After a few days in Mae Sot, we took a quick jaunt up to Chiang Mai. There were just a few things to be explored that Mae Sot didn’t have to offer.
We arrived just in time to catch the last two quarters of the final NBA game at a local pub. While I can’t remember now who we were cheering for, “our team” won, and Steven was pretty stoked he caught the game!
Next, we visited the Grand Canyon. It’s really just an old quarry now turned into a swimming hole with cliff jumping. And this particular day, we arrived for them to tell us there wasn’t any cliff jumping today because someone had hurt their back this morning. When we asked if they were okay, they just said they were at the hospital, but “no problem, we make safe for you.”
And cliff jumping was back in business within thirty minutes or so.
With the back incident and personalities to consider, Stephen & Keri much preferred the tubing while Steven and I took some jumps.
We visited the zoo the next day (with a few hundred Thai school kids), which is one of my favorite places in Chiang Mai. One of the best parts is that you are able to purchase food to feed animals, for about 30 cents per exhibit.
Here Steven & Stephen are feeding emus bananas at the end of a stick. Emus are scarier than you might think, and that stick might have been a bit shorter than we’d have liked!
Check out this hippo mouth!? I love that in offering food to them, they come right to you. I can’t say I’ve otherwise seen the inside of a hippo’s mouth.
Feeding baby pigs milk from a bottle is one of the cutest things.
Here we took turns putting raw meat on the end of a stick and feeding it to a panther. Again, amazing to see the animals so engaged and interested in our being there!
In all, we fed hippos, sheep, goats, elephants, panthers, piglets, emus, & giraffes. Pretty amazing!
The following day we headed back to Mae Sot, but stopped at an Elephant Conservation Center on the way. I think we’d all say it was the best day, so that deserves a post of it’s own!
Leave a Reply