White water rafting

On my last Saturday in Thailand I had trouble choosing what I was going to do. I thought about visiting Doi Inthanon (the highest point in Thailand and how of the Royal Project) but couldn't figure out an easy way to get there and still have the independence to see the stuff I wanted. I was very tempted to go to the pool and lay out for the day as a break from the business of the past couple weeks but that seemed to boring and very un-Thai. So Joy convinced me to go white water rafting. I have been before in West Virginia so I wasn't very nervous. I was a bit surprised that the raft guides were much more conservative than the ones I had in the US. We never paddled through the rapids, just sat on the side or on the slightly bigger ones the instructed us to sit in the bottom of the raft. Also they had rescue crews on the shore at all of the big rapids and our boats had to line up and take turns going through the big stuff. Overall it was really fun though. We met some cool American girls who were living internationally for a year. One of them was living in Israel and completing an internship related to child development and the other girl was teaching English in Malaysia. They were both at their half way points and were traveling for vacation in Thailand. It was fun to compare stories about living abroad and crave western foods.

 

  

Orchid Farm

On the way back we stopped at the orchid farm. It was raining again but still very beautiful. Here are some of the highlights.

 

Poi and I 

LONG AWAITED ELEPHANT CAMP

We went to the Maetaman Elephant Camp which was about an hour and a half ride from the city of Chiang Mai. They gave us a discount for our project and were actually very interested in learning more. 

The day started with a demonstration of the elephants bathing in the river with their "mahout." Each elephant that lives at the camp has two mahouts so that they can have days off. Traditionally the mahout and the elephant would be partners for the elephants entire life.

The elephant show....

Riding an elephant. We sat on top of a platform on the elephant. I road with our friend Keung who uses a wheel chair. She has a spinal cord injury and is not able to use her legs. The staff helped her transfer in an out of the platform and was very accommodating on our visit. I was very surprised at how much the elephant rocks while it walks. Keung and I almost slipped out of the seating area a couple of times.

Feeding the elephant bananas and sugar cane. We were told that an elephant eats about 10% of its body weight a day.

We walked along the road and then cut into the fields. This was the view while we stopped to give our elephant a snack.

We had a little down time before our next activity after lunch so our hostess for the day showed off one of the ways the camp "recycles."

According to her, elephant dung has a lot of grass left into which they use as the fibers in the paper. The soak the dung for a while, drain it, boil it and then make paper. It was available for sale at the gift shop and she gave us eat a book mark to take home.

The last activity of the day we chose to participate in was a bamboo ride down the river. The river was very calm but peaceful. They loaned us these lovely hats in case it started to rain too hard.

Mae Sa Water Fall

 On Saturday of our long holiday weekend I decided to rent a motor bike and go to Mae Sa water falls. It has 10 levels of water falls and a lot of hiking (well depending on where you park and how many water falls you want to see). I parked at the bottom and hiked all the way to the top. It was a nice trip and a lot of water falls. The night before I visited there was a big rain storm so the river was very full. I tried to keep track of each number of the water falls but it didn't work out too well. I marked the ones I remembered.

1st water fall.

5th Falls

 

 Lots of stairs.....

 The view point was a bit of a let down. You couldn't really see very much because of the over grown trees and part of the wooden platform was falling apart.

Thai people swimming in the base of the 5th water fall. 

 

 

The 10th water fall.

 The super cool scooter I rented and drove to the water falls. Yes don't worry I wore my helmet!

The most yummy western food I've had in Chiang Mai, french toast, for dinner.