deluxe.

Our fun time in Chiang Mai started at the zoo, and it thoroughly exceeded our expectations.

The animals were of course a little more exotic: zebras, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, elephants, lions, tigers, bears. We even saw the only three pandas in Thailand and visited the aquarium that houses the longest underwater tunnel in Asia.

The best part, though?

You can feed so many of the animals that you encounter. They have stations with fruit, vegetables, and meat–whatever diet is appropriate–and you can purchase a basket for somewhere between $.30 and $2.

It was more fun than I could say.

Seriously? He was cute enough to almost convince us to get a pet elephant.

I fed raw beef to a leopard!

The whole place was huge, and we spent seven hours perusing. It wasn’t designed very practically, which I might argue is somewhat common in Thailand, and we walked up some sharp hills and steep, uneven steps for many of these hours, sometimes just to find that there was nothing built at the end.

With such a day full of walking and exercise, we enjoyed a night out: dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Chiang Mai, complete with a hamburger and fries for Stephen!  We had some Starbucks coffee while we waited for our late showing of Hugo, in theaters here in 3D. It was brilliant, by the way.

And it was a very fun, very deluxe sort of day.