Chiang Mai's Tigers, Elephants, and the LongWalk

We awoke this morning to a cooling temperature of about 18 degrees C. It gets hotter through the day up to 29 degrees by 4pm about this time of the year. Maybe the next trip, I could try to make it earlier in January to enjoy cooler weather.

Peaberry served us a wonderful breakfast of toast, omelet and orange juice. Coffee is available round the clock, so that’s a plus point too. We decided check out the Tiger Kingdom and the Elephant Park today and the staff were so helpful, they arranged a Red Taxi for us at a price of 800 Bhat for a round trip. The first stop was the Tiger Kingdom, entrance is at a minimal fee , and depends on the size of the tiger that you want to spend time with. We decided to take small tiger of about 6 months old as the cubs were not available. Couldn’t be certain if the tigers were sedated a little or they are so used to human touch ..we could just walk around them and take pictures while rubbing their bellies. It was the closest I have ever got to seeing a tiger in the eyes, and the blue of a Bengal Tigers eyes is not something one can ever forget.

The Bengal Tiger a.k.a Panthera. Male and female are kept separately so they dont fight. 

They didnt have so tiny cubs available but the cubs are most expensive to hang around with

This small guy was kept near the nursery

We then headed up the Maesa Elephant Camp which had received numerous awards for their elephant care. We stopped at the entrance to enjoy coconut ice cream with bubur pulut hitam(40 baht well spent!) and got in just in time for the elephant bathing show. The elephants are trained to put their trunks around people for picture taking, then grabbing 20 Baht(thats fee for photo taking) and passing the monies to their Mahouts.

Coconut Icecream with pulut. super yums

The podium for the elephant show reminded me of a Roman Coliseum. The Romans had enjoyed sports with animals, and I remember reading one such sport being a fight between elephants and rhinos.  Thank god, no such spectacle is played today, and the elephant show was a showcase of how intelligent these gentle beings are. To the Oohs and Aaahs of the crowd, the elephants went on stepping over their Mahouts, pulling logs, playing football and even painting a scenic picture.

This fellow is a better painter than i will ever be

Though it was wonderful show by the ever amazing elephants, I couldn’t help but cry at the thought that these magnificent giants are not in the wild instead. It is sad world we live in.

The fee to the camp is 40 bhat but there are souvenir shops inside the camp where the proceeds go to the upkeep of the camp. Diplodocus did a donation with her purchase of another stuffed Elephant, and deviljoe asked her where is the space for her to store more toys, so I guess a new apartment is much needed now.

From the camp we went down to the Orchid Farm and Butterfly house, the orchids were in arrays of colours and textures and I was lost in richness of these beautiful plants.We had decided to have our lunch here and though I would not normally eat at the parks around KL, the food here was really good.

Butterfly enclosure..I almost didnt get out alive after the Butterfly attacked

We got back to our hotel at 5, tired and beat , but just as we sat in the lounge, Mr Kishore walked in the front yard. He immediately came to us and told us to take a taxi to the night walk,that it would be a worth stroll. So as hurriedly as humanely possible, we raced to our rooms, washing up before catching a taxi to the walking street.

The traffic was starting to get heavier by 6pm. The driver dropped us across from the walking street and we right in the middle of km long road of food and more food. It reminded us of the old gurney drive, before it became the commercialized eatery it is today. We were sort of lost, not sure which way to go, so we decided to take a breather next to a stall selling sort of like lok lok. The smell of the grilled meat was amazing and were decided to place an order for a stick each, it cost us 10 Baht. When was our satay ever RM1? Seems a lifetime ago, sigh.  The meat on a stick was good, the pepper sauce burning into our tummies. Finally pedas food!

Holy-lot-of-people

 Anyway the crowd seemed to going one way, so we got into the mass of heads and followed along. That’s when we realized the nigh walk was just in front of us, excitedly we followed the throng of people. Food was everywhere we turned, Sausage with pulut? 2^nd stop for food it is! Mini donuts, black bean pau, mango sticky rice, waffles,sausages, avocado In a cup, u name it, they have it. Apart from a  brief panic of attack of losing devil Joe, everything else was great. The only problem was, we did not realize the walk goes on for about 2-3 kms and there aren’t many shops to stop and sit at and there isn’t any small lorongs to get out of the street. Once you are in,you got to be in for all the way. We had to make one pit stop for a beer so that we don’t lose our knees and after that we were so happy to see the end of the road that we had to stop again for crepes. Not knowing how to order exactly, we decided to just order the same thing as the customer in front of us,though with minor changes(they had egg with chicken floss and chocolate sauce. Chicken and chocolate? I’ll pass)

Me and Pekster enjoying the sticky rice. somehow we couldnt find this in Krabi.. 

Tiru people and order crepe..but it was good tho

The things at the street walk are cheaper than the bazaar so haggling is not much of an option. There are many people so they tend to keep their prices at a certain rate. In pain and tired as hell, but with grins on our faces, we only got back to our hotel around 11pm. Phew.