Nearing The End

So we get on a train today and head back to the City of Angels (at least that's what the locals call Bangkok). However, I would have named it something different. We now have nothing exciting planned as we leave in a couple of days. Chiang Mai has been great but for some reason I felt it necessary last night to try all of the foods that I hadn't tried yet. Some of the stuff was great and other stuff was not so good. A word of advice if you ever visit here - stay away from the vegetable jello. So the next update will be from Alaska with a bunch of pictures added. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this wonderful experience. We had a great time!

Elephant Trek and Whitewater Rafting

So we missed telling you all about going to the Mesa elephant camp. It was a hoot. The elephants played soccer, painted pictures and put on a pretty good show. We got a tuk tuk for the day and the poor lady drove us everywhere and waited for us while we screwed around. It worked out pretty good for us and if you like the smell of two-stroke engines, you to would love a tuk tuk. One elephant was pregnant and it appeared that she had swallowed a mini-cooper. She was 20 months pregnant and apparently had two to go. Lets just say she was big.

We were able to check out an orchid garden and a butterfly farm as well. We also went to a silk factory, a furniture shop and a lacquer shop. The furniture shop was crazy and they had beautiful stuff. They say that shipping anywhere in the world and insurance was covered yet the prices seemed to cheap to believe them. Nonetheless we didn't buy anything but would have loved to.

The big thing in Chiang Mai is to go on an elephant trek. Typical treks last a few days and you stay overnight in a hill tribe village. We got an inside scoop from a kid that did a three day trek and said you could do it all in a day so that's what we did. We had a great day that started off at another orchid garden and butterfly farm. We thought we had signed up for the wrong venue especially after hiking to another waterfall but finally ended up at a river that had some pretty good whitewater sections. We were on the water for 1 hour then got on a bamboo raft for another half hour.

We then went on a 1 hr elephant ride. Our elephant was a 22 year old gal whose name was Metzke. I thought the guy called her whiskey at first and I liked that name better so that's what I called her. It was pretty cool as we crossed a river, went up hills and they let us sit on its head. Luckily we do a lot of bull riding on Friday nights at Henry's and we were able to stay on. It was neat and now Naomi wants an elephant of her own.

The elephant trek was then followed up by a trek to the Karen long neck hill tribe where we got to see the natives with the gold coils around their necks. It was neat but it really wasn't their village, more like a market in the jungle. There were a lot of farang staying there and they didn't have a lot to do but drink beer. So I think we made the right choice with the day trip as we had an excellent time.

Tomorrow we're sleeping in.

Doi Inthanon National Park

So Naomi really wanted to check out the National Park and go to Thailand's highest peak. I wish I could tell you the name of it or how high it was but I will have to fill you in on the details at a later time. Mainly it was a driving tour that lasted all day. We had a fairly knowledgeable guide who filled us in on some of the trees and history of the places. I would have to say the highlight was seeing the Royal Garden. The hillsides are covered with terraces from growing poppies for opium. The problem is that the soil is only good for three years then they have to go and decimate other hillsides. So the King and Queen made one of the areas into a garden that is huge. There are ornamentals, vegetables and all kinds of beautiful plants. It was an incredible site. I am sure the pictures won't do it justice. Otherwise we stopped at some waterfalls, and met some pretty interesting folks from others parts of the world.

Mekong Catfish

Alright we are a few days behind on the blog. We apologize, but we are just having so much fun, it's been tough to make the time. But here we are at the almost end of our trip, and ready to share the past few days with you. As you have read in our previous blog, our friends Chad and Monica were in Chiang Mai as well for a few days. We caught up with them and went fishing with Chad a few days ago. We were fishing for Mekong catfish. It was not your usual fishing scene, but never the less very fun, and even a work out. We arrived at the lake outside of town in the early morning. We were anxious to see what Chad had been talking about from his previous experience here last year. We had a wonderful guide, his name was Mr. Tuk Tuk. He baited and cast the poles for us. I allowed him to do this all day, but Robbie eventually baited his own pole. Guess what we used for bait? Come on, think outside the box, way outside. Give up, left over 7 Eleven ham sandwiches. Mr. Tuk Tuk cut it all up into small pieces and then stuffed it into some sort of cage. I have a picture, and will post it once we are back in the states. It didn't take long at all to catch fish. Well actually it didn't take me long to catch fish. The largest fish I caught was 46.3 pounds (21kg), and I caught a total of 5 fish, and then lost 3 others. It was hard work getting them into the shore. Robbie did well also. He caught 4, his biggest being 42 lbs. It was non stop action, and there was only a handful of us there.

Cooking Class

O. K. Robbie and I are fresh in from our Thai cooking course, and it was awesome. The two gentlemen who put it on were absolutely great and very funny too. We made seven different courses and they even let us eat our fixing's for lunch and dinner. They sent us home with a small cook book, so get ready everyone, it's on, dinner at our place. Yesterday was our first full day in Chiang Mai, and we spent it walking around. There was a walking market, that took place in the evening, and it was pretty cool. We got to play the bartering game, and I got better at it after a beer. We tried a pork sausage that was to die for. It had lemon grass, peppers and was barbecued. We also had some sort of waffle desert, a fresh strawberry shake, and then the usual fixings for dinner (pad thai). Our friends Chad and Monica have arrived here today as well, and we may meet up with them this evening. All is well, we wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

The Piehls