Thailand Take 1

CHIANG MAI and PAI

We flew into Bangkok on the 20th, and as there isn’t much to do there, we preceded to get hammered for the first 2 nights. On the third night, we were sensible stayed in, and tried to catch up on sleep, however the hot, window-less room we were in had other ideas. Ridiculous heat meant neither of us slept a wink, so we decided to check into a nice hotel, with air con, a telly and a roof top pool, convenient as Spurs played Bremen that night as well. We moved on after we got our Vietnam visas, and headed to Chiang Mai.



On one of the days we went to the Tiger Kingdom, I say decided, the girls we were with organised everything for us, and we just paid! The Tiger Kingdom is a sanctuary for tigers, where all the profit made is put into tiger conservation, and to try and raise awareness. This was a pretty daunting experience, with all of us shitting it as soon as the tiger moved a paw suddenly! However after being exposed to people all their lives, and being well fed, they were very tame and weren’t too interested in eating us.



The next day, once again organised by the girls in our group, we went to have a day learning to ride and look after elephants. You could do a tour which included half an hour or so of elephant riding, but we wanted to do it properly. It was pretty hard trying to control an elephant while sitting just on its head, no saddle. At first it seemed like Mike got the worse deal, with his elephant seeming pretty crazy, but as we got into the trek, we realised that wasn’t the case. Mine did whatever it wanted regardless what I or the trainer said, then resorted to trying to hit with bamboo trees, and finally decided to try and break my camera by shooting it with water. (I have to confess the last 2 pictures weren’t taken by me….)



After having a pretty manic time in Chiang Mai, me and Mike decided to split from the group and head to Pai. Pai was the chilled out town we expected Chiang Mai to be. No clubs, just a few bars, and cute little restaurants. The second night we stayed in a tiny bamboo bungalow, directly next to the river. A cool experience, but it was not cool being woken up by Thai people at 5am, just for them to sit around, not even go anywhere or do anything! With all the fog in the morning, it did feel like waking up in Jurassic Park or something.



On one of the days in Pai we rented motorbikes to get around the surrounding area of the town, this was mainly so we could see the waterfalls, but quickly turned into just driving around for fun. Some of the waterfalls were cool, but there was no real swimming opportunities. Decided it was a good time to play about with some camera bits I got Hong Kong. Above being the result of a timer, self- portrait type thing, not sure if I like it….