Advertisement
Today is our last day in chiang mai. leaving for a small village nearby called pai in the morning. woke up very late today as we spent last night drinking (buckets of Samsong) and talking rubbish with a dutch couple we met in a bar. Had a great day yesterday, got a tuk-tuk in the morning out to the monkey centre a few miles away to watch macaques playing basketball, riding bicycles (hee hee hee) and various other silly things. Didn't like the fact that they all had chains around their necks but there was a sign up saying that this was only during show times and they were set loose when the centre was closed. i hope they're not lying. next up was go-carting which was great fun until the front wheel on triona's cart came off and she was sent flying into a wall of tyres. (It was just like Mario Kart only there was no helpful little cloud man to pick me up) she escaped with a big bruise on her knee and a few other small bruises from previous smaller crashes (these due to careless driving rather than faulty wheel) (pictures to follow, still no luck finding
a samsung usb cable). we were about to head back when our tuk-tuk driver suggested visiting an orchid farm down the road. a very weird but cool place, it consisted of lots of deadly looking orchids, an aquarium with very large ugly unknown fish, a small collection of classic cars, and a mini-zoo with cats and dogs. (And a beehive)
the weather here has been cloudy which is great cause we don't have the sea to keep us cool anymore. chiang mai is a very pretty town, lots of temples, lots of bars and restaurants and a very relaxed atmospehere to the place. except for last night just before we went home from the bar. we were sitting outside the bar - Babylon - about an hour after it closed with this thai guy singing and playing guitar when a small group of men from a rival bar came by and started arguing loudly with the guys from our bar. it was nearly pitch dark but we could see one of the guys had a large knife behind his back. (It was just like West Side Story without the singing, dance routines or Officer Krupke) This went on for
about 10 minutes, no violence but alot of shouting, then they went on their way. Apparently this happens all the time. it turned ou that the rival bar was a place recommended by our travel book, we're thinking of writing a letter to them advising them not to recommend that bar anymore.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.076s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.048s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Cliff
non-member comment
Elephants
When I was on Koh Chang (I think it was) we just happened on a group of elephants near the road with their keepers. You could ride them but we actually didn't - I think I considered it too expensive, especially since I wasn't keen on the idea of riding one anyway. The size of the animal is quite intimidating but I guess I told myself it was unnecessary and possibly dangerous (also doubts about how well kept they were though they seemed not to be ill-treated). I saw something about a rampaging bull elephant on 'When Animals Attack' or something once and it wasn't pretty. But you could buy some nuts and let the baby rob them from your pockets with her trunk. Baby elephants are cute and playful (and weigh as much as a hatchback). It didn't cost anything apart from that and there was no long trek to a remote village involved! The Parkes have just left for the States by the way so we're expecting more blogs and fantastic adventures to brighten our gloomy Irish summer!