After the intense week in the elephant park and a whole week of veggie food and tofu we went back to Chiang Mai.
First point of call was a good restaurant with meat!! We met up with Cindie, Christina, Sandra and Myra who we'd worked with at the park and descended upon an Italian restaurant recommended Cindie. This was followed by a wander round the Sunday market with some interesting products!
The next day was dominated by temples, the most impressive of which was Wat Chiang Man. Whilst wandering round we met several enthusiastic locals eager to impart their local knowledge to us! After lunch with the same park workers we had had dinner with (completely unplanned this time) we went on a Thai cooking course. This is something we would recommend to anyone coming to Thailand, but beware of the curry paste! The chances of us being able to recreate these dishes however is much to be desires but they did give us recipe books to help.
The next morning we visited Doi Suthep, another impressive temple atop a hilltop which involves climbing over 300 steps to the top. Whilst there we were blessed by monks with good luck and happiness forever and received a white 'bracelet' making it the second one we've received in under 2 weeks! We also fitted in a quick visit to Bhubing Palace, the winter residence of the royal family and home to some impressive rose gardens.
Our evenings in Chiang Mai featured the night market a lot, and included the purchase of some rather dubious trousers by both! The decision to experience a Thai foot massage turned out be an excruciating experience and though our legs felt good afterwards still led to us hobbling home and Em got bitten to pieces after the woman had removed all the deet from her legs!
We then took a tour from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai taking in some sights on the way. These included some hot springs and the white temple, a stunning sight with some beautiful paintings inside although the appearance of spiderman, the matrix, terminator and others was a surprise! We also got to go to the golden triangle, the meeting point of the Thai, Laos and Burmese borders and a hotspot for opium production.
Chiang Rai is considerably smaller than Chiang Mai, so we visited some temples and sights in the pouring rain, went to a hill tribe museum and took in some street food, with no bad affects as yet! Tonight we are off to a restaurant called Cabbages & Condoms, which is a charity helping to stop the spread of STIs in Thailand. Tomorrow we will head off to laos with our first stop being Luang Namtha.
We apologise for the lack of photos to make you envious, but we forgot to take any on the iPod. We did try to buy a device to transfer photos from our cameras to our iPods, but it didn't work unfortunately.
Hope you enjoyed this post, our next one will be in a couple of weeks when will be leaving Laos.
Take care
X x x
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Saturday, 15 September 2012
Elephants Galore
Despite only being away for a week we still have loads to tell you!
After many hours trying to pack our bags we finally managed to fit everything in and both rucksacks were way under our weight allowance which was a bit of a shock. So we headed to heathrow last Saturday evening where both mums broke down in tears whilst we rushed through security. About 14 hours and 2 flights later we landed in Chiang Mai.
The following morning we were picked up and taken to the Elephant Nature Park where we spent the next week. This place is just amazing and the woman who set it up, Lek, is truly incredible! ENP is a sanctuary for elephants who have been badly treated/injured. There are currently a total of 34 elephants here but there are so many more that need rescuing across Thailand. Many of them have been involved in logging or tourism where they are trained and beaten from a young age. A number of the elephants here were blinded by their previous owners and some have broken backs, hips and legs which will never properly heal. The Sanctury allows the elephants to live in an environment which closely resembles their natural habitat but each elephant has its own mahout (elephant keeper) with them at all times. Lek tries to teach the elephants to gradually start trusting humans again and watching her with the baby girl elephant was just amazing. She sat under her singing lullabies and kissing her legs and trunk to calm her down. The particular baby, Faa Mai is a right trouble maker and has provided us with great entertainment! Lek has also rescued around 280 dogs which are at the park (finding this out almost gave Em a heart attack!) bust most of them are in kennels with only around 50 walking round the park. More than half of these dogs were rescued from the floods in Bangkok last year. There are also water buffaloes and cows here - apparently Lek just can't say no.
While we were at ENP we did a variety of jobs including washing and cutting elephant food (pumpkins, bananas and melons), scooping elephant poop, planting trees, building fences, moving sand for a newborn buffalo and cutting corn and sugar cane with machetes! The most fun jobs of all were feeding and bathing the elephants on a daily basis! :) One afternoon we walked round the park and met all the elephants which was pretty cool.
As for the weather its been both hot and wet - mainly hot but when it does rain it truly pours, notably when we're out in the middle of a field. Rain also means no electricity which makes showering even more difficult than usual. Our accommodation was pretty basic but we had an awesome view. There's a picture of it below, which brings us on to treetops and whistle. So for those of you that don't know, my dad and his friends have this toy sheep they all take away and take photos of in different places (don't ask!!). So as I joke Em bought James a little monkey, treetops. Unfortunately her mum was there at the time and thought it would be even more amusing to buy her one as well - the little deer, Whistle. The photo below shows Treetops and Whistle sitting on our window ledge....
We've met some great people here from across the world - Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and even some Norwegian soap stars! The volunteer coordinators have been great and the main leader, Chet, is possibly the campest person we've ever met, constantly singing 'born this way' and wearing some flair outfits including a glittery waistcoat and bright pink trousers!
Unfortunately our time at ENP has now come to an end and we don't want to leave! For anyone visiting Thailand and wanting to see elephants we would strongly recommend here and if you consider going trekking instead then just consider the pain and suffering that they have and still are being put through.
We're now off back to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai for a few days before heading into Laos.
We've uploaded a few photos of our time here and when we get a chance we hope to upload ones from our cameras onto flickr, although we'll warn you now that we've already taken a fair few!!!
Take care!
X x x
After many hours trying to pack our bags we finally managed to fit everything in and both rucksacks were way under our weight allowance which was a bit of a shock. So we headed to heathrow last Saturday evening where both mums broke down in tears whilst we rushed through security. About 14 hours and 2 flights later we landed in Chiang Mai.
The following morning we were picked up and taken to the Elephant Nature Park where we spent the next week. This place is just amazing and the woman who set it up, Lek, is truly incredible! ENP is a sanctuary for elephants who have been badly treated/injured. There are currently a total of 34 elephants here but there are so many more that need rescuing across Thailand. Many of them have been involved in logging or tourism where they are trained and beaten from a young age. A number of the elephants here were blinded by their previous owners and some have broken backs, hips and legs which will never properly heal. The Sanctury allows the elephants to live in an environment which closely resembles their natural habitat but each elephant has its own mahout (elephant keeper) with them at all times. Lek tries to teach the elephants to gradually start trusting humans again and watching her with the baby girl elephant was just amazing. She sat under her singing lullabies and kissing her legs and trunk to calm her down. The particular baby, Faa Mai is a right trouble maker and has provided us with great entertainment! Lek has also rescued around 280 dogs which are at the park (finding this out almost gave Em a heart attack!) bust most of them are in kennels with only around 50 walking round the park. More than half of these dogs were rescued from the floods in Bangkok last year. There are also water buffaloes and cows here - apparently Lek just can't say no.
While we were at ENP we did a variety of jobs including washing and cutting elephant food (pumpkins, bananas and melons), scooping elephant poop, planting trees, building fences, moving sand for a newborn buffalo and cutting corn and sugar cane with machetes! The most fun jobs of all were feeding and bathing the elephants on a daily basis! :) One afternoon we walked round the park and met all the elephants which was pretty cool.
As for the weather its been both hot and wet - mainly hot but when it does rain it truly pours, notably when we're out in the middle of a field. Rain also means no electricity which makes showering even more difficult than usual. Our accommodation was pretty basic but we had an awesome view. There's a picture of it below, which brings us on to treetops and whistle. So for those of you that don't know, my dad and his friends have this toy sheep they all take away and take photos of in different places (don't ask!!). So as I joke Em bought James a little monkey, treetops. Unfortunately her mum was there at the time and thought it would be even more amusing to buy her one as well - the little deer, Whistle. The photo below shows Treetops and Whistle sitting on our window ledge....
We've met some great people here from across the world - Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and even some Norwegian soap stars! The volunteer coordinators have been great and the main leader, Chet, is possibly the campest person we've ever met, constantly singing 'born this way' and wearing some flair outfits including a glittery waistcoat and bright pink trousers!
Unfortunately our time at ENP has now come to an end and we don't want to leave! For anyone visiting Thailand and wanting to see elephants we would strongly recommend here and if you consider going trekking instead then just consider the pain and suffering that they have and still are being put through.
We're now off back to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai for a few days before heading into Laos.
We've uploaded a few photos of our time here and when we get a chance we hope to upload ones from our cameras onto flickr, although we'll warn you now that we've already taken a fair few!!!
Take care!
X x x
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