Chiang Mai

Date: 28/03/2007 | Author: Ella

We flew to Chiang Mai and arrived at 2pm. We were staying at a place called Lanna Mantra just outside Chiang Mai. It had a very nice swimming pool overlooking the River Ping so we spent the afternoon keeping cool in the pool and hanging out by the river with our school books. For dinner we went to a nice restaurant near the Ping River called the Riverside. I enjoyed going there and liked the food very much.
While we were staying in Chiang Mai we visited a place called the Elephant Conservation Centre where you could see an elephant show, go elephant riding and there was an elephant hospital. The elephant show was really really cool and the elephants bowed, played instruments and painted pictures. The pictures were really good. I really liked elephant riding even though we have done it before. This time it was really cool because the elephants went through creeks and rivers. At the elephant hospital it was very similar to a human hospital. The sick elephants had either broken legs or infected parts of their body that had to be looked after. One elephant had even stood on a land mine!! Also at the elephant hospital there was a baby elephant who had been born on the 7th of March (20 days ago). He was so cute but had been abandoned by his mother and had a step mother who was looking after him.
The driver that was normally taking us around was a lovely man called Pong and when we had finished our time in Chiang Mai he took us all the way to Chiang Rai. It is a long way so we stopped at a few places. We stopped at a hill tribe villiage which was really nice but I felt a little bit sad for them. because they were being made to be tourist attractions so they couldn't get on with their life. It's like going to a human zoo, which is very sad. We also went to a glistening white and silver temple that was so beautiful. We were allowed to go inside so we took our shoes off and said a prayer to the Buddha then went out because it was getting late. When we arrived in Chiang Rai it was very late so we went to bed as soon as possible. We were staying in a place called Laluna Resort which had a very nice swimming pool but apart from having a swim we didn't do much there and soon we were on our way to the border, to Laos.

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