Chiang Mai trip post mortem - Day 2

Late night at the bazaar followed by an early morning the following day. About 7am to be exact. Headed down for some simple American style buffet breakfast.

Today was supposed to be a hot spring, going to the Golden Triangle and Myanmar border day, but was rescheduled to the following day to accommodate other guest in the tour. So our agriculture day was moved forward.....and i mean agriculture. You don't need to go the Taiwan for that....Thailand also can what...

First stop was the Orchid farm that houses some common orchids like these...


to some that are never seem before around here, at least i have not seem them....

to some wild orchids....


After learning about the flora, we then head on to learn more about the faunas

More about elephants to be exact....We came here to look at and get closer at these giants which is almost impossible in the wild, even back home

The other attraction here will be the elephant show where the elephants will parade around the ring, throw some darts, paint some pictures, give a massage, move some logs and kick some balls.


The proceed to get some close up with the elephants...

there goes my white pants....tainted with dust, sand, mud and god knows what. Still its a truly unforgettable experience.

After leaving the camp, we head on for more flora lessons at the botanical garden. However all we saw there were the glass houses, meant to create the optimum condition the the plants it housed. To fully enjoy the botanical garden, it would be a day trip. Other stuff missed here will be the jungle trek and biking. Heck we did not even went into all the glass houses as it was rather rushed.


and that has gotta be the biggest lily i have ever seen in my life so far...


Proceeded for lunch before visiting the some craft makers. It started of with the Thai silk making factory where silk threads are extracted from the cocoons of the worms before sewing them into clothing or other silk based stuff.

It started with the parent moth which can lay about 200 eggs.


Which hatched into these worms.


Which will become individual cocoons. White ones are the China-melanine tainted- silks (lol) and the yellow ones are the Thai silk.


Which will be boiled, with the larvae still inside....talk about cruelty.


Before becoming silk threads which look like meehoon.


We then proceed to the leather, jewel and silver making factories. ( don't know why but it is just part of every single tour i have been to). Before heading to the umbrella...ella...ella...making factory(?) Not as many pictures already as getting on and off the van is finally taking a toll.


This dude here is actually painting on cloth. For a small fee, he can also put those images on a shirt, cap, bag....well you get the picture...

Finally heading over for some birds nest before heading back to the hotel for some much much needed rest.

Come to think of it. Eating birds nest is like eating the home of a bird which is made of twigs, saliva, where the bird shits, eats and does everything there. And it is so expensive...

Dinner was supposed to be a river cruise, but it ended up like a dinner on a motor boat.


It was rather disappointing, the food that is. We were served, mixed veg which had an overdose of pepper, over fried and extremely oily spring rolls, sweet and sour fish which had like 3 or 4 pieces of fillets and tom yam which was neither sour nor spicy(i find the one at a nearby mamak way more spicy and sour) with soggy prawns.

Plus the cruise was about 2 hours and we can't like get off half way as well. The ang-mohs behind us seems to enjoy this 'cruise' very much thou.

After dinner, we headed back and had another round in the bazaar, to get stuff we did not get on the previous day. Heck, even some traders recognized us and offered a lower price for their wares compared to the ones give the previous day. We had this banana roti which was actually roti canai with banana and glazed with chocolate. And a lime orange tangerine juice to drain it down..

Thats it for day two....

to be continued