Hello again. Nathan and I have had quite an eventful past few days and would love to share a bit about it with you all. We've really enjoyed our time here in Chiang Mai and it has definitely proven to be our favorite location in Thailand. We've found a great little guest house that we've stayed at for over a week now. I never knew how grateful I would be for a warm shower, toilet paper, toilet flushers, and a soft mattress with a pillow that doesn't make you cringe in the morning. We even have a TV here, so we're feeling awfully spoiled, while only paying $9 per night!
After our cooking course that I've already shared a bit about, we took a day or two off to recover from our food comatose. We still visited the night market here, an elementary school that we got to tour and gain some historical insight of Thailand, went running around the city square a couple times, and explored the area a bit more.
Once Wednesday the 9th rolled around, we were picked up and taken to an elephant training center about an hour and a half outside of the city. It was glorious! Our first adventure riding elephants. Not only that, we got to train, feed, and bathe them. I wish I could upload more photos of this experience (I have a few below), but the computer is being lame and not letting me upload any others. We spent the entire day there with just one other couple from Holland exploring the jungles while riding our elephants barebacked. Although, I must say the "comfort" of sitting on an extremely large beast's back is not entirely pleasing. Nonetheless, this was an experience that we will never forget. The day that we were mahouts (elephant trainers).
We then had one day in between our next plunge into a unique adventure. On Friday the 11th, we headed out with a group of other tourists back into the jungles of Thailand. We made a pit stop at an orchard/butterfly farm, a locals market, a longneck village market, then we continued on and hiked for 5 hours through the hot jungle. After a lot of sweat, dirt, insects, bamboo, beautiful views, the fear of TIGERS, we reached a village within the hills. This village consisted of an open dirt area with about 7 grass huts surrounding the central area. Dinner was prepared for us (rice, cooked veggies, and curry) and then a bonfire started that we gathered around and listened to a local man play the same 3 notes over and over again on his strange wind instrument contraption. It reminded me of "hot cross buns", but yet it seemed surreal that it was while gathered around a fire in the middle of the jungle with pigs, dogs, and little kids running around the whole village. We then slept in a grass hut (see picture below). I layed awake the entire night thinking of a bed NOT made of a bamboo mattress, blankets that kept me warm, and when hogs and roosters aren't the nightly calls. While it was a bit painful, it really was quite the experience and we wouldn't trade it for a thing.
Once the night hours finally passed and we didn't have to wait for it to get light, we woke up to a bonfire and a breakfast consisting of toast, hardboiled eggs, and coffee/tea. It was a lovely start after a dreadfully long night. We all mosied on through the jungle for another 30 minutes until we reached our "taxi", a large truck bed we all piled into. Then we set off for riding more elephants, bamboo rafting down the Mahout River, waterfall swimming/lounging, and white-water rafting. So much excitement in 2 days!
We're now back at our lovely guest house for 3 more nights. We're heading to a church service here tomorrow morning and spending our last full day in the city. We have a trip planned for Monday to take a bus 3 hours north to Chiang Rai to visit the temples and markets, then crossing the border into Burma to renew our travel visa's for our last week here. We're then heading back to Bangkok on the 15th to pay a visit to the S. Korean Embassy to finalize our work visa's. We were blessed to finally receive our visa issuance numbers just a few days ago! We'll spend our last week around Bangkok as we prep for the year spent in Korea. We're still not sure what we'll fill our time with during that week, but I'm sure we'll keep busy with new adventures!
I'll go ahead and wrap this up now. I'm going to attempt to upload some more photos onto a facebook album tonight, so be on the lookout!
I LOVE reading your posts about all your crazy adventures! What a phenomenal thing to do so early in your marriage. Graeme and I will have to seek out your expertise when we finally leave Canada. :) Still can't believe that a) you're married, b) you're in Thailand, and c) you trained elephants. What the heck?!
ReplyDeleteAll the best to you guys! You're in our prayers fo' sho'.