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Published: February 21st 2013
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Since we've found a fairly cheap and decent internet place close to where we're staying at the moment, I thought'd I'd do another quick blog before we head up to the Laos border, where internet cafes full of excitable Thai nerds playing some kind of online fantasy game are probably quite difficult to come by. Following our elephant adventure yesterday we rounded the day off with a BBQ put on by the hostel owner. It was a cracking meal and really nice to spend the evening chatting with all our fellow travellers at the place. I was sat next to a very amiable american guy named Tom, he'd been travelling around the world for 8 months already, so it was great to pick up some tips and advice and hear some of his stories. He also explained the long haul transport system in the US to me, which I'm sure will probably come in handy at some point. Everyone was having a good time so we headed into town to hit a bar and then the local club. It was possibly the biggest 'so bad it's actually quite good' club I'd ever been to. They had champions league football on the
big screens and played three Blue songs in a row. I didn't even know Blue had three songs, but there you go.
Suprisingly, my hangover was triumphantly brief, but given the fact we'd been awake for almost 24 hours the previous day we decided to have a bit of a lazy morning. Since we'd hung out with elephants the previous day, we thought it would be a little rude not to visit the other famous wildlife experience in Chiang Mai - tigers. At first I was a little sceptical about going to the Tiger Palace, there's a lot of rumours going around that they drug the tigers to make them docile enough to be approached by humans but after doing some reading on it I decided I'd give it a go. It turns out tigers require a lot of sleep anyway and are naturally quite lazy, very much like their domestic siblings. We got there and they gave you a choice between big, medium, small and smallest tigers, with various combination packages available. Given the expense of the elephant trek the day before, I opted to see just the small tigers, all aged around 2-3 years old.
Tiger fight!
Me soiling my pants just out of shot. We got into the park and began to wonder around, it was essentially just like a normal zoo, except it was filled with tigers (and, somewhat confusingly, two parrots and a lion). We headed to the small lion pen and waited outside til the keepers called us in. Entering a tiger pen with a man whose only form of self protection was a tiny wooden stick may seem a ridiculous idea, but that's what we did. Seeing the tigers up so close was amazing. They're such beautiful animals, and despite these ones being only youngsters, they were still incredibly majestic. There were four tigers in the pen we were in, and we got to approach each one and pet it, have a picture taken with it and then rub it's belly. It was quite strange rubbing the belly and feeling the muscles of the tiger, all the while in the back of my head thinking "I bet he could rip my arms clean out with minimal effort." The tigers were so much more active than I was expecting them to be, there were two in the middle who were continually play fighting with each other. I was
stood literally one metre from two dualling tigers. It was fantastic to watch and a bit of an adrenaline rush, especially when one bolted and the other chased it, straight in my general direction. I ended up stood behind the tiger trainer and his wooden stick, with another tiger behind me and two scrapping ones in front. Pretty fantastic. Luckily the wooden stick reigned victorious and we managed to escape with our lives (this sentence might be a little melodramatic).
Ryan and Dan had booked to go in with the big tiger and the tiger cubs, so I went for a little wander around the park to see what else was there. I found a newborn tiger in a little cage perched on a windowsil round the back of the main enclosure. It was no bigger than the soft toy tiger I had taken everywhere in my childhood. It must've only been a few days old, it's eyes weren't even open yet and it couldn't even walk, only limply pull itself through the newspaper bedding. It was a fairly incredible sight to see something so small that would one day turn into the massive arm-ripping off machine like all the others.
We will now spend one more night in Chiang Mai, possibly taking in a little jazz, before heading up to the Chiang Khong border town to take the two day one night riverboat down to Luang Prabang, Laos. Strangely, I can't wait.
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Sarah Hughes
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Seriously envious
Hi Ollie, well if your intention was to make readers envious you've achieved it with us over at fiz.com! Were these Bengal tigers? My daughter has one that's over a metre long on the end of her bed (stuffed of course, not drugged, and very glad yours weren't either). Laos, and Luang Prabang specifically, are in my top 5 places ever visited - check out this view of it on the Fiz map! http://www.fiz.com/?Luang+Prabang+Laos. Have a brilliant time and stay in touch with Fiz!