Chiang Mai

The first thing we saw when we got to the Chiang Man airport were these signs everywhere for a mall named "Maya."  It might have been a sign. 

We also saw this very strange lady Santa in the airport. 

The next morning we woke up early and went to see the sunrise at Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. 

The temple was pretty too. 

You had to climb over 300 steps to reach it. 

On the way back we had a hard time hiring a car to take us down.  This man did not want to take back the only seven people crazy enough to come up for sunrise.  He really wanted to wait until there were ten of us. 

We finally convinced him though. It was neat throughout the trip to meet travelers from other places.  The other people who rode with us were from Brazil and Mexico. 

Next we went to see Wat Phra Singh and Wat Chedi Luang. 

Here are some pictures of the airbnb we rented. 

It was gorgeous, but the showers were cold. 

We washed our own laundry in the sink and hung it out to dry.  

They had these giant durian growing there. It is the world's stinkiest fruit, but we didn't open it. 

This looks like a pretty pleasant spot for Ari to catch up on a few emails. 

Here I am at the front gate of our house. 

After my time in Bangkok, I forced Ari to go to a restaurant with American and Thai food. 

We had very different lunches. 

After the morning at the temples, we rented a scooter. We had to get used to riding on the other side of the road.  We also had a police man pull us over to exhort money from us, but Ari told him we wanted the paper ticket to take to the police station, and he let us go. 

The place we went was a national park that had hiking with ten waterfalls along the trail. 

That night we found a very tourist friendly night market to eat at. We decided not to have bugs though. 

The next morning we woke up for the reason I wanted to come to Thailand! It was time to walk with and feed the elephants! 

We mixed up some pumpkin, bananas, rice, rice husks, and vitamins together with our hands to feed them. 

My first elephant selfie.  I didn't know how many more I would get. 

We feed them around twenty to thirty watermelons.

The elephant next to ours had not teach, so watching her eat watermelon was pretty funny. 

After we washed our hands we walked out to where the elephants were hanging out.  We got to feed them bananas all day. 

This elephant was blind, and she was pretty handsy (or trunksy) in her banana search. 

This was Bae Moon.  She had recently been rescued from Phuket. 

She was very sweet and they were trying to take care of some infections she had. 

It was really beautiful up in the mountains. 

We followed the elephants as they crossed this stream. 

Not without my favorite picture of Ari and I first though. 

The water was freezing. 

There were also cows and dogs roaming all over the land. 

Who wouldn't want to hike here even without elephants. 

I thought it was funny that our guide took off his pants every time we crossed water. 

Ari was good at luring stubborn elephants who didn't want to move with his bananas. 

I was probably more of a banana push over. 

The elephants were just so beautiful. 

This was the camp where the elephants who can't go on long walks like ours play. 

My new facebook profile photo, of course. 

We might really nice people on this day trip too.  There was a couple celebrating their honeymoon and another two friends from England. 

You just put whatever food you have into the curve of their trunk. 

My walking view in front of me... 

... and next to me. 

It was surreal to be playing with elephants in this amazing place. 

We crossed another cold stream. 

We were supposed to bathe the elephants, but since it wasn't hot, they didn't love it that much. 

We just did it for a little while, and then we went rafting. 

After rafting, we went to the actual Elephant Nature Park to see more animals. 

This was a head with two different families including a baby, mother, grandmother, and older sister. 

We met this sad elephant who was rescued from a logging camp. 

They are trying to heal her foot, but she will never be able to put weight on it again. 

It was amazing how resilient she was though.  She used her trunk to help support herself and walk. 

I took a few pictures during Ari's quest for a street food breakfast the next day. 

These girls were in uniform on their way to school sharing one iPod. 

Things like this are just out on the street where people are cooking. 

Here is some more street food Ari bought.  It just comes in bags.

This was the bathroom on the way to the day's activities. 

We took a walk through a forest first on our day trip tour. 

It was much chillier up here in the mountains than anywhere else on the trip. 

Instead of Bugles, I found these chips called "Big Noise."  Ari and I thought it was pretty funny. 

This was the king's pagoda up on the top of the highest mountain in Thailand. 

Sadly, it was pretty foggy so we didn't get the best pictures. 

 We went to visit a hill tribe village called the Karen.  

We saw how they weave their textiles, and we even bought one for Karen.  We couldn't resist. 

The bus drove up to this amazing waterfall.  It was the biggest one I've ever seen. 

Ari and I found a path down lower where we could walk out on to some rocks for more pictures. 

This is what all the teenagers in Thailand do when you take their picture.  Instead of looking at the camera, they look off thoughtfully.  It was too funny to me. 

This was another night market only for food that Ari really liked. 

The last night in town we went back to the other night market to finish our shopping. We had so many people to buy presents for.  Ari is much better at haggling than I am. I loved the shopping, but he did not.  We didn't have to do anymore shopping in Koh Samui though so it was worth it.