How do I tell the story of Chiang Mai? Do I skip to the Dragon named Mom? 

No, that’s too far ahead.  We must go back.  Past the wax monks and tigers, the golden Pagodas, the remains of the Buddha, and the ancient city gates.  We must start our story of Chiang Mai in the Elephant Sanctuary.

ELEPHANT NATURE PARK

I’m not an environmentalist.  I’m not an animal rights activist.  I really don’t care what KFC does to its Chickens as long as it gets those 7 herbs and spices right.  So, I didn’t know if I would like my trip to the elephant nature park.  They are, needless to say, very big on animals, and I wasn’t eager to listen to a lot of hippie speak on how animals are people too.  However, Elephants are totally cool and I really wanted to get to see them up close, so that possibility was too good to pass up.

I was absolutely blown away by my visit to the park.  While yes, they are huge animal lovers, the purpose of the park is to let you interact and fall in love with these creatures, and then hope you will go spread the word to not mistreat them.

Right out of the gate, you get to go feed the elephants and start bonding with them. 

It’s hard not to fall immediately in love with these creatures.  They are so much different in person than you imagine them.  Far from lumbering giants, they graceful and almost elegant in the way they move.  The ground does not rumble when they walk, in fact they are actually really good at sneaking up on you.  They can run at speeds of 25 miles an hour, and that trunk can flick you aside pretty fast.  That truck can also shovel dramatic numbers of watermelons into an elephants mouth.

The guide took us all over the park and taught us the elephants names and had us call to the elephants by name as he told us their stories.  While some of these elephants have suffered traumatic injuries, at least 2 were shipped over from Burma after stepping on land mines, most were systematically abused and mistreated for long periods of time in logging or in street performing.  Take my friend Jokia .

Jokia was mistreated and abused for many many years.  If her eye looks a little strange to you, there’s a reason for it, she’s blind.  She was blinded in both of her eyes by some very cruel owners.  Again, I’m not an animal rights activist or anything, but you have to be an especially bad kind of evil to intentionally blind an animal.

When Jokia arrived at the park many years ago, the story goes, they didn’t know how she would react to the herd, or how the herd would react to her.  They were very worried that an older, blind elephant might not fit in, and that the herd might reject her.  When she arrived, another of the older elephants, Mae Perm noticed her, and went over to her.  They quickly became inseparable, and now, even years later, Mae Perm leads Jokia around the park, acting as Jokia’s eyes, you will not see one of them without the other following very quickly behind.   

We found this out as we were meeting Jokia and Mae Perm appeared silently out of nowhere, like some sort of elephant ninja, to make sure we did not hurt her friend. Good times!

The program at the park was extremely well run.  Not a lot of structure, just “hey, look there are elephants, lets go look at them.  Now let’s go look at other elephants!”  It’s a great time and you really come to love these animals. 

P.S. That little baby elephant, I cannot emphasize this strongly enough, is a total A-hole.  But in a lovable baby elephant kind of way.

Highlight of the elephant afternoon, is that you get to take the elephants down to the river and wash them.  I hate washing my car, but a two ton mammal?  Pass the soap.

I should probably add that these guys promptly exit the river, run over to the nearest pile of dirt, and proceed to cover themselves in it.  Oh well.

Elephant Nature Park is an amazing experience, a definite top ten on this trip.  I highly recommend it to anyone who happens to pass through the Chiang Mai area.

TIGERS

Meeting the Elephants is such an absolute high, how do you follow that up?  You meet freaking Tigers, that’s how.

A quick word on the ethics of Tiger Kingdom.  I looked into it, and the animals are not drugged.  And, having been in the cage with many of these tigers, I can tell you they did not act drugged, especially the one tiger who was walking around kind of fast and freaking me out.  Chill out Tiger!

The main criticisms I found while I was researching this place amounted to “It’s wrong to keep animals in cages and outside of their natural environment.”  That’s fine, but these tigers also happened to be SUPER endangered, so keeping them around, even if it is in cages, until we can boost numbers in the wild seems like a good idea.  Also, it’s just really cool to be able to take pictures with tigers.

No lie, it is taking all of my willpower to not make that my Facebook Profile pic.  There’s a strong chance I make that my Tinder Profile pic and get all the dates.  But it’s not just cool pictures, you get the opportunity to see tigers of various ages (you don’t get to be in the cage with a tiger over a certain age.  Fun fact:  mauling you Siegfried and Roy style is the “get off my lawn” of the tiger world) and interact with these amazing animals.  Also, baby tigers are really cool.

I know what you’re thinking.  Brad, You have all of these pictures of tigers, but do you have a picture of you spooning with a tiger?

Okay, fine, but do you have a picture of you and the tiger looking seductively into the camera?

So in conclusion, Tigers are awesome, don’t make them do magic acts in Vegas.

TEMPLES AND HISTORY AND THINGS THAT ARE NOT ELEPHANTS AND TIGERS

Chiang Mai has a long and fascinating history.  It is remarkable how much of the old city wall still stands after all these years, and how some of the old temples dating back hundreds of years still stand.

Take this dope place-

Wat Chedi Luang, dates back to the 14th century.  It once housed the Emerald Buddha that has since been moved to Bangkok and which I labelled as “boring.”  My guide told me I should probably not call the Emerald Buddha boring, since hundreds of millions of people consider it super sacred.  Time to brush up on sensitivity training.  Also cool, the wax monks.

So, I did not know that these guys were wax, and they freaked me out when I first saw them.  Well played, thailand.

Also worth seeing, Wat Suan Dok, a cool old temple that has a history I remember being very fascinating, but did not write down and am sure is readily available on wikipedia. 

The coolest of the temples is Wat Prathat Doi Suthep. The temple is set high above the city on a mountain and overlooks the entire Chiang Mai Valley, or at least it would if the valley weren’t, you know, covered in smog.  The temple is a series of structures, and really quite something to see. If you want to see it, you get to climb up these perilous and certainly not up to code steps:

But, if you do, you are in for a treat.

The temple is really quite spectacular.  You can also get blessed by the Buddhist monk who wraps a nice piece of string around your wrist so that the demons at the gate know not to drag your soul down to hell, or something like that.  I wasn’t entirely clear.  Also, on the way out I saw this cool thing which no one explained to me.

I can only assume someone has some unresolved feelings towards their mother.  Other than crazy dragon mom statues, Chiang Mai is one of my favorite places I’ve ever been.  It feels like a city that you have to come back to again and again and each time something new is discovered.  What a wonderful place!