Chiang Mai River Wild

Maetaeng Elephant Park, Chiang Mai

For my father's 70^th birthday, the family went on a trip to the Golden Triangle in northern Thailand where the three countries of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet. That took us to a small city called Chiang Rai and since we were going all the way we thought we'd throw in some time in Chiang Mai as well.

Chiang Mai is the largest city in northern Thailand with a very interesting mix of the old and the new. Traditional and beautifully kept Thai wooden houses coexist with modern brick and mortar and the city in itself has a gazillion interesting things to do for both kids and adults. We went with two small children and basically the three days we spent there were occupied with pretty much overeating and entertaining the brats.

The taxi driver taking us from Chiang Mai airport to our hotel planned the following day for us which included a trip to the elephant park and said he would be ferrying us around everywhere during our stay. We were pretty happy about that but after checking with the hotel the next day we realized he was charging us more than double the fare! Coming from one of the most unscrupulous cities in the world where we are constantly on guard against getting conned, we still managed to get taken for a ride. That just shows, taxi drivers mostly everywhere will manage to stiff the gullible (and not so gullible tourist) till they wise up.

Our most memorable experience was the Maetaeng Elephant Park, located an hour out of the city. We arrived there in time for lunch which was a pretty good spread and then settled down to watch the elephant show where they played football, rolled logs, saluted and painted pictures. Am amazed at what kind of stuff people dream up for animals to do and how the hell they even manage to make them do it! After feeding the elephants bananas and petting the cuties it was time for our rides.

Lessons anyone?

We got on to the elephants in twos and went on a 20 minute ride in the river. I had my one-month-shy-of-three year old daughter with me and had to hold on to her for dear life with one arm at all times else she would have fallen through the gap between the seat and the safety rod right into the water. There was a particular moment of apprehension when the elephant had to negotiate a steep slope to get in to the river.

After the ride, which became quite enjoyable once my arms adjusted to the strain of hanging on to the kid and the rod, we got onto bullock carts. Now that was a seriously uncomfortable ride. The carts had wooden wheels which were particularly excruciating on a stretch of tarmacked road and I'm sitting there getting bumped around thinking ``really? I've come all the way to Thailand to ride on a very expensive bael gadi? India could learn a thing or two from these guys about using all of its resources for tourism. I was very happy to have got off at the end of the 15 minute ride to another part of the river where they had the rafts.This was like a triathlon. Elephant ride, bullock cart ride, rafting.

How cute is that!

The elephant draws better than my kids!

The trip down the river started off pleasantly enough. There was this long bamboo raft and they had put wooden stools (unsecured) on which seven of us sat and two young boys.. who I don't think had very much experience..were rowing us. It was a beautiful crisp sunny day and gliding downstream with lovely scenery, we were talking about how nice it was to have this relaxing long ride and how in Thailand you really get bang for your buck. All of a sudden, we came to this shallow patch right in the middle of the river and our raft ran aground. With that jolt, my mother who was sitting on the last row, fell on my father, and my father fell right off the raft. In that commotion, we didn't realize that the water had now started flowing over the raft and drenched my daughter who started crying in fright and in her flailing got two drops of water on my seven-year-old son, who started screaming even louder because he realized he got splatted with water contaminated with elephant dung. So here we are, man overboard but everyone's attention is on the brat screaming..``aaaaaaaaa she splashed potty water on meeee!' `She splashed POTTY WATER on meeeee!'

Things could have gone badly here. We had no life vests and out of all of us, only my husband and I are swimmers and even then with the swift current and scattered rocks, I don't think we'd have managed to keep it together. Luckily, because that rocky part was only a foot deep and the raft got stuck on a wide-ish patch, my dad got away with a few minor cuts and scrapes, a banged knee and a drenched camera. He managed to hop back on the raft and we waited..and waited..and waited, with dirty water still flowing over our shoes, for another raft to come and rescue us. That was a bit of a problem because of the flowing current, none of the rafts had a stopping mechanism and attempts by two of them to throw us a rope failed. Finally we managed to catch a rope and with much shuddering and scraping we were in the water again. I thought this time we'd all be overboard.

`Dung'erous!

By now we were eagerly looking forward to getting back on land and getting cleaned up. Just before we ran aground, we passed the elephant stables and a large part of the slope leading up to the water was covered with elephant manure and there were even some floaters in the river, which is why my son totally lost it when he got splashed.

Our mood had gone from buoyant to kind of south by then and when we asked the oarsmen how much longer, they said three more kilometers. So now from saying `wow this is so much fun,' to mutters of `oofff soooo loooong' and `when will it get over!'. We were feeling really sorry for my dad who took it like a champ. Finally on dry land we managed to clean up a bit and my trooper family decided to keep going. We drove up the hill a bit and my parents and uncle waited with the kids in a shack with refreshments and fruits while my husband and I spent an hour zip-lining across the forest and the river. That was good fun, zipping between trees on ropes. After playing Tarzan, we were taken to a village where we could see long necked people..courtesy rip off driver..and got ripped off more on spending quite a bit of money to see all of two women with rings around their necks, one of which didn't look very authentic.

This one looked staged for the tourists

Long neck tribe

 Getting back to the hotel we had a good laugh about my son's reaction in the raft considering he was the least scathed. You must be wondering by now how come most of our holidays are with my family. I'm extremely lucky to have parents and family who share the same wanderlust and are such good fun to hang out with (ask the husband separately, he might say different ;-)). And they help with the kids!