Tigers and Elephants and Temples. Oh my!

Tigers and Elephants and Temples. Oh MY!

March 15, 2011

Senne's Summary: Today we were able to pet tigers and ride an elephant. Then we visited a Palace (if you want to know the hilarious name, you must read on 😉) and walked up 360 steps to a hilltop Temple.

Sophia and Steve making arrangements for the day in the gorgeous lobby of the Sirilanna Hotel

This morning our driver picked us up for our private tour. Sophia, the tour agent at our hotel, was able to secure us a car for the day for the same price it would have cost us to go on a bus tour to two places. We prefer doing tours this way because we get to pick what time we want to leave, and where we want to go.

Saw this sign as we were driving. Did you notice that you can book the "Pretty" for your next event?

Our first stop was at Tiger Kingdom. Steve had done a bit of research on the Internet and found out that there are two tiger places in Chiang Mai. One of them sedates the tigers and the other doesn’t. We chose to go to Tiger Kingdom because they don’t sedate the tigers.

When you arrive you decide which tigers you want to go into the cage with (sound scary? Yep, it is!) I wanted to only do the smallest (being the chicken that I am), but Steve talked me into also going in with the big tigers so I could at least take photos of him. We went in with the smallest tigers first. One was 3 months old, and the others were 4 months old. They were very cute, and not too big. It was still a bit scary. I personally think that having a little healthy fear of tigers is a good idea! There were lots of trainers in with the tigers, and they interacted with you and the tigers. It was interesting to watch because it was a bit like watching someone training a puppy. "No Bite!" was one phrase we often heard!

Steve playing with a 3 month old tiger.

They also have a one-month-old tiger at the sanctuary, but you can’t interact with it yet, because it is too young. We were able to look at it though. It was very cute.

One month old tiger!

After the smallest tigers we went in with the big tigers.

This was extremely terrifying for me. I actually spent a lot of time clinging to Steve and hiding behind him.

Yep... terrified!

Steve really enjoyed it, and cajoled me into petting one of the tigers… but I have to say… I could not wait to get out of there, and was extremely happy to get out of there with all my limbs intact!

When this tiger started sniffing the air like this it was time to get out!

Our next stop was the elephant camp. We had been waffling back and forth about going to see the elephants… mostly because zoos make us sad. Call me wimpy if you want… but it just doesn’t seem right (had the same sad feeling at the tiger place… but placated myself somewhat by thinking that they were treated pretty well and its better than extinction… not optimal I know… but it made me feel slightly better about going.)

Elephant having a snack!

Anyway, we went to the camp and decided just to do the half hour elephant ride. They also had an elephant show… but I wasn’t really interested in watching elephants play soccer or darts, so opted just for the ride. It was … weird… It was very scary going downhill… I felt like I was going to end up flying off the front of the elephant! Now, we can say we’ve rode an elephant. So many people told us it was really a highlight… but it didn’t really do anything for either of us. Maybe elephants just aren’t our thing.

...and here we are riding an elephant!

After this we headed on a very windy drive to the Puh Ping Palace. (Pronounced Poo-Ping...I am not making this name up by the way!!!) This palace is the Thai Royal Family’s Summer Palace. You can’t go inside the actual building, but you can walk around the gigantic grounds and admire the beautiful flowers. It was raining when we arrived which actually made the flowers a lot more fragrant… so the rain wasn’t a bad thing...

Steve had to wear these fancy pants to enter the Puh Ping Palace

There is one area of the grounds they call the “reservoir”. It had some fountains in the middle, which were attempting to move to music I think. Let’s just say it was no Bellagio fountain… but that didn’t stop me from dancing along to the music!

A little dancing at the Puh Ping Palace!

Next, we headed to Doi Suthep, which is a hilltop temple.

Beautiful, LONG, staircase to the temple!

You have to climb 360 steps to get to the top. Not for the faint of heart! I managed to make it to the top (with a lot of huffing and puffing!),

Even this baby was faster than me!

while Steve thought it might be interesting to walk to the top with me, then walk back down and run back up all the steps. He’s such a Whakahehe!!! (I’ve been waiting to use that word again 😉)

And there is Steve running up the steps!

The temple at the top was beautiful, and we enjoyed looking at all the Buddhas.

There were a lot of people who came up to the temple to worship… it wasn’t just a tourist attraction.

They also had some very cute little girls doing some traditional dances out in the courtyard, so we watched them a little before we left.

When we headed down to the bottom of the steps there was a little market filled with Buddhas. Steve had wanted to find one to send back home, and this looked like a good place to find one. We did find one we both loved. It was about 21 inches tall and carved out of teak. It also had many decorative mirrored squares on it. We decided that it would be even more special if we bought it here because then we would always remember our trip to the hilltop temple whenever we looked at it.

Now some of you smarty pants are already saying, “Uh OH! Someone forgot to tell them that you can’t take Buddhas out of the country”. You unfortunately are ahead of yourselves… that little tidbit of information is unknown to us at this point… and we happily take our Buddha back to our hotel… imagining how it will look in our next house. (We will come back to this unfortunate rule in a later travel blog).

When we arrive back at our hotel we are absolutely starving! I convince Steve to take me back to the pretty restaurant for some yummy pad thai. The restaurant is really quite beautiful. It’s hard to explain (don’t worry we took photos), but I sure wish I had a room that pretty and comfortable in my own house.  Maybe the next house… who knows!

The great part is, that not only is the restaurant gorgeous and very comfortable… the food was great!

We had a pretty quiet evening after that… all those animals and steps made me very tired!