Chiang Mai, Thailand

Day 1

After getting stuck in Bangkok traffic and rushing to the train station I caught my overnight train to Chiang Mai. Shortly after the train took off a man came through and turned all the seats into bunkbeds and I set up camp in the semi-sketchy top bunk. I downloaded the Hangover II to watch on the ride as a tribute to leaving Bangkok. The ride was surprisingly not bad and I slept most of the night. The worst part was probably having to use the bathroom. It took me a solid 3 minutes just to figure out how to open the door. Then the toilet was basically just a hole in the bottom of the train. Real fancy stuff in the second class sleeper cart. But 13 hours later I made it to Chiang Mai! I settled into my hostel and quickly met two girls and we set off for food and to explore the town. Chiang Mai is a bit bigger than I expected but it's a really cool city. I have no idea what the history is but the main town is an old walled city and is set out in a big square, surrounded by water. The city is known for their night markets, so that night a big crew from our hostel set out to find some good street food for dinner.

Day 2

Today Emily (UK) and I are headed to the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary! The sanctuary is filled with rescued elephants from the logging and entertainment industry who know spend their lives happily eating and playing in the river. After a long drive up into the mountains we finally arrived. We were all given a traditional Karen Tribe shirt and were given a slight rundown on how to act around the elephants. We were then given a handful of bananas and got to feed the family of elephants that were at our camp. Throughout the day we rotated between three different camps of elephants feeding them bananas, corn (I think?), and medicine. We were really lucky because our main camp had two PRECIOUS baby elephants who were 6 and 9 months old. They loved to play around and weren't quite sure how to use their trunks yet.We had a break for lunch and got to relax for a bit until afterwards when we gave the elephants a mud bath and washed them off in the river. The babies loved playing in the water. It was so cute and they didn't want to get out. I also fell into the river and got ~300 prickly things in my hand. Two weeks later and there are still a few left but I'm confident that one day they'll come out. By the end of the day we were pretty tired but we still went out to the giant Sunday night market. The Sunday night market is insanely large. I'm not really sure how we all managed to not lose each other. We ate so much good street food. Street food is life. It's my favorite and you can get a really good meal for $1.20. And iced coffee is about $0.75 and they conveniently put it in a plastic bag with handles so you can walk while eating food, drinking your coffee and still have a free hand. They actually put most things in baggies. Great for me but probably not so great for the environment. I still love it though.

Day 3

Today is my ~relaxing low-key~ day. I signed up for a cooking class which took up most of the day. We started by going to the market to buy all of the ingredients. We then went back to our open air kitchen where we made 11 Thai dishes. Everything was SO good. I now know how to properly roll a spring roll. I also was one of 3 people in the whole class who was able to handle "Thai spicy". Everyone else was a wimp and could only handle "foreigner spicy". So I left class full, happy, and really sweaty. Cooking outside, in very hot Thailand, while cooking with 13 other people all cooking over a hot stove, while eating really spicy food, causes everyone to be drenched in sweat. No amount of ice cold Chang beer could cool me down. After cooking class I decided pamper myself and get a pedicure and a hair cut. The Thai woman who cut my hair was perplexed with how frizzy and thin my hair was. She was also angry that it was cut at different levels (my layers?) and got so stressed out she cut off 4in instead of the agreed upon 2cm. She then straightened it and put in product to give me a great flat asian hair look that lasted approximately 5 minutes until I stepped outside into the humidity. It is a pretty good haircut though so I can't really complain.Today is the last day in Chiang Mai and tomorrow I'm catching the 8am bus to Pai!