Never been happier - Doilom elephant sanctuary in Chiang Mai

The previous post in this series is here..

After visiting the long neck tribe, our next stop was the Doilom elephant sanctuary. We had told Joy that we wanted less crowd. So he went to a place farther away. We were the first customers and after waiting 15 minutes for another group that never showed up, they decided to give us a private tour for the two of us. It was nice of them. I am sure Joy explained our time crunch to them.

There is only one thing that has made me happier than a 90 minute hot yoga class. That is spending 90 minutes with this amazing gentle elephant. Had an great time making medicine for her and feeding her and walking with her and taking a bath with her.

Had already walked in there with a cold and had taken tylenol. After getting in the cold water with the elephant and getting completely wet, not sure if I helped my own cause. The recovery was going to take longer. San was not happy with my move to jump into the water but I don’t get to do this every day! So there was no reasoning with me.

After the water, we got changed quickly and luckily they had really nice towels to keep us warm for a few minutes to dry.

They served us lunch but again I just settled for plain white rice with salt and pepper. Only the jeera was missing. After eating an energy bar and two more tylenols for desert and topping it off with a packet of emergen-C vitamins, was ready to move to our next stop..

A video highlights reel..

Our next stop was a place that I added to the tour list that is not in most folks list. Had heard about this place through a friend who visited Chiang Mai as a photographers delight. That in the next post..

Meeting the Long Neck tribe people in Chiang Mai

The previous post in this series is here..

Joy showed up in the morning to pick us up at 7AM sharp. We had received the breakfast and they gave what they could. San was covered. I was not. Luckily I still had some energy bars left for the day. We also wanted to stop by a pharmacy to get some throat lozenges. Joy helped San buy stuff. It was good we had a translator!

With a quick pharmacy stop, we were on our way to our first stop on a very packed day. Joy was surprised that we wanted to see all that in one day, but we promised him we will step up and we will be done before 6PM for sure. He simply smiled. As we drove out of the busy area of Chiang Mai, he showed us the old houses in the area made of Teak wood on one street where the trees were also old and lined the street on both sides. It was going to be an almost 100km drive. Gave us some rest. We saw an airplane that was converted to a restaurant on the way as well.

Our first stop was to visit the Long neck tribe who are originally from Burma but have been given refuge in Thailand. They can sell trinkets to tourists and have some land to cultivate crops for themselves, but are restricted to that area. The women have long necks and wear a heavy set of rings from the time they are children. Originally only women born on a full moon Wednesday had to wear it. Now all girls are wearing it here. Learning about their history and way of life was interesting. We took some photos with the women and children, bought some souvenirs and walked back to the car. The river that ran through their area was key to their survival and there were beautiful waterfalls right near the houses of the tribe.

A few more photos..

A video highlights reel..

The reason for visiting them first was that the next stop wasn’t going to be ready for us that early and they were on the way..

A thousand lingas

The previous post in this series is here..

After getting down from the reclining Buddha temple, we had a very short drive to another parking area to see the 1000 linga river.

The kings had carved a 1000 lingas and other reliefs on the rock face after blocking the river and once done, had released the river across these carvings. The idea was that the water was blessed by the gods as it flowed over their reliefs and came down as a waterfall. They also planted herbs alongside so the falling water was medicinal.

The water source is a spring and you can see it gush water out in the video at the end of the post. It was cold fresh spring water at its source!

We walked a good mile along the river till we had crossed most of the lingas and turned back. The crowd was starting to arrive.

The next two photos are Sarak taking our making a selfie and the actual selfie..

We prayed at the little Buddha shrine near the river source (which used to be a Linga at some point back in time) and walked back. The buddhist take over some 700 years ago was apparently violent in some places and peaceful in some places where kings reconciled and built temples for Vishnu and Buddha side by side to appease people. Guess we now know where the “buddha is the 10th avatar of vishnu” logic came from. In Hindu mythology the 10th avatar is yet to arrive (Kalki.. who shows up to cleanse the world and close out things).

The video does a better job for this leg of the trip than the photos..

There was a lot of water flowing in the river which meant our next stop was going to be amazing!