Rather than boring you with every detail of every day, I'll just sum up what we got up to for 3 weeks in our temporary home of Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai Zoo.
That was really fun. Not like any normal zoo that has cages. No this one didn't really have cages. There was just a bit of water in front of a low wall which I wasn't convinced by really. Especially when getting eyed up by Leo! The zoo is situated on a bit of a mountain, so to say that we had a bit of a walk round is an understatement. They did offer a train thing or a car to take you round but we thought it'd be nice to wander round ourselves. It was loads of fun but hard work. And we've since read in a guide book that you shouldn't attempt to walk round the zoo unless you're a bit of a professional at hiking, haha. So at least we know our fitness levels are up to scratch! All the usual animals that you'd expect to see but with amazing scenery as you go around. Another Jurassic park setting. I actually found the controls to the T-Rex pen so turned them all off before we left :) Oh and the best thing we saw was possibly the biggest spider I've ever seen. It wasn't part of the zoo or anything. Just chilling out in it's web being big. We couldn't catch it on our cameras (not because of size but the light) but we found it on a website anyway and it's not a dangerous one or anything. Probably a common house spider over here. The map for the zoo was comic as well as it didn't really take you to any of the right places. Not unless giraffes these days have big teeth and live in the water... the aligators were huge! And the wooping monkey! It wooped and wooped, until all the other monkeys has a massive woop back at him which shut him up.
The Tribal Museum
We actually agreed with the tuk tuk driver who did fully understand when we asked to go to the National museum of Chiang Mai. But he took us to the tribal museum. It was quite interesting though with lots of facts about the tribes around Chiang Mai. I'm sure you'd learn more by actually going on a hill tribe trek but tht wasn't really on the agenda for us. It was a little out of the center though and it took us a while to get back in as there weren't any tuk tuks.
The National Museum
So the day after next we tried our luck again, and hey ho we managed to make it to the national museum of Chiang Mai. It took about 2 hrs to make our way round, learning about the history and how it's progressed. Was another interesting morning. Here are a couple of facts:
1. King Mairai founded Chiang Mai and had an opening ceremoney on 12th April 1296.
2. Chiang Mai sits in between the River Kok and Mai Rim.Our Day adventure trek!! I'll put another day to write a separate page for that one but it was just so much fun and i'd love to do another one.
Wats
A Wat is a temple. There's a huge amount around CM so we ventured out a few mornings and visited them. They're all pretty much the same thing really but good to go and see. I am Wated out now though so probably won't really see any more. Oh except Bangkok and Cambodia...
Night Bizarre/Day Market/Saturday Market
Always a market or two to look around. And yes I have resisted temptation to most things. Although I didn't really want to give Stephen any more ammunition to take the mick out of my bartering skills... a new one (apart from the Eliza Doolittle) is to tell them that 'I'll come back later'. Knowing full well I won't. It just came out my mouth though, I don't know why I said it. I have since then stopped though. I'm pretty good now.
Doi Suthep
Another temple but actually one of the most important. I won't go in to the story of it, but basically they put a relic of Buddha on a white elephant and sent him off packing and said that whenever the elephant stopped that is where the temple with the relic in will be built. They say it's a miracle as the elephant made a noise before it stopped and died. A sort of sign that it's work was done. We weren't taking the mick, but maybe poor nelly was just knackered and made the noise coz he was dying??!! Anyway Doi Suthep is up the mountains. We got taken up there and then had to contend with 300 steps. We had been told by a few people that it was quite a trek so be prepared. It actually wasn't bad at all and we made it up without any help from paramedics. There was a line of ancient bells up there which specifically said 'no pushing bells'... there were people ringing them though!! Poor monks probably thought lunch had come early or something! So we had a wander, took some pics and listened to a concert being performed by some kids. They didn't seem to have any sort of order of coming in together, or any conduction. But this pretty much matches most other things in Thailand, so it's no surprise!
And then of course the orphanage...
It has been my favourite part of the 3 weeks. They run about with their flips flops on the wrong feet. I actually bonded with Tom Thumb. Actually he bonded with me first, which is lucky seeing as I'm going to adopt him. We used to sit and blow rasberries at eachother which was funny. Although it didn't bode too well for me on the day we arrived there and he had a mouthful of cake...and then there was the day that a little girl found a dead frong and was chasing about with it scaring the others. Including me. Yuk. And the food the supervisors used to give to us! I think Thai's are slightly offended when you say no to food they offer. We had:
- Ice cream sandwich - although not convinced it was proper stuff. We're sure it had an egg and some sweetcorn in it
- coconut wrapped in a lead - except it was all mushy and I can only describe it tasted of slime, so again not convinced. We got over this by feeding it to the kids when the supervisors were'nt looking. Genious.
- Pork Scratching sticks. These were pretty gross. The worst was all the kids hands going in the packet as well...
- Fruit that didn't taste but looked like beetroot
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