Elephants and Tigers and Monkeys, Oh Mai

We arrived in Chiang Mai, located in the northern part of Thailand, on a short one hour flight from Bangkok. We were picked up at the airport by our hotel, the Rimping Village. The boutique resort of 27 rooms nestled around a central pool is less than a year old and is located about 20 minutes from the airport and a short walk from town. After getting settled, we walked to the night market and had dinner at a restaurant called Le Spice which was a mix of Indian and Thai food. The food was very cheap, and April had her new favorite dessert Mango with Sticky Rice and Coconut Ice Cream. Following dinner we walked all around the night market (which is several blocks of small shops that sell local handicrafts each night until midnight). We ended the evening with a Thai massage before turning in.

On Sunday, we hired a private taxi to take us to a road outside of town where they features factories of the many local handicrafts. Our first stop was at the Thai Silk factory where we saw the process for making silk from silkworm cocoons to hand looms where the threads are weaved into fabric. We were fascinated to learn that each cocoon (about the size of a peanut) produces a thread of silk 500 meters long! They boil a large cauldron of cocoons which allows the threads from each to meld together to create one larger strand of silk which is extracted easily with a wooden pedal powered spool.

We also stopped at factories where they make silver jewelry and handicrafts, teak furniture, celadon pottery, lacquer ware and a precious gems showroom. We really enjoyed the teak furniture, particularly the dry bar's that they had, and the celadon colored glazed pottery where we picked up a cool ceramic serving bowl + lid for $12.

For dinner, we went to a place called Jerusalem Falefel which had amazing middle eastern food (humus, taziki, baba ganoush, tabouli, tahini, falafel) all served with fresh made pita (still hot). Mark was in heaven. After dinner we walked around the downtown area where on Sunday nights they block the main streets and have a special market which we found to be the best quality and variety at the lowest prices that we have seen so far in Thailand. All the locals attend this market, so they can't easily gouge tourists.

The next day brings us to the title of this post. We hired another private taxi for the day, and headed out to the Maesa area north west of the city. Chiang Mai is located in a somewhat jungle like setting, particularly as you get outside of the city and into the hills. Everything is green and very beautiful. There are also many animals that are indigenous to the area, in particular the Asian elephant as well as several others. Our plan for the day was to see as many different animals that we could, and to be able to interact with them in ways that you can't do at a zoo at home.

Our first stop was at the Masea Elephant camp. Here, they have about 70 elephants of all ages. We were able to feed them bananas and sugar cane, take up close and personal pictures, watch them bathe, and then we watched a show. There were about 200 people at the show. The elephants dance, play soccer, give thai massages, and compete in a pick up sticks game. The most amazing thing is that they have trained them to paint, and they actually make quite beautiful pictures that you can purchase after the show for about $70.

The highlight for us was that April volunteered to play darts on center stage vs one of the elephants (popping balloons). There were about 7 balloons for each of them, and the Elephant got off to an early lead (April missed the first couple throws). However, she came back strong and ended up tying the Elephant (he does this every day - so I was proud of her). The crowd loved it.

Our next stop for the day was at the Tiger Kingdom. Here you can pay to play with tigers of all sizes. You choose whether you want baby tigers, cubs or full grown adults (you can do all if you want to pay). We selected the cubs, and were given 15 minutes to play with four tiger cubs in their cage. This was really great as we were able to hold them and play with animals like we would never be able to do back at home. While they were pretty docile when we were there, we maintained a healthy fear of them as even at this age they could bite you and do some serious damage. Their paws are HUGE also.

The next animal adventure was a Monkey show. We watched as the monkeys demonstrated their abilities in riding a bike, picking coconuts, playing basketball and other activities. Mark volunteered at this show and had his hands tied up. One of the monkeys untied him and gave him a big kiss afterwards. Yuck!

We also went to an Orchid farm (many beautiful varieties growing), a butterfly farm (we were able to catch and hold them in our hands) and finally as snake show (where the most amusing part was not the cobras, but the MC who made all kinds of funny sounds to jazz up the show - we have a video, it's hilarious).

We returned back to Rimping Village, swam for a bit and ate at the restaurant there (great Thai food). That night we had hired an in room Thai massage. The hotel coordinated bringing someone in from the local massage school, and each of us were treated to an hour Thai massage in our own bed. She was awesome and we had her come back the next night for 3 hours.

On our final full day in Chiang Mai, we attended Thai cooking school at www.thaicookeryschool.com. Chiang Mai is well known for having very good food, and we were not dissapointed in learning how to make some of it. The school has five different courses (each a day long) and you learn six different dishes at each. We were just there for a day, but learned how to make yellow curry with chicken, steamed fish in banana leaves, chicken with cashew nuts, fried big noodles with sweet soy sauce, spicy prawn salad, and bananas in coconut milk. First we went to the local food market and learned about all the ingredients and then we each bought one item that we would use for the day. Back at the school, they demonstrated how to make a dish, and then sent us each to our own station (where ingredients were waiting) to make it. Of course we ate all that we made also. It was really a lot of fun, and we were surprised that we could make such good tasting food! In addition, they gave us a recipe book that has all of the 30 recipes from all their courses in it. So, we look forward to making some good Thai food when we get home.

Our last night we relived some of our favorites. We made another stop at the Jerusalem Falafel restaurant and then had our in room Thai massage therapist again.

Now we're off to the beach, with a trip to Krabi on the south west coast of Thailand (near Phuket)