend Mr. Bin and his Tuk-Tuk. He can be contacted by phone 086-188-6793 or email kaifah.cnx@gmail.com.

Pamela with our Tuk-Tuk driver Mr. Bin

Things to Do in Chiang Mai

To list all the things to do in Chiang Mai would take all day. We've already written about the Elephant Camp and Tiger Kingdom but here's a list of some of the other activities we hope to write about in the near future:

• Baan Thai Cooking School 

  

  We leaned how to make pad thai, coconut soup, thai fish cakes and Chiang Mai chicken. All in a kitchen that was about a million degrees.

• Chiang Mai Night Safari

  

  Giraffes and other animals will eat our of your hands as you drive through their enclosures.  If you can understand 50% of the tour narration then you've done a good job.

  
  
• Chiang Mai Monkey School
  

  

  These poor monkeys are treated like garbage then paraded in front of you for tips. We had a bad feeling after we left and would not recommend this place at all.

  

  This monkey rode a bike around in circles.

• Doi Suthep Temple

  

  The Doi Suthep Temple is a pretty nice excursion up to the mountains above Chiang Mai. 

  

  The temple gives a pictorial history of Buddha and sees many -many visitors every day.

• Mae Sa Snake Farm

  

  Pamela having a go with a python. The trainers love to play tricks on you while you're holding the snakes. Their favourite seemed to be to stick you in the back of the leg with a two prong stick to simulate the biting of a snake. Bastards.

  
  

  

  Petting a Siamese Cobra. 

  

  If you hate snakes then you would HATE this place. Behind me is a tree full of snakes. I like snakes and even felt a bit squeamish.

  

  The "trainers" would take your camera and get up close shots of the cobras.  This wasn't zoomed in at all. Crazy!

  
  

Hopefully in the near future we will write more detailed stories of some of our adventures above. Probably not about the monkey school, even talking about that place gives us the creeps.

Some links to more pics if you're interested:
Mae Sa Snake Farm: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/MaeSaSnakeFarm?authuser=0&feat=directlink
Around Chiang Mai including our Cooking School and Doi Suthep Temple: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/ChiangMai02?authuser=0&feat=directlink

From Chiang Mai we flew back to Bangkok then on to Hanoi, Vietnam. 

Cheers for Now -

Pamela and Dave

Mae Sa Elephant Camp - Our day with the Elephants

Mae Sa Elephant Camp is one of the bigger elephant camps of Chiang Mai. Located in the Mae Rim area, about 40 minutes from the city center, the camp has grown significantly since the last time I visited them about four years ago. The camp now has close to 70 elephants! Still a great show, but due to the high demand an increasing tourists in the area, it is somewhat commercialized, and also caters for big tour groups, so don’t expect a quiet intimate time with the elephants by any means.

Each elephant and it's trainer are listed on the board.

In saying this, they put on a great show for a price of 110 baht per person (4 USD) –  starting with watching the elephants bathe in the river with their mahouts (elephant trainer – each elephant has their very own personal trainer), and then continue on to do an hour long show, showing the talents and intelligence of the elephants. I (PW) was even picked out from the big audience, to play darts with one of the elephants – undoubtedly, the elephant won! (his darts were 5x as big as mine though!!) They finish the show with 5 or so elephants each painting a quite impressive painting with their trunks, which then sold from 3000-6000 baht each (100 to 200 USD)!! Quite a good little money making venture for them!

Pamela playing a game of darts with an elephant during the main show.

This elephant was a fantastic painter.

Once the show is finished, it’s time to get up close and personal with the elephants, taking pictures with them while they wrap their trunks around your neck and pose with you. They then keep poking you with their trunks, or tapping their trunks on the ground asking for tips,(all under direction of the mahout of course!) this is quite cute at first – until you realize how carried away you get putting the money in their trunks having a great old time! 

The elephant put the hat on Pamela's head.

After that, we looked around the elephant camp while we were waiting for our elephant ride, as there were a few big tour groups in that day, they were booked out until 1pm to get a ride straight after the show. It worked out well though, as you can walk around the camp and check out the elephant gallery containing all the different elephant’s artworks for sale. They also have an elephant nursery – where they had a few elephant babies around 6 months old. SO cute! Not so well trained though at that age – he liked to grab your fingers and hands while you were feeding him bananas, and try and pull them out of there socket if you were not careful! Just being playful, but unaware of his own strength!

The baby elephant was a bit rough.

We chose to do the 1hr elephant ride at a cost of 600 baht per person (20 USD), as opposed to the half hour option at 400 baht per person, as the hour tour took you into the actual jungle surrounding the camp, instead of  just through the elephant camp/village. As it is the wet season here, the path through the jungle we took was quite swamp like and muddy, and quite amazing to watch the elephants being such big elephants, so eloquently step through the thick mud, using all the same foot holes as each other. Towards the end of the trek, the elephants wash off in the river, and cool down, the fastest our elephant walked on the whole trip was to get into the water! While the elephants were all drinking and cooling off, someone spotted quite a big snake on the river bank – next thing one of the mahouts was jumping off his elephants and down onto the snake, pegging him under the hook of his elephants stick, grabbing him by the tail, and then hacking his head off with the hook. Crazy, just no fear at all!

Going into the river on the elephants.

Riding the elephant through the jungle.

All in all, a great experience. Dave loved it too, it was his first time to ride an elephant, and get so up close and personal with these friendly giants. It’s just amazing to see how well trained they are, and how much they love human interaction.  There is such a trusting and great relationship between the mahout and the elephants, it’s hard to understand and really see that without experiencing it in person.

Here’s a link to all of our Mae Sa Elephant Camp photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/MaeSaElephantCamp?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Cheers for Now –

Pamela and Dave

Tiger Kingdom - Chiang Mai

Sitting with a tiger named Jackie Chan

Like an interactive zoo just for tiger lovers! Tiger Kingdom is absolutely amazing, and like nowhere else in the western world. This place lets you get right up close and personal with the tigers. Of course, you have to sign a disclaimer before buying your tickets, stating that you are entering at your own risk, that they are not responsible for your safety. It’s a pretty humbling feeling you get when cuddling up to a 180kg tiger cat (and this is still only half of its potential size when fully grown) as after all, even though they have been raised by humans in captivity, they are all still wild animals, and their natural instinct is to hunt and kill.
                             

SAFETY - Of course, there are basic safety precautions you have to abide by, and listen to the trainers at all times, as they spend a lot of time with these animals, and know how there behaviors better than anyone – so they can keep a look out for you, and get you out of the way, or distract the tigers where needed.

With the "small" sleeping tigers.

THE TIGER’S EXPERIENCE - It’s an indescribable feeling, giving a tiger a bear hug, and resting your head on its stomach, listening to its heart, and hear it breathing in and out, and its stomach gurgling. You are putting yourself in absolute trust of the tiger, that it’s not going to decide it’s had enough of you, and turn around bring you down in one strike of its massive paw. For the most part, they are super sleepy, and just laze around (especially in the heat of the middle of the day) so many people think that they are drugged etc. in order for them to be around people safely, but after spending a few hours there, you start to see the tigers in all the states of their daily cycle. Sometimes they sleep, but that very same tiger 5 minutes later can be pouncing up on a table to get the palm leaves the trainer is hovering around for them (just like  a cat chasing after a ball of string). So you see, that they just sleep when they want, and play when they want, everything revolves around there natural life/sleep cycle. If they do get too overactive, then they can take that particular tiger out into another caged area, and switch it out with another one, as they have many tigers there. This also means that the tigers get some nice time off to themselves, and aren’t being patted and loved all day long, even though you can clearly see that the tigers do truly love human interaction, just like a dog or a cat. Remember that these ones have been bred in captivity, and it’s all that they are used to.

Pamela and the tiger called Jackie Chan

ENDANGERED SPECIES - Bengal tigers are extremely endangered, and very rare to see in the wild, as there are less than 2,500 left in the world, due to poaching, and destruction of their habitats. So this breeding program helps increase numbers of Bengal tigers, and populate our zoos, increasing our knowledge and research on them  – helping this endangered species.

This looks like a good place to lay your head.

Relaxing with the 4-6 week old cubs.

OUR EXPERIENCE - Upon getting to Tiger Kingdom, you can choose what size tigers you want to play with, you can buy a package that includes all sizes if you want: newborn, smallest, small, medium and big. Once you’ve got your ticket, your into the park to visit these amazing animals.

The smallest tigers at Tiger Kingdom. 

We originally played with the smallest, and big, but after visiting the newborns, I (PW) had to play with them as well, and this was for me the best experience by far.  It takes out the humbling and fearsome side of it somewhat, and just lets you enjoy playing with one of the cutest baby animals you will ever see. Seeing how small and vulnerable they are, after just playing with their parents – knowing just how big these babies are going to grow up to be is amazing. They really are like oversized kittens, only with much sharper teeth, and bigger claws!

This tiger loved it when we rubbed his belly.

The small-medium tigers are probably the most dangerous to be around, as they are still young enough to be so playful just like a kitten or puppy, but they are still big enough that if they playfully bite you, it does really hurt, and can be dangerous. ( I got quite a few scratches and teeth marks, but nothing serious!)

You normally visit the tigers for 10-15 mins in small groups of 5 -8 people at a time. But when I went back to visit the newborns, no one else was there – so I had a room full of six 1-1.5 month old tigers all to myself. Dave didn’t want to pay to visit these ones, as they weren’t active enough to interest him so much. So, he did a great job of videoing me with the babies instead! 

Check out the two videos in this post if you haven't already done so. They will show you more than words could ever explain how happy and excited I was to be with the baby tigers. If you are an animal lover, you will want to be on the next plane to Chiang Mai, Thailand.

You've got to see the rest of our pics from Tiger Kingdom: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/TigerKingdom?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Possibly one of the most incredible things you could ever experience in life!

In October we're going to India for a two week tiger safari. Hopefully we'll be able to spot these magnificent animals in the wild and post some pics to prove it. 


Cheers for Now - 

Pamela and Dave