Hello all. Sorry this blog has been stagnant for a while. I have been quite busy but things are more settled now, so I am going to gradually update you on my adventures since I last posted at the end of July.
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| Graphite sketch I did of an elephant |
The first weekend of August was a Thai holiday so I had a few days off, and one of my best friends Haley came to visit me! We had a blast and did SO much. In fact one night we stayed up all night, and another night only got 1 hour of sleep. She was only in Thailand for a long weekend, gotta see as much as possible, right?
The first couple days I showed her around Bangkok. Among other things, we went to a lot of good restaurants and a sky bar, and saw the Grand Palace, some other temples, and a few malls. (I found out that I can get into the Grand Palace for free, same as a Thai person, because I work at the king's school woohoo!)
Here are some photos of our visits to the Grand Palace and a temple called Wat Pho.
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Haley & I at the Grand Palace in Bangkok
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| You can only imagine the stares I got from Thai people for doing this. Woohoo! |
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I did not know that the temple we went to had this giant reclining golden Buddha.
Our mouths literally dropped when we walked in the room which barely contains it, it's soo big! |
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| Gives you an idea of the scale |
Here's a few pictures from one of the highest sky bars in Bangkok, it's 59 floors high! Appropriately named the Moon bar.
The next 3 days we spent in Chiang Mai! It's in the northwest of Thailand, and it's absolutely wonderful. It's surrounded by mountains and rain forests and is so much smaller and nicer than Bangkok. It was so nice to get out of that crazy city and be in nature and out of pollution, crowds, and traffic all the time. I think it was one of the best weekends of my life honestly! We rode elephants, went zip-lining through the rain forest, held a tiger, went on a night safari, stayed in a cool hostel, went to the zoo, ate great food, and all with some of my best friends. I couldn't be more thankful.
So Haley and I had stayed up all night because our flight was at like 6:00am. After our 1 hour flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and checking into our hostel, we went straight to an elephant camp! We first saw a show in which the elephants played soccer, basketball, threw darts, and PAINTED! After the show the elephants came to the edge of the performing area and they hugged us all with their trunks! Kind of gross and snotty but a really fun and cool experience.
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| playing soccer |
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| one of the elephant trainers getting a "massage" |
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| Painting!! Amazing! |
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| Me & my pal |
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| I was turned the other way and this elephant came out of nowhere and wrapped his trunk around my neck! After freaking out for a bit I finally just decided to let it be and take some pictures. There are many blurry photos of my initial freaking out as well haha. He got lots of elephant snot in my hair, hope he's happy. |
After the show Haley and I rode an elephant for a whole hour through some beautiful scenery including going through a river!
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| Elephants are such beautiful, smart, calm, amazing creatures. |
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| Babyyyy dahhhh! |
As if our weekend could get any better.. it did! The next day we went zip-lining for several hours high up in the trees of the rain forest! It was a program called "Flight of the Gibbon", and we saw a few gibbon monkeys up there! We drove up into the mountains and were surrounded by nature. It was exhilarating and we had a wonderful time. And got to do a bit of hiking by a beautiful waterfall too. Thanks to Haley for risking/bringing her camera with her so we had photos!
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| Haley, Cara, Vanessa, one of our guides, Sarah, and myself |
That evening we went on a night safari, where we rode in an open air car/tram and saw all different types of animals, some quite close to the car; and we got to hold a white tiger!! There was also a dance show at the end.
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| Sorry for the bad quality of the photo. |
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| Again, sorry for the quality. A photo of a photo. |
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| Pretty sure these are ladyboys... |
On our last day in Chiang Mai, Haley and I did some shopping, went to the zoo (got to see a panda!), went to an amazingly cool dessert cafe, and got the worst massages ever. (only bad thing of the whole weekend.) All too soon, it was time to head back to Bangkok.
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| Chiang Mai zoo |
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| iberry, an amazing dessert place with a great vibe and artsy decorations |
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| I love Chiang Mai. |
Haley and I headed back to Bangkok, and then it was Monday. She got to come to work with me on Monday and then had to leave Tuesday morning. We did SO much but the weekend went by really fast. We we had a wonderful time and were pretty much laughing the whole time. I wouldn't mind spending more time in Chiang Mai.
Well friends and family, that's all for now, I'll hopefully try to catch up on my updates again soon! Bye for now.
~ Elisa
