We booked a delightful hotel called the Shewe Wana Resort and Spa, I highly recommend it for several reasons that will become apparent in this post.
We started our stay in Chiang Mai by taking a stroll into old town. A large part of Chiang Mai is still surrounded by the old city wall. I expected more history to be in the city walls then there was, but it was still very pleasant. We just strolled around, exploring things that looked interesting. We found a tiny market in the grounds of a Wat, which was a pleasure to explore compared to Bangkok, less people! No one bashing / knocking into you. We ended the evening in a fantastic shack style restaurant that we discovered via TripAdvisor. I’ve become to rely on TripAdvisor for restaurants a bit too much, need to break that habit, but it’s a heuristic that seems to work. The place was called the Coconut Shell, it was incredible food, highly recommend it if you go. On the way though we got to observe some monks preparing to pray in a local Wat, that was awesome.
Sarah was feeling a bit sick on the Saturday and it was raining, so we decided to take a chill day, and plan the other days. We’d heard there was a Saturday night market though, so we added that to the agenda. I spent the afternoon in a little café with good food and Wi-Fi, and worked on a few pieces while watching Chiang Mai pass me by. Sarah wasn’t feeling great in the evening, but agreed that we would go to the night market, so we took advantage of the free tuktuk offered by the hotel. They run it in the morning and the afternoon, great resource. The market was rammed! Bangkok levels. We battled our way through to an area that was less quiet and found some food.
We sampled a lot of street food, something we would later regret! We had, not in this specific order (my memory isn’t that good!), pork on a stick, sticky rice and mango, banana fritters, fire chicken, pad thai, some bright orange cordial/drink thingy, a watermelon smoothie, a zombie cocktail, and Sarah concluded the feast delights with a roasted quail on a stick! The market was great, certainly worth exploring, but it’s vast and parts are incredibly busy. We headed back to hotel, working half way and grabbing a tuktuk the rest of the way. Called in early, as we’d booked to go to an elephant sanctuary the next day and the pickup was at 8am.
Unfortunately, during the night Sarah was sick, the market food had got her! We don’t know what the cause was, but our money is on the quail, as this was the only thing I didn’t eat. She is rather brave when it comes to food, which I admire, but unfortunately it back fired this time.
We gave it serious thought about if we should still attend the elephant sanctuary, which we’d already paid for. After much discussion Sarah insisted that I still went, which I will be forever grateful for, and she decided it was best for her to stay at the hotel.
I wasn’t feeling great as I left, I felt guilty, as it was me that encouraged us to attend the night market, but I having said that the rest was out of my control. Sarah comforted me, confirming that it wasn’t my fault, it’s just one of those things.
The reason why I will be forever thankful is I had one of the best days of my life, which again leaves me with mixed emotions as I didn’t get to spend this with Sarah, but I’m sure we will return one day! I went to the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary, camp 2 specifically. There were 5 elephants at the sanctuary, four females and one male. The oldest, grandma, was 40! The youngest, was a 3-year-old female, who was incredibly cute. The day started by being shown how to feed the elephants. The local carers, of Karen family, had prepared some sugar cane for us to feed them. They informed us, that if we shout BONBON the elephants will lift their trunks allowing you to put the sugar cane in their mouth. I tried this a few times, but most of the time they were super greedy and just grabbed the sugar cane with their trunks!
Post feeding them the prepared sugar cane we had to go and get some whole branches from the store and carry them down the hill for the elephants. This was great fun apart from the ants!!! The cane was covered in them, I got of lightly, but some just throw the cane straight up on to their shoulders and then discovered the ants! I gave mine a quick shake before doing this, thanks to their warnings! We then got to watch the elephants prepare the cane, stripping the leaves and using their sheer power to snap the branches into manageable pieces. Incredible to experience this at close quarters.
We then returned to the camp for lunch, some fantastic food prepared by the Karen family. After lunch we had to make some food for the elephants. Being in the sanctuary they don’t get to roam as much as they would in the wild, which means they lack some nutrition from certain plants/herbs. So, the carers prepare what they called medicine balls for them. They consisted of tamarind, cooked rice, banana and whole grain rice. We had to mash up the tamarind by hand using a pestle and mortar, and break down the whole grain rice using a foot powered pestle and mortar due to the volume. This wasn’t to de-husk the rice, but to remove the sharp edges from the grain. We then rolled them in to balls and got to feed them to the elephants.
Post the feeding it was time for a mud bath and a swim! Yep, I got to give an elephant a mud bath and then play in the river/waterfall. They looked so happy playing in the water. We were splashing them and just watching in amazement about how cool this was. This brought the elephant experience to an end. But not before the crazy drive out of the camp. The dirt track down to the camp was rather muddy on the way down, on several occasions we were just sliding down, I’m not convinced the driver had control, but we did make it. So, all out thoughts when we got out of the truck, was how the hell are we going to get back up? Answer, all the horse powers! Our driver just literally floored it, something none of us in the back of this truck were ready for, this resulted in many bruises, a small reminder of this awesome day, as far as I’m concerned.
I've posted lots of pictures on Instagram from the sanctuary.
Back at the hotel, it was great to see that Sarah was over her food related sickness, still battling this horrible cold though.
We spent our final day in Chiang Mai relaxing, doing our best to aid Sarah’s recovery. Was needed, after all the traveling and from my point of view the excitement of the elephant trip. I want to thank the staff of Shewe Wana, as they were very considerate after they learnt of Sarah’s sickness. They offered to make her anything for breakfast and gave suggestions on what to eat, also pointing the local pharmacy to me, which I’d already been too, but I still appreciate their concern.
That’s Chiang Mai, certainly a much nicer experience then Bangkok but still a very busy place. Next up for us is a day travelling to Koh Libong, an island in South Thailand.
