Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand, and on our second time through (after our day passing through en route to Pai), we only had a brief amount of time to explore, along with a fairly streamlined plan for how we were going to spend our time. After settling into our new hotel, the first order of business was to reconnect with old friends – Alex and Rachel, the American couple that we went caving with in Phong Nha, Vietnam and had Christmas dinner with in Hanoi, Vietnam. One of the greater joys in traveling is to meet people and befriend them, then to have the good fortune of running into them (either intentionally or unintentionally) later on in one’s travels. Given that Rachel and Alex are finishing up their ~6 months of travels, it was fun to swap stories about our travel experiences to date, ruminate on traveling as a whole and, specifically, as a couple (it’s harder than people realize, but incredibly worthwhile) and to chat about what it will be like to reintegrate into the “real world” upon returning to the U.S. It was a great evening and definitely reenergizing!
The next day was a long-anticipated highlight of our travels – playing with elephants! There are a bunch of elephant “sanctuaries” (they use the term very broadly) around Chiang Mai where you can see/pet/feed/wash elephants, so Jess did a ton of research to ensure we were able to go to an ethical sanctuary that actually treats the elephants properly (e.g., didn’t allow anyone to ride the elephants). We ended up going with the Ethical Elephant Sanctuary, which was a great decision! They picked us up bright and early in the morning for a lengthy tuk tuk ride up into the mountains to the sanctuary, which included a brief stop at the market to get supplies for the elephants. Once we were there they outfitted us in colorful pseudo-ponchos to wear around the elephants (Jess and I had matching blue/white ones – adorable, right?). Apparently elephant trainers/handlers wear these same type of ponchos when working with the elephants, so by wearing them the elephants were more likely to respond favorably to us. [Editor’s note: I have been feeling pretty conflicted about animal-related tourism like this because I know it’s so easy for the place to be dis-incentivized to treat the animals well. When I saw the number of elephant parks in the area I knew I’d need to really try to find something good, since it was obvious that a lot of them just do whatever they think tourists want. Riding elephants, specifically, is known to be pretty traumatic to the animals, mainly because the training and “domestication” needed to make it safe for people requires a lot of aggressive and painful negative reinforcement. Luckily, there are more and more places that truly do care about elephant welfare, and more than that, have realized that there is a large tourist population who also cares and wants to support places that do the right thing. So, no riding at all, only positive reinforcement (mainly food and treats) as opposed to abusing the animals, and generally a caring and personalized (elephantized?) environment were on my list. I’m really happy with the Ethical Elephant Sanctuary and feel that all my requirements were met!]
In our matching ponchos with one of our new friends.
The elephant sanctuary had 6 elephants – 4 adults and 2 babies. Our morning started by petting the elephants and feeding them chopped bits of sugar cane, which they loved and eagerly snatched from our hands with their trunks. We could hardly pull the sugar cane out fast enough, as the elephants were voraciously hungry for them! After finishing the sugar cane treats, they moved on to the large stacks of bamboo that were lying around so that they could finish their meal. After this, we followed the elephants up into the hills behind the sanctuary so that we could see them in their more “natural” element as they foraged for food in the bushes and trees. [Editor’s note: I really liked this part, though there wasn’t really any interaction for us, because it really did feel closer to a “wild” experience. It’s truly amazing how such a huge animal can become almost camouflaged in the bushes so quickly! It was great to see them scratching their backs on tree trunks and foraging for leaves the way they’re meant to with no forcing or coercion.] Thereafter, we returned to the lunch hut for a buffet of food and to change into clothes for the true highlight of the day – the elephant bath!
Feeding the eager elephants sugarcane
Rorie walks with one of the baby elephants into the woods
Two of the elephants in the forest while one of the keepers watches from the tree above them
The purple streaks on this elephant are a treatment for mosquito bites.
There were a couple of steps to the elephant bath. First, we followed the elephants into a giant mud pit that was a couple of feet deep. Our jobs were to counterintuitively “clean” the elephants by rubbing them all over with mud, which was lots of fun! [Editor’s note: This is good for their skin – just as Rorie experienced in the mud spa in Nha Trang, Vietnam. Not having been there, I choose to imagine that the experiences were pretty similar.] The staff of the sanctuary were troublemakers who also rubbed mud all over us, so by the end we were all a mess. We then followed the elephants out of the mud pits and into a nearby river where the real party began. We were given plastic bowls/containers to make us more efficient and effective at our next task: splashing water all over the elephants to wash the mud off of them, as well as all over each other! While this only lasted for 10-15 minutes, it was downright pandemonium of laughter and chaos as super cold water was splashed in every direction. With all of the elephants in the water at once, we bounced frenetically between all of them to wash the mud off and, quite frankly, just play with them. The baby elephants scampered through the water, rubbing up against us and, in some instances, almost knocking us over. It was loads of fun! [Editor’s note: The elephants seemed to really enjoy the water fight as much as we did, despite our loud shrieks as buckets of cold river water arced overhead and drenched us from every direction. A couple of times one of the animals would join in by sucking up and then spraying water with her trunk, which added to the silliness and fun, with the staff also throwing buckets of water in our faces as they playfully yelled “more mud over here!” until everyone was as clean as possible. I didn’t want to leave!]
Rorie spreading mud on a happy elephant
Elephant bath selfie!
Elephant water fight!
More water fight fun
Having so much fun in the river with our buddies.
Rorie takes the opportunity to spread mud all over me in the river
After drying off we finished the day by saying our final goodbyes to the elephants, including with me having an arm wrestling competition with one of the baby elephants. She was lucky I went easy on her…. [Editor’s note: While Rorie was losing his arm/trunk wrestling contest, I managed to also have one of the baby elephants step on my foot – which was certainly better than one of the adults, but still left a bit of a bruise and painful scratch! I figure it’s as good of a minor travel injury story as I’m likely to get, so I’m embracing it.]
Rorie losing his arm/trunk wrestling match.
There can never be enough baby elephant pictures, right?
So sweet!
We didn’t want to say goodbye.
The next morning we checked out of our hotel and commenced our final activity: our cooking class. Unbeknownst to us, there was a food market through a corridor across from our hotel, so we joined the group there and learned more about the various ingredients in Thai cooking. We then joined the rest of our group – all Americans/Canadians, which was kinda weird and easily the highest concentration of North Americans we’ve experienced on our trip (again, Thailand is super western). The class was cool in that they gave us all a list containing several categories of Thai foods (and several items within each category), then let each of us select what we individually wanted to cook for the meal. This meant that all 12 people in our class were able to cook a personalized version of their ideal Thai menu, rather than being stuck cooking a fixed menu or what the collective group wanted. The whole cooking experience was really enjoyable, and I particularly found it quite interesting to learn how to make Tom Yum soup. More than other countries, Thai cooking was really focused on aromatics and flavors, rough cutting large ingredients (e.g., lemongrass, chili peppers and ginger) for the soup that were just there for smells/flavor, but never meant to be eaten. But rather than take these out of the soup when it was done, they were just left inside and it’s understood by everyone that they’ll eat around them. Quite interesting, but also super flavorful! Thai food is probably my favorite, since it tends to have much bigger flavors than the cuisine of other Southeast Asian countries. [Editor’s note: While the cooking class had some dishes we’d already made in our other classes, like spring rolls, papaya salad, and sticky rice, it was a very well organized and laid out class that let us really do the work for every dish. Even though I’m not a huge fan of curries, it was a lot of fun to make our own curry paste and learn the differences between different types of curry. Our instructor was also great, and introduced us to unit sizes like a “sexy cat hand,” which is the size handful of something you would grab if you made a “meow”-type gesture, as well as a spectrum of spiciness that included, in her words as a Thai person, “not spicy, your spicy, or my spicy?”]
Working on a dish with some of our fellow travelers on Team Massaman Curry
Perfect deep fried spring roll technique.
Messing around with our group photo 🙂
Just a few of our delicious creations
The happy, full group.
Another successful cooking class in the books!
After the cooking class, we had one more pit stop before departing Chiang Mai: a cat café. Anyone who knows me well knows that I really, really don’t care for cats. It’s not a fear issue. It’s just an “I don’t like them” issue. Anyways, naturally this means that Jess loves them, because life is hard and everything is terrible. Therefore, to keep my (significantly) better half happy, I found a cat café in Chiang Mai and we decamped there for a few hours before our departure from the city. While I hung out downstairs sipping on tea and working on this blog, Jess was able to hang out upstairs in a room to play with a bunch of oversized cats. She was in heaven, which made it all worthwhile. [Editor’s note: These cats were really, really big and fluffy. It was pretty awesome as I haven’t had nearly as much animal cuddling as I’d like since being on this trip. The bunny café in Pai and the cat café in Chiang Mai are really helping.] After she got her fill of felines, we then caught a tuk tuk to the bus station for an overnight bus to our next destination – Kanchanaburi, Thailand!
Fluffy/happy at the cat café.
