Laura walked to booking agency for pick up, and immediately met world traveller, Kelsey, from San Francisco. Laura's bus ride was relaxed, but ended up getting in two hours earlier than planned. Laura arrived at Deejai hostel at 5am, and they informed her that check-in was 2pm. Luckily, Beulah and Lindsey were up at 6 for a visa run and offered their beds for the morning! Once again, Beulah and Lindsey save the day!
Katy and Alexis took sleeper train, which was pretty cool. Both girls slept for about 10 hours which was nice. They made friends with Jim from Colorado, who had just recovered from Dengue fever in southern Thailand. Alexis and Katy quickly coined the nickname, Dengue Jim - or DJ for short. DJ informed us in the morning that our train had stopped for about an hour and a half around 4am and he got up to check it out. Upon inquiry, DJ gathered from the train attendant that, "There is not enough power to get over the mountain." Thankfully, we arrived in Chiang Mai around 11:30 (two hours late), and caught a taxi to Deejai hostel. We had a nice lunch reunited with all of our friends - old and new!
That afternoon we went to Tiger Kingdom, to see TIGERS! We paid 650B or $20USD, to hang out with baby tigers.
All over Thailand are shirts that say, "SAME SAME - BUT DIFFERENT" on them. Laura, Kerri, Lex - and now Katy, all use this phrase in conversation and try to make as many jokes as possible about it. Our favorite usage was this: (insert pic of house cat/tiger).
Katy, Lex and Laura decided to spend time with the babies, while Jim and Kelsey chose to hang out with the big tigers. Tiger Kingdom is set up with multiple cages for the different age groups and you wait in line to go into the pen with a guide. Natural, we all squealed a lot as we cuddled, played with and had a photo shoot with the little (big) kitties! Alexis was in kitty heaven. We concluded that the tigers were definitely not drugged, however like any animal in captivity, it was sad to see them contained in such small spaces and so used to humans and being touched. The babies slept through most of the prodding, clearly entirely accustomed to it. At one point, there was a tiger fight (roaring and growling - two large tigers on hind legs in the cage next to ours) and alllll of the babies became alert to check it out (photo of Katy w baby tiger). Overall it was super cool to see them up close but definitely a little bittersweet to see them living in unnatural conditions.
That night, Alexis, Katy, Laura, Dengue Jim, Lindsey, David and Kelsey walked to a nearby night market. Although the company was nice - the food really wasn't. Katy and Dengue picked up a bunch of random foods for taste experimentation - no real successes. We all went to bed at a reasonable time for our cooking class early the next morning!
Wednesday morning Alexis Katy and Laura were picked up at the hostel at 830, then taken to a nearby market. Our instructor showed us around the market and explained the basics of Thai cooking and ingredients. Then our "class" hopped in the truck and were taken to a farm about 30 minutes away. We were shown around the garden, smelling and tasting some thai herbs and vegetables.
Then we picked a station in the kitchen classroom and began! Our instructors were funny and helpful and it was SO FUN! We wore red aprons for cooking and "the hats just for fun." Alexis first made coconut milk soup and Laura and Katy made Tom Yam soup - then we ate it! We all then made a curry paste from scratch that we would use in our curry later.. Which consisted of using a mortar and pestle to turn dried chillies and fresh herbs into a paste. Alexis made red curry, and Laura and Katy made yellow. We also made a stir fry - Alexis and Laura made chicken cashew nut and Katy made sweet and sour chicken. We ate all of that, then made dessert - Alexis and Laura made mango sticky rice and Katy made bananas with coconut milk. Although we were completely stuffed, Laura and Katy made pad Thai and Alexis made spring rolls to take home. It was amazing! Not only was it incredible to learn how make all the food we have been eating, we spent the day on a beautiful farm in Thailand and made some great friends with the other people in our class. We went home stuffed and had a lazy night at the hostel booking and doing research for Laos!
The next morning Dengue and Kelsey joined us for a temple tour in Chiang Mai! We walked to a few nearby temples and checked them out first. Check out a few photos from the day!
Name of temples - baby monk school
Then oldddd temple
The americans had a nice lunch then took a wind-y taxi up to the Golden Temple, with an incredible lookout over Chiang Mai. We checked it out, were blessed by a monk, where he chanted and sprayed us with holy water then gave us white string bracelets and signed the "skirt" for the agoda. It was super cool!
That night Alexis, Katy and Laura all went to the night bazaar and did tons of shopping! The stalls seemed endless. After our long day and the exhausting of bartering, we were all very tired!
Already having an incredibly busy week, we were all reluctant to get up early on Friday... But despite being tired we got so excited for elephants!!
DJ joined us and we were picked up at 8am. We took an hour bus ride to Thai Elephant Home where we were debriefed about our day and given attractive denim on denim mahout (elephant trainer) outfits. We went to meet the elephants, learned some basics commands and fed the elephants sugarcane and bananas. We hopped on, did a walking tour around the stable and then got ready for our adventure!
We rode our elephants on a beautiful hilly ride for about an hour to a spot where we had lunch. After lunch we fed our elephants pad Thai, gave them a mud rubdown then went back down the trail to the river. The best part of our day was washing the elephants in the river. Laura was picked up by --- Alexis had a legitimate watertight with her elephant, ----. And Katy cuddled and washed ---. On our way back we fed them more snacks, then rode for another hour. When we got back to Thai Elepgant Home, we bid farewell to our elephants and went and met a baby and her momma. Then had snacks and saw all of the amazing photos taken from the day! It was a dream day, so amazing and perfect. Thanks Sarah Bon for telling us about it!
That night we scoped out a local music festival with everyone and had a relaxed night.
After an eventful and awesome week, we slept in for Lex's birthday and had a lazy morning. We went to lunch, Katy and Alexis went to a crazy local bug museum and then Laura got a pedi/mani and Alexis and Katy got a couples Thai massage. It was awesome! That night everyone surprised Alexis with a pie and candles :) Then we all went out to the walking street market in Chiang Mai for food and shopping! Alexis was iced (good job Lindsey) and then we all went dancing at a local bar. We stopped by to get snacks from 7-11 on the way home, then had a high kick contest. We laughed and chatted until our hostel told us to go to bed! It was a blast!
On Sunday we said goodbye to Lindsey and Beulah :( our favorite travel companions. Although hungover, we had a nice lunch before we caught our bus to Pai!
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