Flight of the Gibbon - Chiang Mai, Thailand

Flight of the Gibbon - an hour's drive north of Chiang Mai

Ok, so on to another blog post from our Thailand adventure........this time we went for the day to do "Flight of the Gibbon" which is a jungle canopy tour where you zip line between platforms for over 5 km. (you wear a harness, clip yourself onto a cable and fly at great speed hundreds of feet above the jungle floor....) This was AMAZING!!!!! :) If you have no fear of heights, then I definitely recommend doing this! I'm still smiling from it! :)

We were all set to go with harnesses, helmets and clips!

Kim carefully was deciding whether or not she was going to make it off the first platform.....

My turn!!! :)

There she goes!

Us after our first couple of zip lines........so fun!!! :)

Here's a good pic to see just how big the leaves of some of these plants are.....I am that little blue speck zipping by in the background......those leaves are bigger than I am!

It was kind of hard to take a lot of pics of the scenery as we were flying through the jungle canopy, but we did get a few! Here is one looking back from the platform we were standing on to the platform we just "zipped" from.......most times you could not see the platform you were zip lining to, which made it that more exciting! LOL

Looking back at the platform we just flew from! :)

Looking up at some of the overhead foliage......these leaves were HUGE!

Lots of vines!

Another platform that looks hidden in the tree.....

Overlooking the canopy from a high point!

There were two short sections where we could zip line two at a time, so that was cool! We actually took a quick video clip during one of them. We actually ended up taking out the guy that was on the platform ready to catch us as we flew to the next platform. Poor guy. We laughed about that for the rest of the day.

The tour is called "Flight of the Gibbon" because it goes through a part of the jungle where the gibbons live. We had been warned by friends that most of the time, people never actually see any gibbons, so not to get our hopes up. Luckily, we did get to see one and she had her baby with her, who was super cute!!!! :)

Mom and baby who's clinging tightly as mom moves from branch to branch!

I love this pic because you can see baby's face! Super cute!! :)

Here's a waterfall we hiked to at the end of our "flight"!

Back on the ground......safe and sound! :) What fun!!! :)

Elephant Escapade - Chiang Mai, Thailand

Our elephant - she had a long name that we could never understand

whenever our guide said it. We call her Nelly! :)

After spending a couple days in Bangkok, we flew north to Chiang Mai. Our hotel, the Chiang Thai House was fantastic! The staff was very friendly, the hotel extremely clean and the room very nice and cockroach free! ;)

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first thing in the morning, ready for an adventure!

Our first day was spent going to an Elephant Camp to learn how to be a mahout - traditional elephant keeper. Funny side story......we were SUPPOSED to be going to an elephant eco-reserve and had given the pamphlet to the hotel guy who books these things and assumed that it was booked correctly. We paid and the receipt said "elephant camp" so we figured we were good to go. LOL When we got there, we were surprised by how ghetto the camp looked and how not-so-kind some of the mahouts were to the elephants. It didn't seem like a legitimate reserve. After taking a picture of the sign and comparing it with the pamphlet when we returned, we realized the hotel guy had booked the wrong elephant reserve and instead of going to the eco-reserve, we went to some ghetto one! Ahhhhh, gotta love language barriers in foreign countries........LOL. We just laughed! We still had a blast and I fell in love with these beasts! :)

Driving out to the Elephant Camp first thing in the morning....

The camp!

Once we were there, they made us change into these really old, baggy and "crunchy" traditional Thai shirts and short pants. (We discovered later that they just rinse these things out in the dirty river water and hang them to dry after we get them wet and muddy) We laughed at how unattractive they were.....:)

Yup, definitely felt pretty stylish in these.........

The first thing we did was to introduce ourselves to the elephants and then bribe them by feeding them lots of fresh fruit. LOL After that, we learned how to climb up and comfortably sit atop our beast. :) Their hair is REALLY course and bristly. I got a few scratches from it! I had no idea they had hair like that!

Feeding our beast some watermellon.......:) These creatures are surprisingly very gentle. :)

Such a sweetie who even lifted her leg to help me climb up....

Yumm! Bananas!!! :)

So cute! :)

Up close and personal......:)

Off on our trek......

It was rather difficult staying balanced while riding an elephant and taking a picture! Nice job, Kimberley! :)

This pic makes me laugh......we look like dorks.....:)

We rode our elephants to the river and then they laid down in the water so we could scrub and bathe them! We ended up having a water fight and the elephants just looked at us like WE were the animals........

Bath time!

We even scrubbed behind her ears......

All clean! :) Well, maybe the elephant, but not us seeing as the water was muddy and had elephant poop floating in it......

Our elephant guide, grabbed our camera and thought he was taking a picture......we discovered this short video clip that he accidentally recorded before he figured out how to switch it back to the photo setting! :)

After we scrubbed and bathed our elephant, she and the rest of them got to go in the mud pit! We didn't.......we went and got dried off and changed back into our clean clothes.

She had pretty good aim when it came to throwing mud!

After their fun in the mud, we went and hung out with our new friends for a little bit more while we waited for our ride. :)

Awwwww..........new friendships.......LOL!

Hahahahah.........these two thought Kimberley had more food in her pockets......LOL!

Our elephant had WAY too much fun in the mud pit.....

This is a big pile of poop!

Muddy and content with life! :)

More pics from Chiang Mai and our zipline adventure "Flight of the Gibbon" coming soon! :)

Escape to Thailand - Bangkok

Whoo hoo! We are on our way to the airport with our friend Kirsten.....she was off to meet her best friend in Dubai and we were off to Thailand for 2 weeks! We were pretty tired after a long week of proctoring and marking mid-term exams.......:)

After 5 months of school, the first semester finally ended and Kimberley and I embarked on our big 2 week getaway from Kuwait! We really wanted to do something more tropical and out of the Middle East, so we decided on Thailand. We flew into Bangkok and spent a few days here relaxing and learning to love street food and cheap shopping! :)

Flying into Bangkok as the sun was coming up......lots of water in and around this city!

We booked a hotel on the main pedestrian street, KohSan Road. Our hotel, Rikka Inn, was great, all things considered! Safe and tucked right off the main drag, and CLEAN! Although we did have a cockroach invade our room for a few hours.........we think he may have come from the sink as he suddenly appeared from under my pj's that were sitting on the counter while I was showering. After we screamed and he ran (these things are ridiculously fast!!!) we realized we had to hunt him down so he wouldn't hide in our stuff! He appeared a minute later on the door jam and we shrieked again. We went down to the front desk to have them come get him and they looked at us as though we had lost our minds. One of the staff even asked us "Don't you have these in your country?". I would have assumed they would have already known the answer to that question, as they could hear our screams all the way at the front desk. Apparently not. They went in, told us they got him (which I am highly doubtful of) and set up a roach trap outside our door. He never reappeared, but I'm thinking our shrieks of disgust were more likely the reason he went into more permanent hiding.

Corny the Cockroach

I had always been told how good the street food in Thailand was, but didn't really know just how good it could possibly be until I tried it myself!!! We fell in love with eating Pad Thai from the street vendors who sold it for the equivalent of 64 cents Canadian! We weren't brave enough to try it with the meat, but instead enjoyed the vegetarian version with all the fresh veges. Sooooo good!!!! In fact, we liked it so much that we had it everyday! LOL

We also fell in love with the banana pancake man.....or lady. There were a few of these street carts out with people making them. They cook this pancake like dough on a hot circular griddle, slice up fresh bananas and seal them inside. Then when it's cooked, they put Nutella all over the top. Again, sooooo good!!!! We may have had these everyday as well........LOL.

Fresh Pad Thai!

These little packages of pancake happiness are filled with bananas.....

....and once taken off the grill are topped with Nutella! :) Yummm!!!!

Lots of fresh fruit!

The nightlife on Koh San Road was supposedly ridiculous, but we had been warned of the excessive amounts of drinking/partying and loud music blaring into the wee hours of the night, so it wasn't too much of a shock. We were surprised by how tame it actually was while we were there! Luckily our hotel room faced away from the main street and we could hardly hear anything at night.

The other thing we experienced was the amazing Thai foot massages where they press all you pressure points and literally make you fell asleep. They were the equivalent of $3 Canadian for a half hour, so you guessed it......we got one every night! LOL On our last night in Bangkok, we decided to try out this "fish spa" where you sit with your feet and legs up to your knees in this tank full of hundreds of little sucker fish that eat all the dead skin off your feet and legs. Ya, it was really weird and VERY ticklish, but fun too! LOL My feet did feel a bit softer after the 20 mins in the tank. LOL

Nothing like a nice foot massage after walking all day....:)

Us with our feet in the "fish spa"......it felt REALLY weird.......very uncomfortable for the first bit actually.

Kimberley barely made it through the 20 minute session and had white knuckles the whole time......LOL!

A close up view of the fish "sucking" my feet.......I remember having these same little sucker fish in my fish tank a few years ago.....who knew you could use them for this too!

We went exploring for a day down the Chao Phraya River (the River of Kings) and also went to a few of the famous temples in and around Bangkok.

Our boat......

Some temple with a giant statue of Buddha......could only see his back from the river though.

A grocery boat......

Another random temple along the river.

From the river we went to Wat Arun also known as the Temple of Dawn, which was built in the mid-1700's. It looked impressive from across the river and was very steep once we were close up. We climbed to the top part and the steps were VERY TINY and VERY STEEP! It was more like climbing a ladder than steps!

Wat Arun - The Temple of Dawn

Looking up......

Us at the bottom......we thought the clouds were pretty cool that day!

Us at the top!

From there we went across the river to Way Pho - The Temple of the Reclining Buddha. This gold plated statue was huge - over 46 meters long! The bottoms of the feet were kind of cool all inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

The Reclining Buddha

The tips of his toes.....LOL

The soles of his feet with all the pictures made of inlaid mother-of-pearl!

Next on our list was Wat Saket - The Temple of the Golden Mount......

Our final stop was to Wat Phra Kaew - the Temple of the Emerald Buddha which was attached to the Grand Palace grounds. We weren't allowed to take any pics of the Emerald Buddha statue, but it was kinda of funny to find out that he has different outfits he wears according to the season. They keep his different outfits locked up in the Palace Museum when he's not wearing them.

And finally, the Grand Palace! :)

Such pretty grounds!

I love this tree! Super cool!!! :)

One of the Palace guards.....

From Bangkok we flew north up to Chiang Mai.......pics of all the adventures we had while up there riding elephants and flying through the jungle are coming soon! :)