Elephants, Hiking, and Bamboo Rafting in Chiang Mai

There are tons of things to do in Chiang Mai, but one of the star attractions is to ride an elephant.  There are several options for elephant camps.  Those catering to the ethically-minded treatment of animals offer a full-day or multi-day visits to elephant rescue parks where you can adopt an elephant for a day, learn about them, bathe them, feed them, etc.  These parks do not offer rides because they feel it is "inhumane".  We love animals but didn't stop us from finding a place where we could climb aboard one for an hour or so.  What we didn't want to see was a bunch of chained-up elephants in a "show" performing tricks for the audience, which there are plenty of as well.  

We made a day out of the elephant ride by going into the Doi Inthanon (tallest mountain in Thailand) National Park with a group of about 13, and rode elephants, hiked around the national park, visited some hill tribe villages, and rode a bamboo raft down the river.  All this for 2 hours worth for transportation, front-door pick-up/drop-off service, lunch, and guide cost $30/pp.  We usually avoid group tours, but it was the most economical and efficient way of getting to do everything in the national park that we wanted to do.

The rest is all photos!  Really, no explanation needed.  The only photos we don't have are from the bamboo rafting.  We didn't take anything with us that could potentially get wet, including our camera.

ELEPHANT RIDING

Our elephant was a mama elephant with her baby.  The baby elephant was a total ham, rolling around the grass, scratching its belly and ears on anything it could find, running around, and (successfully) begging for bananas from the other riders.  

HILL TRIBE VILLAGES

There are hill tribes that live in the mountains.  We started our hike through the Karen and Hmong villages.  All the buildings are built on stilts with most of the roof made of bamboo and leaves from the teak tree.  The women were weaving scarves to be sold at the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai while chewing on some beetlenut.  

HIKING
We meandered through villages, up and down hills, through bamboo forests, rivers, and rice fields.  Our last stop before lunch was a nice waterfall where people are suppose to be able to swim at, but the water looked quite rough so none of us went in.

BAMBOO RAFTING
This photo is credited to www.turismotailandes.com.  It's not mine, but shows what bamboo rafting was like.  The bamboo platform is flush against the water, or submerged slightly below the surface of the water, so there was no way we could avoid getting wet.  There were 8 Chinese 22-year olds in our group and they started a water fight down the river, tipping each other's rafts over and screaming like Japanese schoolgirls (or is it Chinese schoolgirls?).  Anyway, it was a nice way to cool off.