Day 423: Adventures near Chiang Mai

Realizing that my time in Chiang Mai was running out - crafting academic job applications and preparing for interviews does take quite a bit of time - I booked a day trip for today that included several activities. After we drove out of Chiang Mai, our first stop was a visit to the village of a local hill tribe, the Long Neck Karen. They are called long necks because their women elongate their necks with a set of metal rings worn around the neck. Kids only have four or five rings, but older women may have many more - like her, for example:

The visit to the village felt a little like a visit to the zoo, however, especially because the guide constantly pressured me to take pictures.

Our next stop, after another seemingly endless drive, was whitewater rafting. At this time of year, the rapids were almost nonexistent, maybe class II but no more. I imagine that the river really gets going during the rainy season though. Some of the girls in my boat had never done rafting before, so even the tame rapids were greeted by screams, which I found rather hilarious ;-)

After rafting downriver for about an hour, we got out, had lunch, and were hurried to the next activity: elephant riding. This was quite fun because it included feeding bananas to the elephants. The elephants were trained to put their trunks over their heads and expect bananas to be put there.

Compared to my elephant experience in Laos, however, this was definitely worse because the elephants were much less well-treated. Some of them were trained for a dancing show - which wasn't included in my tour, luckily, but I still saw it from a distance. In the afternoon, when almost all other tourists had already left, it became apparent what this training does to the elephants' natural behavior: even when feeding, they were swinging their trunks and tails and legs like they had done during the show. They even include baby elephants in the show. This is one of them:

The next activity promised much more fun and less concern about mistreated animals: ziplining! I was with a rather big group of Chinese people, some of whom had even brought their moms along to join in the adventure. Not all of them were entirely sold on the idea of hurtling through the forest on a thin steel rope, and it was fun to watch how they were slowly convinced to try regardless ;-)

Even though the course was much less impressive than the one I had done in Ecuador, it was still good fun. And the view from the treetops was amazing, of course:

Just before leaving, we had the opportunity to walk around for a bit and get a last look at the elephants. I especially loved the baby elephants - so cute!