My day with elephants and tigers...

Our flight from Kuala Lumpur to Thailand was smooth sailing. It was an early flight so we both slept on the plane. We flew into Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was excited because I hadn't been to this part of Thailand yet. We found an awesome guesthouse to stay at and headed over there. Victor and his wife own Top Garden Boutique Guesthouse. He is a sweet older Canadian man and his wife is from Thailand. He was so kind, we stayed a few nights and actually booked another night for a week later. As much as we loved him, Conor and I teased him alot behind his back (don't tell). Victor couldn't seem to remember anything he said to us so he ended up repeating himself so many times. Oh, Victor.

We booked a tour to go to an elephant camp. We were going to learn from Mahout trainers. I was so excited for this- not only would we be riding the elephants but we got to feed them, bathe them and "command them". Elephants are awesome. I love them. This was my second time up close and personal with some and it is truly an experience. They are so gentle, smart and really all have their own personalities. After learning some words we all got to try out commanding an elephant. It was pathetic watching a group of foreigners try to pretend to be elephant trainers. The Mahout trainers there let us believe the elephants were following us, but they weren't. We rode our elephants to a pond to splash around in the water with them. Luckily we had changed into weird denim outfits to not ruin our daily clothes. I loved this day and really hope we can hang out with elephants again before we leave Southeast Asia!

The same elephant day we also went to the tiger kingdom. This is a zoo like place but only filled with tigers. You pay a certain amount based on which size you want to see. Obviously babies are most expensive because everyone wants to see them. So obviously that's the ones Conor and I paid to see. You enter this small caged off area with someone who works there and they walk you around to the mostly sleeping tigers (and they take your picture!). Some of the babies were up and playing which was just ADORABLE! We stayed for a bit then headed back to town.

In Chiang Mai we found two awesome restaurants that are noteworthy. The first is called Nice Kitchen, Victor recommended. This was a great breakfast place. It was one of those restaurants where you want everything on the menu so it's hard to choose. So then you just order 3 meals at once and call it a day. They had fresh fruit drinks and mouthwatering homemade granola bars. The other place is Cat House. Just thinking about the sandwiches from there make me salivate. The pesto lime sauce was so unbelievably good. Conor considers himself a sandwich master and he said it was one of the best!

We saw a beautiful temple in Chiang Mai called Doi Suithep. Up at the top has a beautiful view of the city. Unfortunately it was very hazy in Chiang Mai so we couldn't see much. There was a monk in the temple who gave us blessed bracelets. Monks can't touch the opposite sex so he just placed it on my wrist for me to tie. As always, the temple was beautiful. But there were alot of tourists at this one, which always takes a little away from the beauty of it all.

We took an overnight train to Bangkok to hang out there for a few days.