8/6/10 (chiang mai)
Annie Lin
Chiang Mai
We felt good about our two days of sightseeing and decided to take an R&R day. It was raining all morning and the perfect day to stay indoors. We may have taken a break from sightseeing but we had a lot of work to do. Jon and I both wrote two daily detail updates and he continued to power through the New Zealand video. We spent five weeks in New Zealand and captured a lot of footage so the video is a challenging one to edit. One of the challenges is that Jon didn’t like his interview so he did a voice over but it sounds different from my interview since mine was done outdoors. We have been trying to find a quiet outdoors place with no motorcycles, chickens, frogs, or people but it’s not easy.
We nestled in our room the entire morning working hard and took a break to have lunch at Mr. Sak’s restaurant. He was very excited to see us and hear about our adventures from the day before. We have eaten at Mr. Sak’s every day and enjoy the food there. It is reasonably priced, good food portions, and the food is tasty. Today he offered us Thai ice cream made from coconut milk with bits of sweet corn. I love ice cream so I couldn't turn down his offer. It was delicious and not as sweet as American ice cream.
After lunch we continued working. We have been trying to decide where to go next. The dilemma is money. We originally planned on visiting Laos and Vietnam but along our travels we have added Burma and India. With Thailand being in the middle we had to decide to which way to go first. We also had to consider what is the best and cheapest way to get to Taiwan. I spoke with my sister a few days ago to give her an update and she suggested that we fly to Taiwan and then she would accompany us to Hong Kong and China. She has been there several times and is familiar with the area. I spent the afternoon researching various options.
In the evening we went to the Chiang Mai Night Safari, which is an animal park where the animals roam free on the grounds. The more docile animals come right up to the tram while the ferocious ones are fenced in though each section is gated. When we arrived at the park we drove through a sanitation station. It was a ditch filled with water. I am not sure if it was supposed to sanitize our car tires since the water seemed pretty filthy. As we parked our car there were deer enjoying the sunset along the road. The park was much bigger than we anticipated and it appeared that they spent a lot of money building it. It was supposed to attract the middle class tourists though I am not sure the idea ever took off. We rode in an open-air tram touring the grounds. It was hard to see at night since they only flash the lights when we were in certain areas to show us the animals and the tram stopped for a few seconds at each place. We saw some amazing animals, many we hadn’t even heard of before such as barasinghas, gorals, serows, and gaurs. The most tenacious were the wild yaks who kept following beside the tram because the driver was feeding them. There was a huge wild yak about four feet long. After the safari ride we stayed for the laser and water show, which was okay. Overall it was a pretty good trip and we were very lucky that it didn’t rain since it had rained every evening.
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