The Queen’s birthday came around and landed us a Thursday off school. Which to us didn’t mean much as that didn’t afford us enough time to go anywhere. But GOD BLESS (Buddha bless?) the queen because the government made a LAST minute to give us the Friday off as well which meant.. that’s right, another 4 day weekend!! We couldddddn’t have been happier about this too because it would be our last and only opportunity to go back and visit my favorite Thai city, Chiang Mai!
If you look back in the blog archive oh so long ago we visited Chiang Mai during our Christmas holiday and loved every minute of it. Last time we jam packed our 2 days there and did elephant riding, an elephant show where they painted for us, bamboo rafting, a women’s prison massage, a muoy thai boxing show and just wandering the peaceful streets of the city. The last few weekends of school after this we were fully booked with English camps so this would officially be our last traveling trip in Thailand and there were still a few things left to cross off the “WE MUST DO” list.
7am and a looong and bumpy overnighter later rolled around and we were back in this beautiful city of the North. We headed to the same quaint guesthouse we stayed at during our first visit, Smile House 2, which was complete with little brightly painted rooms and bungalows and a cozy poolside lounge all for a little over $3 a night. We freshened up, got a nice and cheap 80 baht motorbike (a little over $2) and then decided to jump right into the itinerary and head to Tiger Kingdom.
It was a nice 25 minute cruise to Tiger Kingdom. For being a city, Chiang Mai doesn’t seem like one at all. The streets are never too busy and the roads are all lined with big beautiful trees and lush vegetation. The old city has ruins of the old city gate along the roads which is a bright red brick and gives the city a rustic feel. Once we got to Tiger Kingdom we opted for the package of playing with the tiniest tigers (4 months), and the biggest (about 250 lbs). As we waited our turn to GET IN THE tiger cages (yes, that’s right) they had some of the big tigers out playing. They were not far from us and jumping around and chasing a ball in a pool which was awesome to watch. I could have gone home happy just seeing that let alone getting to touch them! Finally our turn came and we were ushered into the same enclosure that these massive beasts were previously playing in.
Just some background information. As you read and realize I am about to tell you I played with tigers, you may be thinking I have a death wish. But trust me.. there was nothing to be afraid of. These tigers are raised in Tiger Kingdom since birth and have literally grown UP with humans. They are used to the human touch and in fact, the only thing that might make them a little jumpy is if you touch them LIGHTLY rather than giving them big firm pats. They may take you for a fly which in that case they will want to shrug off. The trainers don’t beat, chain, or drug the tigers and if you don’t believe this, then you’ll just have to see for yourself. The tigers are very lively, and if they are sleeping then honestly it’s because a) it’s hot b) tigers in the wild stay up at night rather than the day as this is when they hunt and c) THEIR CATS! Think about how long you common HOUSE cat sleeps during the day, let alone a 250lb beast. The trainers use tap on the nose commands with the tigers. As they grow up if they act bad they will always get a firm tap on the nose, just as you would tap your dog if it peed on the carpet. So while it all seems ridiculous, the tigers were honestly just like big dogs, trained not to bite and be friendly with people. The humans feed them and take care of them so there is no desire in them to want to kill us. Haven’t you all ever seen the “ Christian the Lion video?” Anything is possible
ANYWAYS, we were then escorted to our new tiger friend, MEATBALL, who was lounging against the wall. The trainer pushed us right on up to him and told us to go ahead and start petting him. And I have to say, he honestly felt like a plush carpet. I don’t know if nervous is the right word for how we felt, but maybe antsy. The next thing the trainer told us to do was go ahead and LAY on the tiger which we were like uhhh really……. Well.. OKAY. And it was easy as that. We laid on him pet him rubbed his belly (he loved this) and he really didn’t take too much interest in us. It was awesome. After posing for a hundred pictures because we couldn’t get over that YES, we were playing with a giant tiger named Meatball it was time to wrap it up. We rubbed a few more bellies of some giant beasts (the next named Sticky Rice) and took a nice tiger nap with them even before it was time to move onto the babies.
We had heard before that while the babies were adorable, they didn’t do much besides sleep. But we would see as we waited our turn to come into the enclosure that we came at a perfect time. There was a pile of 3 babies cuddling together in the corner and one feisty tiger decided to jump on them and wake everyone up. From then on ALL of them were in a frenzy running around and growling and attacking each other which.. I can’t say I’ve seen many things in person cuter than this. I’ve been calling them babies, and even though they were only a few months old, they weren’t quite the size of a tiny kitten in your lap. More like a medium sized dog. We sat on the floor and tried to play with them but they were so wound up they just kept wrestling each other which honestly, was so entertaining we were happy to watch. They flopped into our laps and few times and tried to knaw on our arms but just as dogs playing, never really tried to bite down hard. The noises they were making were crazy as they lunged at each other and they growled back and forth. We still wanted to actually get to pet them so luckily one smart and still tired tiger had jumped up onto the table to continue its nap. We pet its plush fur and hugged and posed with it while it slumbered. Ahhhhh.. I was in animal heaven.
After our playtime we wandered around the grounds and watched all the tigers who weren’t out to play. We saw the mother of the babies who was beautiful and a lighter color with spots, as well as the slumbering father who was BY FAR the biggest tiger there, maybe even 350 lbs. After about an hour at tiger kingdom it was time to move on and end one of the coolest experiences I’ve had in Thailand. We got back on the motorbike all smiles thinking wow.. we just literally HUNG OUT up close and personal with live tigers. Incredible.
After all of the excitement right after a long and weary bus ride, it was time to go back to the room and have some down time. Waking up and feeling refreshed we headed to a great German restaurant, Bierstube, and had a nice schnitzel.. a farang food favorite of mine in Thailand. We went to the mall to wander around for a few hours and see Toy Story 3 (great!) to complete the day.
Day 2 began bright and early. We had signed up to take a day long Thai cooking course the day before and were set to begin at 9am. This is something we have talked about doing ever since we came to Thailand and tasted the amazing cuisine, and it was great on this last weekend trip we were finally going to learn how to cook the foods we love so much! We got to the cooking school, Baan Thai, and settled around a big table with the lay down cushions while we waited for the other 10 or so people in our group to arrive. Once everybody got there we had a group of travelers coming from England, Ireland, America (yours truly), and China. Our instructor came and took us to a local Thai market a few minutes down the alley. I have become accustomed to these open air outdoor markets (think American grocery store.. outside!) but have to mention how cool they are. Its tables upon tables of fresh and colorful veggies, and fruits, as well as everything else you can think of. Including squirming still live fish and pig faces. Hey, something for everyone! Each of us equipped with tiny baskets our instructor filled them up for us with the fresh goods for the day and explained to us all the different kinds of fresh foods we would be including in our cooking for the day. After getting the goods we strolled back to the cooking school and had some KANOME’S (snacks) that included dragon fruit, fried sweet potato, and a thai snack that we eat often that is a coconut jelly wrapped around taro and wrapped in banana leaves.
Finally it was time to start whipping up the foods! There were t o make 6 dishes for the day from 6 food categories each with about 4 different choices of food. The day long meal would include an appetizer, stir-fry, soup, curry paste, curry, and dessert. My meal choices were spring rolls, fried cashew nut with chicken and rice, chicken in coconut milk soup, green curry with chicken, and mango with sticky rice soaked in coconut milk. Felix chose Papaya Salad, Pad Thai (a fried noodle dish), hot and sour prawn soup, green curry, and deep-fried bananas with vanilla ice cream. We went off to our separate kitchens divided by what we were making and there they taught us how to cut the fresh ingredients. We all headed to our own personal wok after this where with the instructor guiding us started cooking! It was amazing how easy and quickly you could cook these delicious dishes. We would then bring our food back to the eating room and enjoy it/try everyone else’s and sit and digest for a bit before beginning the next dish! By only the 2nd dish we were already STUFFED and could have all taken naps on the cozy cushioned floor. We did this all day and were done around 4 and I was so happily full of amazing foods. There literally wasn’t a single thing that didn’t taste incredible.
We took a break for awhile after the cooking class and did some walking around town before getting ready for the night. Felix and I decided to go to a rooftop bar/restaurant down the road from our hostel and play some pool while enjoying the view of the city. SOMEHOW… after a few hours of this we thought it was time to eat again. I still was extremely full after eating for 7 hours but the food in Chiang Mai is just so good we couldn’t pass it up. We headed to a Jerusalem Falafel, a middle eastern restaurant and while we meant to only get a hummus.. ended up getting plus eating giant wraps. I’ve never been so full but still wanted to eat so bad because everything just tasted so good! We decided after this to motor our way over to the night market. Last visit to Chiang Mai we didn’t have enough time to visit any markets so we were pretty excited about this. The market was of astonishing size. It was a covered area with rows and rows of things to buy. We walked around for about an hour and I don’t even think we dented the market. We picked up some Chiang Mai t-shirts (yes, we still act like tourists here), a hand painted sticky rice container (after all, we learned how to make sticky rice now!), and ICE CREAM (whaaaat) before calling it a night.
Day 3, our final day in Chiang Mai came and we were happy to wake up with no set plan or agenda. We ate breakfast at an awesome smoothie restaurant with just about any kind of fresh fruit smoothie you could imagine and really good breakfast foods (including my favorite, French toast) which was great since it’s rare that we even eat breakfast type foods in Thailand. We did some research on the internet about what to do and after looking at sites for monkey shows, zip lining, ZORBING (the giant plastic ball you get in and roll down hills), and ATVing we decided to be simple and go to the Chiang Mai Zoo. We took our time and rode around Chiang Mai stopping here and there for coffee or to look into shops before heading over to the zoo. When we first arrived at the zoo we could tell it was going to be really cool. As the rest of Chiang Mai, the zoo was full of pretty plants and big trees, instead of harsh concrete and small cages. The enclosures for the animals were very large and very pretty to look at. In other words, if I was an animal, I wouldn’t mind living here. We climbed our first hill and noticed some adorable miniature pigs on leashes tied to a post near the sidewalk. I was ecstatic and went over to see them while of course taking a million pictures. We just kind of assumed they were someone’s pets. After spending all of this time with the pigs we looked up and realized up the road there were lizards, and birds also out of their cages. We ran over and then looked closer and saw several monkeys! Apparently, it was an animal parade and as ever minute passed, more animals came down the hill out of their cages with trainers who would let us hold and touch them. This literally was a dream come true. We already got to play with tigers and now we had any animal at the zoo to play with too?! It was too much. Extremely overwhelmed at all the animal-touching options we ran around to different monkeys and strange furry animals while a mega elephant, mini ponies, donkeys, and a plethora of snakes, lizards, birds, PENGINS, and even a koala came parading down the hill. Our favorite of the bunch were the monkeys. There were 3 different kinds, one a TINY baby that resembled a wrinkly old man but could fit pretty much in two hands, a funny fuzzy monkey with a flat face and A DRESS AND DIAPER on, and a giant orangutan that was incredible lazy and kept holding out hands and then mid-stride falling on the ground to roll around in the road. Ahh.. I wish it never ended. After all the animals, my camera soon ran out of battery (so many pictures wasted on the pigs!) and the parade started moving so we decided to BEGIN our actual tour of the zoo.
The zoo was actually too big and full of too many hills to walk around in so we tramed our way to each site. The coolest we saw was once again the monkeys. They had a place called MONKEY ISLAND with about 3 different islands full of swings, little houses, and aptly named- monkey bars. They put on a big show for us and raced back and forth across the monkey bars, flying into trees and around the islands like it was the easiest thing in the world. We could have stayed all day and watched them swinging around.
After a few hours at the zoo and all the animal excitement at every corner we went back to shower up before finally packing our things to leave the city soon. Our last stop before leaving was to check out something Chiang Mai is pretty famous for, which is their “Walking Streets”. The walking streets are pretty much just a huge road that goes on forever full of market goods to buy. We have been to maaaanay Thai markets, and while they are always cool, we have found that most of the time they are just selling the same stuff. A lot of it is crazy teen clothes with poorly spelled English phrases, Thai CDs, and lots of random junk. This however to our delight was totally different. Every booth had some kind of unique hand crafted good that ranged from paintings, to baskets, handmade jewelry, lanterns, and wood carvings. All the while there was the peaceful sound of light music and bells around the market. It was realllly nice to walk around here. It was also absurdly hard to not want to buy something from every stand! We found some beautiful colorful lanterns we really liked, which you see a lot in restaurants in Thailand. We bought a few of those, as well as some paintings, and a dress and handmade bamboo bracelet for myself. We could have stayed for another few hours but unfortunately, it was time to return the motorbike. Now bike-less we strolled over to Pum Phi Italian restaurant. This place is a Thai style house in an alley where you eat excellent pizza and Italian dishes outside in a beautiful candle lit garden area. It was an awesome last meal in Chiang Mai meal of the farang variety and we were yet again stuffed and happy before getting back on the overnight bus to return to Chaiyaphum.
Our 2nd visit to Chiang Mai couldn’t have gotten any better. And we really couldn’t have asked for a better final traveling trip in Thailand before we left for good. Tigers, Thai cooking, all animals at the zoo at our disposal, AWESOME food, and beautiful markets made it one of my favorite traveling trips we have taken in our whole time here.
Now as I’m writing this it’s a Friday and we only have ONE MORE WEEK of teaching before we leave the county we have called home for the past year. After school ends we have a day of farewell parties and packing up our apartment before moving on. First stop is LAOS where we will spend a week once again, tubing the river in Vang Vieng (see "We got Laos-ed on New Years" in the January archive!). Then Felix and I will take a lonnnng 24 hour bus to Hanoi, Vietnam. We will have about 3 weeks traveling down through Vietnam, and then will go to Cambodia to spend our final traveling week there. We will finally head back to Vietnam to fly out of there and on OCTOBER 23RD after stops in China, and L.A I will be back in my home state of North Carolina, and Felix in Virginia! It will be heartbreaking to leave, but looking back on the magnitude of what we have learned and seen here in Thailand, and remembering the month we spent in India during our 1st semester break, we are pumped to begin traveling again and then finally wrapping up this year long journey and returning to our home country. After all, home is where the heart is. And we can’t wait to be back!
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