Thailand: Chiang Mai

So after much partying I decided to head to Chiang Mai for some culture. The first day I hired a scooter and drove to Doi Suthep (a buddhist temple). This is part of said temple:

I think the best part of the temple was the ride there. You have to work your way up a hill on a very windy road.. good fun!

Suicidal elephants

As there is so much to do in Chiang Mai and I’m lazy, I did an everything tour the next day. It included trekking, elephant riding, white water rafting, bamboo rafting etc. We starting with the elephant riding. I was pretty disappointed when they provided a guy to drive the elephant, and we just sat on the back. I think the Thai guy overheard me express my disappointment, so he offered to let me drive the elephant, and I happily accepted! I remembered when my friend Glenn told me that you just kick the back of their ear, and the elephant would turn the opposite way.. so I went with that. Only my elephant was seriously suicidal and kept slowly heading towards cliff faces. So I kept frantically kicking at its ear to let it know that I wasn’t interested in joining the exclusive list of elephant fatalities. Anyway, with a bit of encouragement the elephant successfully got me to my destination:

The white water rafting was pretty fun too, although I think either of my grandmas would be able to handle the ‘rapids’ that we were rafting down.

Now content that I had done enough cultural stuff, it was time to party. And I was told the place to be was Reggae Bar. Incidentally, Thailand has a lot of bars called Reggae Bar, and none of them ever play Reggae. Anyway, drink, drink, drink, drink, sleep. Description over.

Hmmm these blogs are getting shorter and shorter.  Possibly because this happened 3 weeks ago and I kinda barely remember what I was doing.

Summary

Awesome:

Elephant when not suicidal

Craptacular:

Elephant when suicidal

What's Next

Time to hit the big city... Bangkok!