Hi everyone,
Today's our last full day in Chiang Mai before we head to Laos so we thought we'd update you before crossing the border where the internet connections are apparently as slow as Newcastle United’s back four...
In the past few days, we’ve seen some Thai boxing, gone on an elephant ride, fed a leopard, watched a panda have lunch, done an art course and been to the dentist…
Since our Mum's are reading we’d better explain the dentist bit first… Luckily the trip was voluntary and neither of us has had to have a tooth yanked out by a backstreet butcher. Instead, Sarah decided to take advantage of the very good but very cheap local dentists and have her chipped front tooth capped for less than a tenner. She’d chipped it a few months ago in the UK before we began the trip and we’d been told the big city dentists in Thailand were very good and so it proved. A very clean, professional and quick dentist got the job done in about 20 minutes. We forgot to take a camera in with us but see if you can spot the new Hollywood smile in some of the recent photos!
Anyway, back to the real action… on Friday night we went to the local Kawila stadium to see some Thai boxing. Now the cynical among you may speculate that this was some kind of trade off with the massages, cookery and art courses Sarah's been signing us up for willy nilly… and, well, you’d be right! Sarah did claim to enjoy it, even though she was caught wincing on more than one occasion!
Thai boxing is similar to western boxing except that you’re allowed to kick and elbow your opponent. Nice. Though if that sounds a bit vicious, it’s worth bearing in mind that head butting was only banned fairly recently…
We saw 9 fights altogether, each lasting 5 rounds of 3 minutes with the winner decided on points. The only fight that didn’t go the distance was one of two fights between non-Thais, where we saw a Frenchman knock out a Scotsman with a flying kick to the head. Oof. Good work Frenchie.
The day before that we’d hired a moped and explored the countryside around Chiang Mai. In the morning we drove to Doi Suthep, which is a Buddhist monastery and temple high up in the hills above Chiang Mai. The view from the top was amazing, even with a fair amount of haze, and there were very scenic waterfalls on the way up.
We rode about 90 miles in all, in a big loop to the north west of Chiang Mai, the highlight of which was stopping off at an elephant camp / conservation centre for an hour long ride. It was a great experience, even though our elephant seemed to be suffering from one or two gas issues…
We had a couple of lazy days on Friday and Saturday where we soaked up the sun and sat in a few cafes reading books, wandering around the night market and having massages (Sarah) and watching football (Phil).
By Sunday we were getting itchy feet again, so we hired a couple of push-bikes and cycled a few miles across town to Chiang Mai Zoo. We were glad we did because we managed to see some pandas in action (well, it counted as action as Giant Pandas go!) and feeding time for the tigers and leopards.
Chiang Mai Zoo has two pandas that the Chinese government donated as a symbol of friendship. We turned up at 1pm just as they were waking up and after 5 minutes the female one, Lin-Hui, grabbed herself a few shoots of bamboo, wandered over to where we were stood and plonked herself down and spent about 10 minutes munching about 3 feet from us. Obviously we got massively carried away and took about 100 photos and 10 minutes of video footage, though you’ll be glad to know we’ve saved the best ones for the gallery...
At 2pm it was big cat feeding time, so we made a dash for the tiger cage just in time to see the keeper send a couple of big chunks of meat down a pulley to the hungry tigers and watch them jump up and grab them. Look out for the ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year’ shots in the gallery!
After the tigers, it was the leopards' turn. Though this time they were letting visitors pay 20 baht (about 35p) to feed lumps of meat on metal poles through the cage to the leopards. Phil had a go and just about managed to get away with all his limbs still attached.
Today we went on a course in batik making. Can you guess who's choice it was?! For those of you who don’t know (which included Phil until about 8 hours ago) batik is where you draw in wax on cloth and paint in-between, the wax resists the paint and you can create different effects using grains of salt and sugar. Sarah’s efforts were very artisitic. Phil cheated and traced an elephant the teacher had drawn…
And tonight we're marking our last night in Thailand with a return trip to Tuskers' weekly quiz night - will we hold on to the Champion's title? Find out in the next installment...
All in all we’ve had a great time in Thailand and it’s definitely been one of our favourite places, but our visa expires on the 13th so we’re off to Laos tomorrow. Or to give it its full title, the People's Democratic Republic of Lao, which as you can tell by the use of the word “democratic” means it’s a one-party communist state. Obviously.
Hopefully we’ll be able to update you about our slow boat trip down the Mekong and visits to Luang Prabang, Vang Viang and Vientiane soon. Though if the internet fails us in Laos, then we’ll have wait till we reach the Nam in about 10 days time.
Till then, take care.
Love from Phil and Sarah x x
