The Adventures of Doug and Bec: Thailand - Chiang Mai

The train to Chiang Mia from Bangkok was better in some ways than Vietnam trains, but worse in others. The layout of the train has the beds on each side of the corridor, rather than in cabins, so it was a lot noisier, but the train itself was much cleaner and a lot newer. After about 13 hours on the train we arrived in Chiang Mai after a fairly sleepless night, and headed into town to find a guest house to stay in. We ended up staying at the Thaphae Garden Guesthouse which was quite nice, but was 590 baht per night. Later we would discover that the more northern guesthouses are about 350 baht per nice, such as the Brittannia, Kavil and SK.

On our first day in Chiang Mai we had a bit of a catch up sleep before heading to the night Bazaar Market in the evening. The markets in Chaing Mai were some of the best that we had seen, and had a lot of food, crafts and clothes.

Early on the next day we hired a motorbike once again, and headed out towards the Tiger Kingdom which was about 20km from the city centre. The traffic in Chiang Mai was more intense than Koh Lanta, but the roads were very good and most intersections had traffic lights. Overall the riding in Thailand has been pretty good and definitely the cheapest way to get around as you can hire a bike for about 150 baht for 24 hours (and cheaper if you hire it weekly)

Tiger Kingdom was a fair way from town (someone told me 150 baht taxi each way), but was easily accessible with a moped or motorbike. The park itself includes a nice restaurant with reasonable prices. We were a bit worried we would get there and find exuberant prices, as the restaurant is surrounded by the tigers which made it a great location for lunch.

After a quick lunch we purchased tickets to see the tigers. The prices at Tiger Kingdom are fairly high but if you compare to the other tiger places are fairly reasonable, and it has one of the best reputations for animal care, which it definitely lived up to. Our tickets ended up costing about 1200 baht each, and this included time with the sub 3 month old tigers, 6 month of tigers, and the large 4 year old tigers. Overall they have a heap of tigers but the sections are broken up into Smallest, Small, Medium and big Cat, all with different prices, or package prices for multiple types like we did.

We were lucky that we were in low season. We could tell how busy the place gets as they had queuing systems for seeing the tigers, which we did not have to abide by as the park was fairly empty. After tickets we headed straight to the smallest tigers and were let straight into the area which contained six young tiger cubs. We spent about 15 minutes with them and were allowed to lay beside them, pat them, play with their paws and we got some photos of us laying on them... see below... The small tigers were very playful and just like a household cat with their actions. You easily remember how big they get though, as even at that age they have massive paws!

After seeing the smallest tigers we headed around the park to the section with the small and big cats. First off we entered the big cats enclosure with our guide, which held two fully grown tigers. Its hard to believe how big they are. Our guide in the enclosure told us they were about 600kg and that they have one in the park that is just over 800 kg. The large tigers were very relaxed and let us lay on them and play with their tails (which weighed a few kilograms!!). One in particular was very playful with the guide and allowed him to wrestle it without getting his head bitten off! They park has rules which include tourist not touching their heads, and it was easy to see why, as the large tigers could have fit my head in their mouth!

Once we had spent some time with the large cats we headed into the enclosure which had 4 small tigers that were about 7 months old. Even these were quite large. We were allowed to once again lay with them and play with them. The 4 tigers were all siblings, however some had more stripes, and one of them have really long soft fur compared to the others.

After a few hours at the Tiger Kingdom, which was one of the best things we have done on this trip so far, we headed back into the City on the bike before heading back to the Bazaar Markets for dinner and a beer. We found the famous Lena Restaurant which lived up to its name, as I had a whole fried lemon pepper snapper for 190 baht (ie; $6 AUD). I have found however that no matter where you go, you can find a restaurant that has cheap whole lemon pepper fish. I have had about 8 now on this trip and all have been amazing and cheap!