Temples and Tigers and Curry, Chiang Mai!

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Ok kids, settle in. This is might be a long one!

The day after my last post was our last day in Kanchanaburi. We left our bags with the guesthouse and walked down to the River Kwai bridge again. Next to the bridge is the Jeth War Museum. It is an odd little museum with donated items from wars around the world throughout time. Sprinkled in with this are things such as a room showing all different minerals and a mural of the Miss Thai winners from 1936-1970. Like I said, odd little museum. In the afternoon we caught a minibus back to Bangkok. This time it took 4 hours and I'm pretty sure the driver had made it his life's mission to see if he could make me vomit. It was a painful ride. We then caught a late flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. We arrived in Chiang Mai about 10:35. I finally made it up past 8 pm!

Thursday we hired a driver for the morning. He was a very interesting guy who we liked a lot. He spoke English very well - he had learned from Eagles songs. Lol. Our first stop was Tiger Kingdom. This place is like nothing I've ever seen. They hand raise tigers from the time they are born to interact with people. They have these large enclosures that you can go in and hang out with tigers. They are not drugged or chained or anything. The trainers just walk in and the tigers all lay down and wait for you to come pet them. Once you are done they get up and go play with each other. They have them divided by size. We both went in with the smallest which were 3-4 month old babies. They were beyond adorable. And, it turns out my cat allergy doesn't extend to tigers! After we played with the babies Graham went in with the biggest. I passed on this. They were just so big and they can sense fear! Graham seemed to enjoy it though and came out uneaten so it was all good.

After the tigers we went up the mountain to Doi Suthep which is a large temple overlooking Chiang Mai. It was very beautiful. While we were up there I saw one of the giant spiders that Graham had been looking for in the jungle and of course it was when Graham wasn't with me. Like a good girlfriend I took a picture, even though it was really creepy! It was bigger than my hand (with legs included).

Our last outing of the day was in the evening to do a Thai cooking class. We went to Siam Rice cooking school. This might have been my favorite part of the trip so far. We had a group of 8. Two other American couples and an Australian couple were with us and we just had a blast. The menu we cooked was one soup, one noodle dish, one curry (make your own curry paste and then use it in a dish) and dessert. I made coconut chicken soup, pad thai, red curry pineapple, and sticky rice with mango. Graham made hot and spicy soup, drunken noodles, Massaman curry, and bananas in coconut milk. Making drunken noodles almost made Graham beardless - the fire from the walk shoots out everywhere! We actually think that the food we ate that night is the best we've have so far.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Sukothai. We were told that doing this from Chiang Mai was a very long trip and it is. It is definitely not the best way to do it and if you have time to actually include this as a stop in your itinerary you should. We left at 6:45 and drove 4 hours there. On the way our guide stopped at a market and got us some breakfast. There were little muffins that were very dense and didn't have a lot of flavor. I didn't quite understand what they were. Then there was a ball of sticky rice with some type of custard on top wrapped in palm leaves. That was pretty good. Our next stop was to feed some pigs! We were both surprised by this one. We suddenly just pulled over on the side of the road and about 50 pigs came running up to the van. Almost all of them were little babies! The guide gave us a bag of veggies to feed to them. The big ones were, well, they were pigs about it! They wouldn't let the little ones get close and would steal stuff from your hands if you were trying to give it to the little guys. The biggest pig even bit Graham on the leg! Luckily not too hard. Our guide told us that these pigs belonged to a spirit house so no one would steal them. It was weird, but cool. We finally made it to Sukothai and saw 3 ruins on the ourskirts before stopping for lunch. After lunch we rented bicycles and entered the main historical park area. We rode our bikes from one ruin to the next and stopped at each for an explanation from our guide. It was a really awesome way to see the park and I'm glad we chose that instead of using the car. Once we were done at the park we got back in the nice air conditioned van and drove the 4 hours back to Chiang Mai.

Today we are going to see the ELEPHANTS!!! And tonight we plan to finally visit the night market. Till next time!

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Comments

[Samantha]

Love the Blog!
Sounds like you're having a great time so far! Thanks for sharing! :)