Day Three Chiang Mai

Our third day's activity in Chiang Mai was a highly anticipated one. Ever since thoughts about traveling to Thailand began to form, this activity was always brought up as something we'd do and finally the day was here where we got to satisfy all the talk that had built up around it..... Today was tiger day!

Bright and early we got up and ate breakfast at Mickey's Cafe (as in Mickey Mouse!); a cute cafe next to our hostel decorated in Mickey Mouse, Harley Davidson, and Coca-Cola Products! Me being completely obsessed with Thai food ordered my daily breakfast of curry and rice. I figure I can eat eggs and toast when I get back to the states, so most of the trip I refused to eat anything that wasn't either noodles or curry!

After breakfast we took a cab abou 45 minutes into a more mountainous area of Chiang Mai and anxiously awaited our arrival at Tiger Kingdom! When we arrived we were created at the front with the different options of tiger ages you had to choose from (biggest: 1-2 years, medium: 8-12 months, small: 5-6 months, smallest: 3-4 months) each for varying prices. All three of us decided to do interactions with the biggest and smallest tigers!

Biggest:

Smallest:

It was strange, when we entered the cage with the big cats none of us had even thought to be nervous until we saw one girl freaking out she was so scared. The tigers just lounged around and didn't mind people petting them and seemed like they barely even noticed they were there, just like a big kitty!

They actually were surprisingly similar to house cats with the exception of size, of course! They played with each other, groomed each other, and even chased and batted at a dangling coconut hanging from a long bamboo pole which resembled the common cat toy in large scale!

The big tigers were very soft and calm just wanting to lounge and sleep mostly. It was a really hot day so thy also liked to play around in their swimming pool! Most of the time thy just later in the shade barely acknowledging that there were people all around, probably because tigers, like cats, are naturally a nocturnal animal. It was so cool to pet them, I even got to cuddle with one while she slept and layed down on her!

After the big cats we went over to the babies! They were so cute! Their paws much too big for their tiny bodies which made them stumble around a lot. They were much more restless than the bigger tigers, just like children! But we got to play with them, pet them, and even hold one! One of the babies was crawling all over my lap and kept licking and biting at my pants and was trying to play with my hands by taking little love nibbles at my fingers!

After getting a sufficient amount of time playing with the babies we went and walked around all the enclosures the park had. They house 47 tigers up to the age of 2. Once a tiger gets to be older then 2 they began to act more like the wild animal that they are because their hormones kick in once past the toddler years. That's why we only had the option to play with tigers up to the age of 2, any order and we may have been the ones being played with! They also has a "tiger preschool" that had a month month old tiger to young to be played with, a full grown lion, and a few parrots!

We ate lunch at the Tiger Kingdom as well. The restaurant is treated like half of the attraction of the park, "Tiger Kingdom: Tiger Park and Restaurant", which we thought was kind of strange until we tasted the food! It was AMAZING! One of the best meals I've ever eaten! I had a chicken salad that had an incredible dressing and the chicken as an incredible marinade and we all split an order of spinach, cheese, and apple sauce spring rools. Sounds odd, but I think it's one of the most amazing dishes I've ever eaten. We also got coconut shakes served in the coconut decorated with beautiful flowers. So obviously, because we ate at such a nice, 5 star restaurant the meal was going to be the most expensive one we would eat during our stay in Thailand.... And the bill was less than $20 for all three of us. I don't know how I'm ever going to survive in the states again after being spoiled with food at these prices!

We webt outside of Tiger Kingdom and found out that our cab driver from the mornin had waited (almost 2.5 hours) for us outside Tiger Kingdom! We figured out later that all cabs do that because they want the money to drive you back down to town since its a out of the way location so they just wait for you! From our tiger time he took us to our second destination, waited for us there, and then drove us home. It cost us about $20 for a personal driver for 6.5 hours of travel and waiting for us! So awesome!

Our second destination was a Buddhist temple located on the very top of a mountain that looked over the entire city of Chiang Mai! It was beautiful, quite large, and decorated with gold towers and statues! It was amazing the detail and decoration that aw sour into the temple. When you ventured to the back of the temple, there was a balcony that overlooked the city. It was gorgeous, the entire city of Chiang Mai is surrounded by mountains covered in a thick, green jungle! It was a great place to relax and really take in the beauty of where you are.

We headed back down to our hostel and upon walking in ran into our new friend Alex who invited us to join her in getting Indian food for dinner. Of course we wanted too so we followed her for about 10 blocks until we found the Indian restaurant that was suggested to her by her Lonely Planet book. Turns out, the people at Lonely Plant know what they're talking about! The meal was amazing! I got shrimp masala and garlic naan bread but the four of us ended up sharing everything we ordered and not one thing was less than perfect!

We went back to hostel after dinner and met up with our other friend Brandon and all hung out for a while in the lounge area of the hostel. None of us lasted long though, all of us keep busy during the days, and we called it a night. Just another perfect day in Thailand!