Chiang Mai Nights

The much done thing we of course did, which was to venture out of Thailand’s second largest and very chilled city Chiang Mai and explore the surrounding hills. Only an hour’s drive away and we were in the misty mountains where our first stop was to visit a village of the minority H’Mong people, originally from the Yunnan province of China and of the same descent as the villagers we met in Sapa, North Vietnam.

Due to it being the low season there was only three of us in our group making it feel like our very own private tour and ‘Charlie’ our tour guide, himself originally from a small village similar to the one we visited, showed us his knowledge of the countryside advising us how to spot poisonous mushrooms, pointing out waterproof leaves (!) and how to blow bubbles through the stem sap of a particular plant – hours of fun! Oh, and I got to shoot a homemade wooden crossbow!

Next stop was an elephant ride in the jungle, of which we were initially a little wary due to the uncomfortable experience had in Ko Lanta. Thankfully these mahouts and their elephants seemed to get on much better, meaning the magnificent animals roamed pretty much where they pleased and stopped to eat whatever and whenever they wanted – which was very frequently – as it seems elephants have one hell of an appetite (this making me feel much better about my own similarly sizeable appetite!). Our chair was even fitted with a seatbelt!





At the end of the ride I even managed to get Daniele to feed our elephant a bunch of bananas – yes, she went near, touched and held a whole bunch of bananas (for those not in the know, Daniele is petrified of bananas and that is no exaggeration!) – I even have photographic evidence (see below) to prove it!! Amazing what the love of a good elephant can do!







During our visit to a second village, this time of the Karen people, we saw some newborn piglets being tended to by the villagers – they were tiny and of course very cute leading to much oohhing and ahhing from Daniele!





Finally, we embarked on a ride on a bamboo raft down a nearby river – needless to say we got rather soaked thanks to our excitable guides but it was a great variation on the white water rafting offered on other tours, although thankfully much less in the way of rapids and white water!