Thailand II

After enjoying the Islands very much, it was time to continue to our next destination: Chiang Mai, which means the city of elephants. A city that has all the activities like Bangkok, but with the calmness of a big village in the mountains. Definitely my favorite city in the north of Thailand! There are so many things to do that we decided to take it easy and only to choose a few activities instead of running around like crazy.
Inside the city there aren't public buses, but kind of pick-up trucks where you jump in the back and depending on the color it drives to a certain direction of the city and drops you off right at the place you need to be, kind of like the Israeli Monit Sherut, but then the lazy

person version where you don’t need to walk even the last 50 meters ;-) But the even cheaper option is to rent a motorbike, so there we were, together on a motorbike 9 km drive up in the mountains to our first activity, the visit of the famous “Wat Phra That Doi Suthep” temple. Beautiful and spiritual place that was definitely worth the long drive up the mountain!
Next day time for cooking :-). Together we took a Thai cooking class, so much fun!! I love cooking so was smiling all day and Yohan probably liked me smiling all day more than the cooking all day ;-) but was definitely the best curry paste maker of the whole group :-D It looks so easy, but smashing all the herbs into a paste, is really hard and physical work!
But what made our trip to Chiang Mai the best in the whole world was the visit to the Elephant Nature park, an elephant sanctuary where they already rescued 70 elephants that been abused, used for illegal lodging, elephant shows, tracking on elephants for tourists or they hurt themselves by stepping on landmines. The stories are heartbreaking. There policy is that elephants should be walking free, without being controlled by a painful hook and that riding on them is unnatural and not good for the animals. Did you know that when you

go to elephant riding places, only the chair where you sit on is already 150 kilos? On top of that mostly 2 people and additionally sometimes a guide, that is at least 400 kilos, if not more. And even worst, did you know that in order to train an elephant that they first break his spirit mentally by chaining his feet, trunk and hurting him as long as it takes for him to listen to his trainer? Like us, most people aren’t even aware of this. It was really nice to learn more about these beautiful animals and absolutely a dream come through to have an overnight visit so we had in the morning, with only the 3 other people of our group and the guide, the park for ourselves. And as a cherry on the cake, my long wish to bath an elephant came through twice, absolutely the highlight of our visit to Thailand!
(As I was mostly totally hypnotized by the elephants and by scratching them behind their ears, their favorite place to be cuddled, Yohan took all the amazing pictures, so all honor goes to him :-)