I got back from Thailand a few days ago and had an amazing time down there. The pictures that I put up on facebook really tell the story of what we did down there but I guess I will go into a little bit more details. The flight that I booked was pretty cheap but the layovers were extremely long. I had a 9 hour layover during the day on the way down and an 8 hour layover that was overnight, meaning sleeping at the airport. The other bad thing about the layovers were they occurred in China, which means no leaving the airport without a Visa. If I had 9 hours to explore a city I would have been very happy but instead I tried to get on an earlier flight but it was completely booked so I got to know the Beijing airport pretty well. All in all though the layover wasn't too bad, played on the free computers that they had at the airport and then got some food and studied a little Korean and then bumped into a couple of teachers from Incheon randomly that were going to the Philippines so we grabbed a beer before my flight to Bangkok. Another bonus was the person next to me didn't show up so I had both seats to myself so I was able to stretch and enjoy the ride down.
Once on the ground in Thailand it was nonstop for a while. I met another teacher in Thailand, Tom, and luckily a bed at the hostel that he was staying at opened up so we went onto Khao San Road for a little bit and then called it a night. The next day we went to a number of palaces and temples in Bangkok but the best of course was the Grand Palace which was beautiful. I think that you could have taken a picture every 10 feet as there was so much there. After a busy day of walking around Bangkok we went to the train station and caught our overnight train to Chaing Mai. The train was only supposed to take 13 hours but ended up taking 15 as I think we were averaging about 40 miles an hour the entire way. It wasn't too bad as we had a sleeper car but it was still a really long time. We met a couple of cool people on the train and were able to have a few drinks and share some stories.
The hostel that we stayed at in Chaing Mai was great. It is an actual house in a gated residential area so it is super quite and everyone at the hostel hangs out together. Once we checked in we just dropped off our bags and started the adventure. We didn't know before hand but saw on the tuk tuk we took to the hostel that there was a Tiger Kingdom in Chaing Mai, since we both wanted to pet a tiger we figured that would be a good place to start. We got a tuk tuk driver to take us out there and ended up keeping him for pretty much the entire day for 300 baht or roughly $10 for about 5 hours of driving us around. We went to the tigers and it was one of the coolest things that I have done. It is nice because these tigers were born there and had constant human contact and therefore didn't have to be sedated. We went and saw the smallest tigers (2-4 month) and the medium (11-13 month) and each were great in their own way. I am not going to lie when we got into the medium tiger are I was a little scared at first but that quickly subsided when it rolled over on its back and the trainer rubbed its belly like Frisco. After the tigers we went and saw some monkeys which was good and bad. We felt bad for them as they were chained up but it was fun watching them eat a banana or do some tricks for us.
The next day we did our day trek which cost about $30 for the entire day, we went hiking in the jungle and across some rice fields and then we got to the elephant farm. We got to ride on an elephant for an hour which was pretty cool, they really are massive animals. After riding we had lunch and then we hiked out of the jungle and took a truck up to where we would do our rafting. They called it white water rafting but there was only one section that we went through that had any sort of rapids. Regardless is was nice to be out on the water and also see the jungle that surrounds the river. While everyone was drying off a couple of elephants and their riders came down and took a bit a bath in the river which was pretty cool to watch. After that we headed home and explored the city a little bit that night. The last day in Chiang Mai we went to one of the temples and then played a round of golf. It was great to get out and play on a real course even though I didn't play very well it was still a lot of fun. The last night in Chiang Mai we went out with maybe 8-10 people that were staying at the hostel and went to 3 different bars/clubs. It was a great time and was pretty cheap. We ended up buying a bottle of vodka at each bar for about $25 each but the weird thing was that you had to pay also for the ice and mixers but still pretty cheap. The only bad part was we went out on Wednesday night and it wasn't too crowded at the last club that we went to, but the place looked like a club in Vegas, different rooms, lots of lights and just a really cool looking place.
We flew back to Bangkok and just relaxed for the last couple of days sitting at the rooftop pool at the hotel we stayed at and got our last few pad thais before we headed back to Korea. I had a 8 hour layover in Beijing again over night so I slept in the airport which was a bit chilly and uncomfortable but wasn't unbearable. The worst part of coming home was knowing that I had just left 35 degree temperatures and it was -10 back in Korea. All in all the trip was great and if you ever have a chance to go to Thailand I suggest you do it is a great place to visit and provides a little bit of everything you could be looking for.
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