We met ‘Jackie’ this morning, our new guide while in Chiang Rai. He and driver ‘Chip’ picked us up around 8:30 this morning for a tour of the mountains north of the city. The drive into the mountains was along winding roads where we encountered road works repairing earlier landslides and numerous police checkpoints as…
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We had a 7:00 pickup for our morning visit to the Kanta Elephant Sanctuary, about an hour’s drive from Chiang Mai proper. Elephant sanctuaries are a controversial issue in Southeast Asia and especially in Thailand as many exploit the animals for commercial gain. We spent a lot of time working with our booking agent to…
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Today was labelled a ‘city safari’ in Chiang Mai using pretty much every form of transportation available in the city. Kong and driver picked us up at the hotel in one of the city’s ‘songthaew’, the local form of public transit. The color of these small ‘buses’ identifies which route they take – ‘red’ is…
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Today was ‘city safari’ day and our last day in Bangkok. Mr. Ed and a new driver gathered us up from the Ariyasom for the drive into the center of Bangkok and the Jim Thompson House. Jim Thompson was an important character in Bangkok and Thai history. An American, he revitalized and commercialized the Thai…
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