After a couple days in Bangkok we headed up north to Chiang Mai. We didn't have much planned, except for caving and zip-linning, which we leave for tomorrow. The first 2 nights we spent in the city center laying by the pool and exploring the millions of markets that are all around. We really enjoying just relaxing and took full advantage of the $7 massage places scattered around town.
On our 3rd day in town we decided to check out Tiger Kingdom, a place where you can pet tigers. Reviews online are all over the board, people either love it or think the tigers are drugged and beaten. Our experience there was terrific. We opted to pay to go in all of the tiger cages (smallest, small, medium and big). We started off with the baby tigers. They were 3 months old and adorable. Mostly they just laid around sleeping while we petted them, but occasionally they would wake up and wonder around. After 15 minutes it was time to move onto the bigger tigers. The small tigers were 6 months old and they most active. One kept running around the cage and jumping in the "swimming pool". I definitely don't think they were drugged. Next we were onto the biggest tigers, which were only 18 months old but HUGE. I think we were both very glad that they were sleeping, although one did stand up while Adam was petting it, that got the heart rate going a little bit. We ended our journey with the medium tigers. They were more interested in watching the ones in the next cage play than with us, but that was fine by me. Our guide got some great pictures of the two of us in this cage. We survived our tiger petting experience and would highly recommend it to everyone. The tigers seemed much happier then you typically see in a zoo and the trainers were always playing and interacting with them.
For all of our tiger pictures click here
On our 3rd day in town we decided to check out Tiger Kingdom, a place where you can pet tigers. Reviews online are all over the board, people either love it or think the tigers are drugged and beaten. Our experience there was terrific. We opted to pay to go in all of the tiger cages (smallest, small, medium and big). We started off with the baby tigers. They were 3 months old and adorable. Mostly they just laid around sleeping while we petted them, but occasionally they would wake up and wonder around. After 15 minutes it was time to move onto the bigger tigers. The small tigers were 6 months old and they most active. One kept running around the cage and jumping in the "swimming pool". I definitely don't think they were drugged. Next we were onto the biggest tigers, which were only 18 months old but HUGE. I think we were both very glad that they were sleeping, although one did stand up while Adam was petting it, that got the heart rate going a little bit. We ended our journey with the medium tigers. They were more interested in watching the ones in the next cage play than with us, but that was fine by me. Our guide got some great pictures of the two of us in this cage. We survived our tiger petting experience and would highly recommend it to everyone. The tigers seemed much happier then you typically see in a zoo and the trainers were always playing and interacting with them.
Back in Chiang Mai we waited on our ride out to The Secret Garden, our next hotel which was 12 km outside of town. The Secret Garden ended up being in the middle of a subdivision, but was a lot of land and trees so we didn't notice (except for the Saturday night parties). The hospitality was amazing. They had a delicious dinner buffet every night and made us lunch the day we chose to stay and lounge around the pool. On Sunday we ventured into town (via public transport, aka the back of a pickup truck) to experience the Walking Street (also called the Sunday Market). The market was huge, and you could buy pretty much any craft or food you could ever imagine. We spent several hrs walking around, and the place got progressively more crowded. By the time we decided to get out of there it took of good 45 minutes of ducking and dodging to navigate the crowd. Neither of us were in a very good mood by the end, reaffirming the fact that we don't like big crowds. We found the nearest restaurant with AC and went to cool of and grab a bite to eat. We took a cab back to the hotel and had to shower before either of us could fall asleep. It was so hot and sticky!!!
For all of our tiger pictures click here
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