Our first day in chiang mai we lazed about with really no goal and then later we went to the night market where simi easily parted with her money. we were very lazy that day, spending most of it at wawee, a coffee place on the river.
Day two in chiang mai we hired Tawee, our future bff, to basically chaffeur us around all day in the outskirts of the city. We went to the elephant camp, pretty much the highlight of our lives, where we fed the elephants and left the "show" early for the nursery where we spent 20 minutes completely alone with the 3 month old baby. He didnt even know how to take bananas with his trunk yet and kept dropping and stepping on them so we had to put them in his mouth. He kept thinking my arm was a banana and grabbing it. We went to an orchid farm next with a butterfly enclosure, that was cute. We had lunch with Tawee at a really local place (he had to order for us in thai)and then he took us to the umbrella factory and silk factory where they showed you some of the worms and the process silk goes through. Tawee rocks. Later that night we went to bubbles-the most stereotypically asian club that ever existed.
Day 3 we slept in for the first time since we got here. We signed up for a cooking class in the evening and it was a really good time. A little better than our first sooking class (we each had our own wok) and we made spring rolls, pad thai, coconut soup, and mango sticky rice. That night we went to the row of bars near our "hotel" (eagle 2 guesthouse-it was awesome for $9 a night w a/c but the lock to our door was literally a padlock-no frills) and while we were in the bar someone randomly walked up w a baby elephant trying to get ppl to pay to feed it. Its kind of sad that they take advantage of them like that for money.
Our last day in chiang mai was spent ziplining in the forest outside chiang mai. Ziplining wasnt that scary except we are awful breakers. our break was a piece of bamboo that youre supposed to press on the line but instead I just kept closing my eyes when i got close to the platform. After lunch they also took us to a waterfall. When we got back to the city we got on the crazy bus.
Our plan to get to the islands wasa bus ride from chiang mai to bangkok (7pm-4am) a bus from bangkok to champhun (6am-1pm) and a ferry from champhun (1pm 4pm). We literally decided that day that we wanted to go to koh tao instead of koh samui because its a smaller less developed diver island and way less expensive. I had to overcome major koh tao induced malaise to write this entry. My next entry will probably be reaaally long because we decided we probs arent moving for the next 8 days or so- a lifetime on this kind of trip. We've been here since monday and we just switched to a bungalow in the sand for 15 dollars a night- its really really nice too. The epicenter for these kind of beach places is the restaurant/office and ours is this open air two story wood house with balconies over looking the water. AHH its the best. Its called blue wind. alright until later...
