Chiang Mai

Though Chiang Mai seemed like it would be a nice quiet place after all the drinking and not much else in Bangkok it turned out not to be at all. We met a group of people on the first day and ended up going out with them nearly every night we were there. On the plus side we did at least do things (mostly animal related) during the day as well! The first stop of our animal tour of Chiang Mai was the Tiger Kingdom; a tiger sanctuary not far out of town where they let you get in the cages with the tigers. According to the signs the tigers aren't drugged they are just hand reared and well fed! They split the tigers up into different size groupings and as the smallest were most expensive we decided to go for the largest (to make sure we got the most tiger for our money). They really are quite docile though it did seem they weren't drugged as occasionally they would make a quick movement, luckily the trainers were well armed... with a short piece of bamboo!

On our way out of the centre we got a bonus extra animal as a guy from the snake farm down the road was there with a small snake. He took great pleasure in putting on my head and then trying to make it eat my face. Later in the day we headed to the zoo in town (yeah another zoo). Though the animals themselves weren't that special compared to everything else we had seen the completely lax safety measures were worth seeing as was the fact that most of the animals could have simply walked out of their enclosures if they had wanted to!

A couple of days later we spent a whole day visiting a nearby elephant sanctuary. As we arrived we were handed a set of clothes to wear for the day including a massive pair of tie on shorts, a tribal vest and a head scarf. We started by picking the elephant we would be riding for the day though somehow I missed that this was going on, as a result I was stitched up with the youngest and craziest who would not stand still for one second. After feeding them a tonne of bananas to gain some trust we were taught various basic controls and then after lunch headed off up a hill riding on the neck of our elephants. It turned out that though my elephant (celled Dee) was smaller, when she had someone riding her she calmed down, stopped dancing around and as actually the best behaved of all of them. Pete seemed to end up with the worst deal as his elephant just constantly wanted to walk off and eat. When it wasn't allowed to do this it just picked up a 6 foot tree branch and swung that around a bit! 

The culmination of the day was jumping off our elephant's head into a watering hole and then splashing around with them. Being young and a little mental my elephant decided to run straight in and roll me off into the water, at one point I did fear for my life when I was surrounded by 4 elephants with my feet stuck in the mud but I managed to clamber out with my foot only slightly trodden on!

The only downside to Chiang Mai was the amount of times we managed to pick a perfectly nice looking restaurant, only to realise we were surround by crass older white men either with or talking loudly about their various Thai girlfriends.

Oh yer and I called a girl a prostitute.