After that, we headed to Lampang and our hotel, which was listed somewhat romantically as being on the river. Well, as it turned out, while I guess it was a river, it was sort of like being on the Los Angeles river. Like a concrete aqueduct. The hotel itself looked decent enough but everyone in our group was complaining of bed bugs the next day. We weren't there long anyway, though. I wouldn't personally recommend Lampang to anyone.

After breakfast we headed towards Chiang Mai and stopped at an elephant park on the way there. The main elephant park had elephant rides, elephants painting and such and was an overall educational park all about elephants.

Elephant painting.

Now if only we can teach them Photoshop!

At the start of our elephant ride here, not that you can see the elephant in this shot!

They also make paper out of the massive amount of elephant dung that's generated by the park's residents. Seems pretty eco friendly and the proceeds go to the park.

Mmm mmm. Poop!

Near the elephant park was an elephant hospital. They showed us a film to educate us about what they do and introduced us to some of their elephants. In the area around the border with Myanmar, people illegally use elephants to haul timber. And in that area, there's a ton of landmines. Once in a while, an elephant gets their foot blown off or is otherwise injured. And this hospital helps those elephants.

You can see his injured foot.

We donated some money to the hospital, bought some shirts and such. And otherwise, we had a pretty nice day. The elephants were pretty cool. Sad to see the injuries sustained by the hospital residents, but nice to see the hospital taking care of them!

More about our Thailand trip:

The hotel we stayed at in Bangkok, the Viengtai, was also the meeting point for the Intrepid tour that we had booked to start off our vacation. I also booked us time in the south, on Koh Mook and Koh Lanta. So, we'd have some nice, warm beach time with sun and swimming and such. For the tour, we decided to head to the Northern part of Thailand so we'd see a bit more of the country rather than just the islands.

We decided to take the tour called Treasures of the North. This took us around the north a bit, starting with a train taking us up towards Sukhothai. After the train, we switched to a songthaew for transportation to Sukhothai. The songthaew is basically a small pickup truck that's been converted to carry tourists in the back. They range from moderately comfortable to totally uncomfortable depending on the seat structure and how low the ceiling is. Anyway, this carried us to Sukhothai where we checked into our guest cottages.


The guest cottages were pretty decent. If memory serves, we then headed off for a Thai massage at a local place (which was great! Maybe the best massage I had on this trip.) and returned to the cottages where we had some tasty dinner and drank beer for a while to get acquainted with the group we were touring with. As it turned out, we had very good luck with our group. It was a mixed group from Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada and Luxembourg (and Croatia and America counting us). For the most part we all got along great on the whole trip and had a lot of fun together. And our tour leader, Toon, was really great. I'd recommend these guys to anyone after this experience.




The next morning, we headed off to see Sukhothai National Park, which was quite a sight to behold. We took a songthaew to get there, once again, then rented bikes for touring around. Our tour guide was fantastic, explaining a lot of the history of the place and really showing us around. And she made us some amazing lunch too that she brought with us for a picnic. Our tour leader was not really our *guide* per se. She did a great job of getting us around and helping us, but in each location we had local guides who really knew the area. That was the case here as well.

Our tour group.

Further reading about the Sukhothai Kingdom:

Sukhothai Kingdom.

Last year at this time, Nara and I went to Thailand for a four week vacation. Originally, we had planned to be married in December of 2008 and this would have been our honeymoon. But when we were renewing my visa in 2008, the process took ten full months, which took us up to November. And when they told us that I would have to renew my visa AGAIN within 8 days of getting married, we decided to delay the wedding until August of 2009 instead. The Thailand trip was already planned and paid for, though, so we went anyway and had the honeymoon before the wedding!

It was the best vacation we've ever had. Truly fantastic. Not just because it was 4 weeks long, but because we really got to relax and we did a lot of exploring of Thailand, which is a beautiful country filled with great people.

Me, outside of the hotel in Bangkok.

Nara, outside the hotel in Bangkok. Intrepid sign in the background.

When planning our trip, I had talked to a few friends who had either been to Thailand a lot or who travel a lot. We were basically told that Thailand is an easy country to get around and that you can just book everything yourself. But I wanted us to do a guided tour for part of the trip. Having never done a guided trip before, I took the advice of my friend Marie Javins who recommended Intrepid. The basic plan was to arrive in Bangkok, then head north on a tour for 8 days, then return to Bangkok and head south on our own and head first to Koh Mook then Koh Lanta, then return to Bangkok and return home from there.

Local Heinz!

Khao San Road.

The view from the hotel room.

There were a few reasons a guided tour sounded good to us. Neither of us had ever been to Asia, for one. And we'd be pretty jet lagged. I didn't really want to arrive into Bangkok then have to deal with all the travel and planning stuff to get around up in the North. And from reading Intrepid's site, it looked like they'd also take us to some places to do some things I just wouldn't have gotten around to.

Driving around Bangkok in a Tuk Tuk.

Anyway, we arrived into Bangkok. We had booked a room at Viengtai Hotel, just a block away from Khao San Road, which is a street bustling with activity and backpackers. It was fun to be in that area for a short time because there was a lot going on. It's loud at night, though, which would be a drawback for me if we stayed there for longer. As it was, though, I wore earplugs and all was well. We settled into Bangkok and spent a couple of days wandering around the city before heading north on our tour. More posts to follow with tons of pics of Thailand. Wish we were there this year too!

Khao San Road.