The last full day in Chiang Mai! We decided that we wanted to leave the city, and so we scheduled an outdoor tour in the Chiang Mai countryside today. The tour started at 8:30 AM, when we were picked up in front of our hotel by a songthaew and our tour group. The first stop on the tour was a visit to a farm which raised both orchids and butterflies named the Bai Orchid-Butterfly farm. The drive took about 30 minutes, and while it wasn’t the most comfortable it wasn’t too bad either. We spent about 30 minutes walking through the rows of orchids and the butterfly pen. It was amazing to see all of the different orchids growing. It gave me a few ideas on ways we could grow orchids in our apartment… another project ahead I suppose. The butterflies were nice to see as well, I think I got a few pretty good photos of them which I am excited to see.
After our visit to the butterfly and orchid farm the tour continued on to the jungle. The next stop was an elephant tour, where we rode on the back of an elephant for 30 minutes. It was interesting to see the jungle from a slightly higher perspective. We bought a small bag of plantains and sugarcane to feed to the elephant during the ride; it would reach up behind its head and grab it from our hands.
Note: In retrospect, while it was an interesting experience, both Todd and I regret taking the elephant tour. It didn’t seem like the elephants had a great life, and there were better ways we could have interacted with them. If we were to do something similar in the future, we would do more research ahead of time to explore better alternatives.
After the elephant ride we took a quick break for lunch. Lunch was simple and portable, pad thai wrapped in a banana leaf. The tour then continued with a hike in the jungle, which took us to a waterfall. The hike took about 45 minutes in each direction. It was a pretty low-intensity trail, but other people in the group seemed to have a hard time with it. Todd had no troubles though, and seemed to enjoy stretching his legs. We got some nice photos of the two of us at the falls before returning back to the songthaew. On the return trip we saw a tarantula nest, however, we didn’t see any of the tarantulas.
The final part of the tour was some white water rafting, followed by bamboo rafting down a river. The white water rafting part was a lot of fun, while the bamboo rafting was only okay. The bamboo raft didn’t float very well, so we got pretty wet as we floated down the river. At one point during the the white water portion of the trip we saw an elephant rummaging through the forest on the bank of the river. It wasn’t easy to see at first, and given that we were only able to see the elephant’s tail at first Todd thought that there was a snake fighting something in the forest! Luckily it was just an elephant foraging for food. It was pretty impressive to see an elephant like that in the wild.
The drive back to Chiang Mai took about one and a half hours; both Todd and I nodded off during the drive despite the bumpy and cramped conditions. After arriving at our hotel, we quickly got organized, changed, then went to dinner. The Wi-Fi at our hotel was out so we were a bit unsure as to how we were going to book tomorrow’s activity, but luckily the restaurant we ended up at had Wi-Fi. We booked a half-day Thai cooking class, which should be a ton of fun! We have done a lot of last minute booking of activities during the trip. While it has been a bit stressful, it seems to have worked out alright for us this trip. After dinner we wandered through the night market and picked up 2 souvenirs - we bought ourselves a small wooden temple, and we bought Brett & Jay a ladyboy keychain toy. Hopefully they’ll get a laugh out of it. We tried finding something for our parents but we came up short; hopefully they aren’t offended.
I just finished repacking my suitcase; we get going early tomorrow and I won’t want to forget anything! We check out, then we cook, then we fly back to Bangkok to start our trip home! We’re ending the honeymoon with a blast!