After an 11 and a half our flight from Athens with a layover in Singapore, we finally arrived at the airport in Bangkok, Thailand. We met Savannah’s friend Maley there, who flew in from Dallas and planned to join us for the first week of our Thailand excursion. We decided to spend a few days in Chiang Mai before venturing back to Bangkok.
We met our Airbnb host, Diego, at the airport in Chiang Mai and made our way to our place, a small Thai style villa on the southeast side of the city. Diego had moved to Thailand from Madrid several years back after falling in love with the country. And after all the street food and a visit to a no-ride elephant sanctuary, we thought we might end up on the same path!
Chiang Mai is an amazing place. The food is excellent and it is everywhere and it is very cheap. Pork skewers are 20 Thai baht (~$0.60). Bowls of pad Thai are 70 baht (~$2.10). Beer is just as cheap. And no trip to Chiang Mai is complete without a visit to the night market where you can haggle for just about anything, and at the same time have all of the dead skin eaten off of your feet by a bunch of little fish.
The highlight of our trip to Chiang Mai was our visit to the no-ride elephant jungle sanctuary, an ethical eco-tourism project where we could be with the elephants in their natural habitat. Savannah took a lot of time to research these animals and facilities, so we were glad to have found this one. It was truly a life-changing experience that we would never forget. We fed the elephants bananas and sugar cane and then gave them a mud bath and washed them in a river. Savannah and Maley really became attached to the little baby, who kept coming back!
If you ever visit an elephant sanctuary, please make sure it’s a no-ride place!
We had an amazing time in Chiang Mai but it was time to move on. We said so long to Diego and left to catch our flight back to Bangkok.
This entry was posted in Destinations
