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After thanking Aoi and her family for their fantastic hospitality we set off on the back of a 4x4 pickup truck and headed for our next destination…Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is the largest city in northern Thailand and is surrounded by mountains and lush countryside.
We arrived at our hotel in the early evening and once the sun had set we visited the huge night bazaar. The night bazaar offers a whole range of northern Thai and hill tribe handicraft products including carvings, artwork, clothes, fabrics, and jewellery as well as the western clothing and other faked goods available in Bangkok. The bazaar is also full of bars and restaurants and after an extensive shopping trip we spent the rest of the evening in an Irish bar.
The following day Mandy, Coco and I headed into the hills to have a go at bamboo rafting. Here we had great fun with Coco and I taking it in turns to steer and I nearly fell off a few times! As we floated down the river we were greeted by elephants eating in the fields along the bank. There were a few times we thought we may end up in the river and Mandy was very thankful to Kate for lending us her waterproof bag, but we all managed to stay on and enjoyed our ride.
In the evening we enjoyed a nice meal at a restaurant on the riverside and Mandy, Lucy, Evan and Courtney experienced their first four in the back of a Tuk Tuk ride!
The next day we visited tiger kingdom which was split into three areas; adult tigers that were eleven months old, cubs that were five months and babies that were three months old. This was an amazing, yet at times scary experience.
Our first encounter was with the largest male adult tiger, and our presence did not seem to bother him at all. He lay in the warmth enjoying the attention everyone gave him. We then visited the cubs which were stirred up by a noisy macaw. Here we were able to witness how a tiger in the wild would stalk its prey and it was lucky for the parrot he was on the other side of the cage! This was quite an unnerving experience as we were surrounded by active tiger cubs. Mandy was lucky enough to get very close to one of them as he put his face and paw into her lap.
Next we went to visit the babies who were very cheeky and showed real character. One tiger managed to undo Courtney's bra from behind her! All the babies were very playful, always sneaking up on you and one of them in particular kept trying to paw the back of my leg! Lucy was not as cautious as we were and got into Playing with the babies. Unfortunately she received a bite to her thigh but luckily there was no major damage and we did not need to visit the hospital!
After returning back to the hotel we got ready for our long overnight train journey back to Bangkok. Although we were not looking forward to the trip, Evan and his Australian humour kept us laughing until we were politely told by the guard (he turned the lights out in the cabin!) to get into bed.
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