One of the things we had promised the kids we would do while we were in Thailand was to got to a safari park and ride the elephants. While we did let them have a short ride on Jackie’s birthday in Ayutthaya, most of the feedback we found about safari parks was that the best ones were in the north around Chiang Mai – our trip yesterday proved our research to be right on the mark.
While we were wandering around the old city on our first day here, we ran into a tour operator on the grounds of one of the temples – at first we were a little apprehensive, fearing that we were going to get pressured by a typical tout trying to rope tourists in, but the lady (Riam) chatted with us for a few minutes and in addition to being very helpful, her services were priced quite a bit lower than the tour desks we had spoken to in our hotel and on the street.
It seems that her and her husband work independently from the big tour desks – he is the driver, and she is the guide – and they prefer to work with smaller private groups and families vs just selling X seats to fill the bus to go to a given location. This seemed like a great fit for us and we signed up for a trip to an elephant park – they would provide transportation for the day and guide services for $500 Baht (about $15 USD) and we would buy our tickets for the safari direct from the park – turns out that we saved about $1000 Baht by doing this vs a standard tour operator.
Our tour takes us to the Maetang Elephant Park (some info about their animal friendly program can be found here), and the day’s program is for us to take a 1 hour elephant ride, and ox-cart ride, stop for a buffet lunch, and then a 1 hour bamboo river raft ride. The tickets cost us $1000 Baht each (vs the $400 Baht we paid in Ayutthaya for 20 mins) so the day seems like a steal to us, and by the time we are done, it will be among the best $30 USD per person we have spent so far.
We begin with the elephant ride – the ‘trek’ takes us back and forth across the Maetang River a couple of times and up into the mountains and to the Lisu mountain tribe village. We get the added bonus of a couple of baby elephants following us (and their momma’s I suspect) along the trail. The trek itself is awesome, it is so peaceful going through the jungle, and the scenery is amazing. We bring some bananas and sugar cane with us to feed the elephants along the way, and they clearly know who has food and where it is 🙂
Once we get to the Lisu village, we get off the elephants and they transfer us to an cart pulled by two oxen for the return trip to the camp. The elephant drivers (mahout) return the elephants to the camp, and the ox carts plod along down a road to return the people back to their starting point. To get us all into a single ox-cart Jackie got to sit up front with the driver – at one point he turned over the reins to her and she was driving us along down the road – clearly, the rules for driving an ox-cart in Thailand are a little laid back!
Once we get back to the camp we walk back down to the river to watch the mahout’s give their elephants a bath and a refreshing dip in the river, and then there is a short show with about 8 or 9 elephants to show some of the amazing skills that the elephants have learned. One of the elephants has been trained to kick a soccer ball with striking accuracy, and can also flip the ball up with it’s trunk and then kick it in the air with either it’s front or hind leg – it seems like maybe the Ladybugs soccer team back home could use a few practice sessions with the elephant 😉
One of the elephants (named Suda) has been trained to paint pictures using her trunk – we have seen this before a places like the Calgary Zoo, but this is much more impressive – she paints an actual picture of an elephant and some flowers (all the ones we have seen before are really only a random bunch of brush strokes on a page). At the end she signs her name on the picture and takes a bow. Jackie asked specifically for a picture painted by an elephant for her birthday present, and was thrilled to be able to see the elephant paint the picture, and then was able to buy the actual picture painted that day! (I have a video of the painting being made that I will post online somewhere once I get back to a high speed connection)
All the while our guide, Riam, is helping us to get the perfect spots to view some of the events, or arrange the purchase of the picture, etc. so with her great help the tour is going along fantastically. Next it is off to lunch before taking the bamboo raft down river. We were not expecting anything great from the buffet having sat through a couple before, but were pleasantly surprised when the buffet contained a large array of choices and they were all well prepared, including a couple of our favorites – spring rolls, and mango with sticky rice. After a few visits to the serving table, we are done with lunch and off to the bamboo rafts.
The raft is exactly what it sounds like – about 20 bamboo poles strapped together to form a flat ‘raft’ – for us they place 3 wooden frames on top of the raft for seats and we are ready to go. I am not completely certain they thought through the whole process of feeding people before getting on a raft, but the big lunch we just consumed surely helps to lower the raft a little lower in the water…. In the center, the raft seems like it is sinking – sitting about 1/2 inch below the surface of the water, but surprisingly the whole thing is quite stable, and aided by the 2 Thai ‘drivers’ the raft wanders it’s way down the Maetang River.
The raft journey is about 4 kilometers (a little under 2 miles) and while not quite as good as a massage, the experience is quite zen like. The only sounds, other than the people on your raft talking, is pure nature at it’s finest, and it would be easy to just let the river carry you and your raft along for the entire day if it were possible. Sadly, our crew and their raft must make their way back (the raft gets loaded on a truck for the return trip) so after our 4k we unload on the river bank where our smiling tour guide is waiting to pick us up.
On the way back towards Chiang Mai we decide to stop at a monkey school – the facility trains monkeys to pick coconuts as the monkeys are much more agile than a human picker, and can harvest the coconuts much faster by leaping from tree to tree vs the human alternative. There is a little baby monkey here that the kids all get a picture taken with and a number of monkeys in the facility that you can go look at, and then they put on a short show to show off some of the skills they are being taught. They say that it takes about 4 to 5 years to train the monkeys properly before they can go out and work the coconut farms. The show was fun, and some of the monkeys and there tricks were quite cute, but it felt a little ‘touristy’ to me so while the kids enjoyed it, I would likely pass the next time around.
For the last stop on our trip we take a long windy road up the side of one of the mountains overlooking Chiang Mai city to see the Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep – this is likely the last temple we will see while here, but it is quite impressive, and has a phenomenal view of the city and the surrounding area. The temple complex sits high above the road and can be reached by climbing the 309 steps to the top (or by a tram if you are real lazy) and we all ‘step-up’ to climb the stairway. Once we get to the top the view is everything it is cracked up to be – it is too bad that it was a little hazy because the pictures do not do it the justice it deserves. We also step into the temple itself to look at the Chedi and to get a blessing directly from one of the monks – we had not been blessed this way since the temple at Koh Samui, so a fresh blessing seems like a good thing 🙂
Our tour comes to an end with our return to the city. Riam and here husband were great, and we had such a great tour that we have booked them again for another tour out to Chiang Rai a couple days from now. We take an hour or so to unwind and then pop down for a massage 🙂 for the perfect end to a perfect day.