Our third day in Chiang Mai we went on a day tour. It included elephant riding, visiting a mountain tribe village, trekking through the forest, a waterfall, lunch, and bamboo rafting.
First up was elephant riding. We rode through the jungle and water for about an hour. Our elephant was a little stubborn and kept wanting to stop and eat plants or just hang out. There were two little shops along the way that we stopped at to buy snacks for the elephants. We bought our elephant bananas and sugar cane at one of the stops and she loved it! She would reach her trunk up to where we were sitting and we'd give her a snack. We could tell that was her favorite part.
Our favorite part was this 5 month old baby elephant! She had such a fun personality. She walked with us the whole time. She was so adorable. She loved finding rough tree trunks and scratching her back and sides. She would pick plants and dirt and eat them or throw them into the air and onto her back. She was a happy little thing and did a lot of trumpeting with her trunk. She kept us laughing and smiling the whole way.
They took this picture, printed it, and put it in a frame to sell. I just snapped a picture of the picture instead.
Next we stopped at a village tribe. We watched this lady making scarves and walked around.
After the village we did a small hike up to a waterfall.
Next we had a delicious Thai lunch and went bamboo rafting. I was really hoping to go white water rafting instead, but the lady at the booking agency said the water level wasn't currently high enough for that. She kept saying, "You can bamboo rafting. I think it will be very funny for you!" She said that over and over and we got a kick out of her use of 'funny' in place of 'fun'. We didn't get any pictures of rafting since we couldn't take anything with us. It was a long bamboo raft. It was about 3 feet wide and 10 feet long. Our raft had the driver/guide, another married couple, Tanner and me. We sat right on the raft which was water level, so we got partially wet right away. The driver stood at the front of the boat and steered and pushed with a long bamboo pole. A couple minutes in we saw a water snake. The other lady pointed it out, clearly scared. The driver saw it, picked it up with his pole, and threw it in the air causing it to land a foot away from us. The other lady let out a shriek of terror and we all had a good laugh. About 10 minutes into the ride he pointed to Tanner and asked, "You, man. You want to drive?" Tanner happily accepted and headed to the front. He did a great job! All was going well until we got to a fairly sharp turn. The water speed had picked up and there was a big tree jutting out of the bank where we were headed. Tanner was waiting to push off the tree when we got close enough. The rest of us on the boat felt like it was cutting it too close so we all ducked and leaned. We leaned just as Tanner pushed off the edge. That resulted in the raft tipping. All three men were thrown off and into the water. I laughed and laughed and laughed! Tanner and I joked that the lady at the booking office was right--this was very funny for us! A little farther down we all (minus the other lady [she wasn't too happy about getting wet]) got in the water and swam a little bit. The cool water felt really nice. While we waited for the other rafts to finish and for people to get changes we each ate 2 magnum bars. The ride back was close to 2 hours. After getting cleaned up Tanner and I ate mexican food for dinner.
