Advertisement
Published: March 12th 2011
Edit Blog Post
I thought it was definetely time to update the blog - we have done a lot in the last 5 days!
We got to Chiang Mai on Monday morning after an epic journey on the all night train. It wasn't too bad, but I didn't get much sleep. It was quite rickety.
Luckily, the place we had booked to stay had included a free transfer from the train station which was so helpful when your not all there with the sleep deprivation. It made me smile when I saw this little Thai man holding a sign saying 'Clare and Andy' We stayed at the BMP Resident, which means Backpacker Meeting Place. It wasn't bad but we definetely felt the slip in 'luxury' from our Bangkok hotel. ;-) It still had a pool though which was a nice bonus.
They have a tour agents on site so we flicked through their masses of brochures and I immediately spotted the one day elephant course! It was the cheapest one I'd seen, 2,400 baht each, (around 50 pounds). We booked it for the following day, and a Thai cooking course for the day after!
I was sooo excited! About as excited as I was
for Disneyland, and everyone knows what that was like!
We wondered around the Night Bazar that night, it was so much more relaxed than Bangkok and there was no humidity just lovely dry heat. No one pestered you. No one was trying to scam you. It was a great break from the big city! We bought a few naughty things, like our big Buddha, I'd been after one for ages and Andy spotted the perfect one, it was bigger than we wanted, but just perfect! The price was great too after a bit of bartering.
We were picked up the next day by Woody, our elephant trainer, luckily the group we were in was quite small, only 5 of us so it was really easy to chat and get along. There was a couple from Belgium and a girl from Canada. We saw the elephants when we pulled up, and fed them some bananas, they were amazing, the power in their trunks and in their legs blew the both of us away. No doubt about it, they could flatten you if they ever stopped eating! Rather than giving the elephant the fruit with its trunk you had to put the
bananas directly in her mouth while saying a command that sounds like BON SOON. After we fed her she gave us a kiss with her trunk, this experience I really didn't like, she kind of sucked her trunk on your neck and left grubby marks. (It was worse than when Hugo licks your face - bleurgh!)
I knew it wasn't going to be easy learning to control an elephant, but blimey, we had to learn some Thai for about an hour, then he tested us. Then there was the movements you had to do when sitting on the elephant. The person in front had control of the elephant with their legs and a stick with a blunt hook on the end. It didn't hurt them but they knew that when you put the hook on the top of their head lightly and said YUUT they had to stop! Same thing with left and right, left was SII and right was KUWAR.
When we were on the elephant it was fine, except you didnt have much to hold onto and it was very high, but it was great! Ther getting up was the difficult thing, you had to hold the bottom
of their ear and say YO KAR and they would raise their front leg into a bending position, you then had to use that as a climbing frame and once on, say SOON and they would lift their leg higher with you on it. You just then had to swing over and end up sitting behind their ears with your legs dangling.
After trekking for a bit and taking it in turns so we both had a go at controlling our elephant Baan (the other person had to sit on the back and hold on for dear life.)
We led Baan, the elephant into the river where she spraye4d us for ages, it wasn't very nice as the river was quite dirty, but you just haqd to go with, we tried hard not to think about it.
They lay on their sides while we scrubbed them and posed for different photos. He took some with our camera but the rest of them are here: Click the link below!
http://www.woodyelephanttraining.com/blog/photo-gallery/?shashin_album_key=166
Overall, it was a fantastic day, being with a two tonne elephant who could lift you by the trunk, nearly knock you off their back by the force of the water
they spray, eat for 21 hours of the day was really great. You definetely couldn't do that in the UK. It was nice to see that the elephants were all looked after really well.
As you can imagine we were absolutely shattered when we got back and couldn't wait for a shower! We decided to stay in that night and hung around by the bar area, they had some live music which was really good.
The following day we went on a Thai cooking course, we were the last ones to be picked up and the van was full when we got in, everyone was really friendly, there were 3 french people, 3 aussies and the two of us. We went to the markets to pick up the fresh produce we would be using that day, it was really interesting as we had wondered around some food stalls before wondering what the different veg and fruits were and there we found out. I have never seen so many variations and types of rice ever!
Back at the cooking school we had to pick 5 dishes - a noodle dish, a curry dish, a soup, an appetiser and a dessert. Andy
and I decided to cook different meals so we could try more choice, the downside to that was that we didn't actually get to cook together. The Thai chefs were really quick in chopping and explaining what to do, it took me until the thrid dish to get the hang of it. I know it might sound biased but those dishes were the best we've had so far in Thailand and it was great that after each course you went back to the table to eat it all. Andy of course, had a chili eating contest with an aussie lad the same age as us. It was hard to tell who won as they were both reaching for the bucket of water at the end!
We received a cookbook at the end of the day each with all our recipes in, and helpful hints if we can't get certain ingredients back in England.
After our two hectic days we chilled out, did a bit of sight seeing and bought our train tickets back to Bangkok for the following day, we wanted to stay longer in Chiang Mai but the trains were full on Saturday and Sunday, and the Full Moon
Party is fast approaching, we wanted to make sure we had a few days on the beautiful Ko Tao first.
For our last night in Chiang Mai we met up with Steve from work and his friend Ping who he'd met on the train that day. We went to a hotel called Porn Ping Tower (it wasn't that type of place I know you're all thinking - hehe). It was a really posh hotel and on the top was a rooftop bar with the most amazing views! We sat up their for ages, chatting and swapping stories before heading down to the club on the ground floor. It was the wierdest place I've ever been too, it had this cheesy boyband on stage doing some really cheesy dance mopves. It was quite funny to see what a Thai nightclub was like. Well now we're back in Bangkok for one night until we make another epic journey south, heading to the beaches! Woo!
Hope you are all well! Thinking of you all! Thanks for reading!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.102s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0712s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Chris
non-member comment
cool elephants
hey little dude. Cool elephant pics. Can't believe how strong those elephants are. Cooking looks good we are looking forward to Thai food when u get back. Train journeys sound long and tiring. Hop u enjoy the beech and the full moon party. Looking forward to pics of the beech and party. Take care. Chris & Claire. Xxxx