Taxi Chiangmai: Patrick 081 617 2116 E-mail: neomart@gmail.com
Recommend: Elephant show + elephant riding through jungle and stream to 7 hilltribe village (including Long neck Karen) + monkey show + Orchid/Butterfly farm and lunch buffet at Tiger Kingdom, a day program about 6-7 hours
Fees: 2,450 Baht per person for 2-3 person (if one person = 4,900 Baht) including air-con car/English speaking driver/gasoline/ticket for Elephant show/Elephant ride/hilltribe/monkey show/orchid n butterfly and Lunch buffet
Reviewed December 15, 2011
My wife and I booked the Elephant safari and long neck tour with Journey Tours.
If you've never ridden an elephant, or seen one up close, it's an unforgetable experience. Elephants are truly intelligent gentle giants. And riding them is exhilerating. Be sure to buy some sugarcane and bannanas as you ride to feed them.
The tours starts with watching the mahouts wash the elephants in the river. Then the elephants put on a little show. Not as crazy (or even cruel) as a circus show. It's entertaining, but not at the expense of the elephant (no elephants on bicycles and stuff). Then the mahouts take the elephants around to take pictures, and even allow you to sit on them for photos and feed them.
Then you travel up the hill to see the longneck lady village - villagers imported from Burman explicitly for tourism. They'll agressively try to sell you stuff (most of it not even hand made, but from the factories) but be sure to bargin hard. I found out later while shopping at Chiang Mai night market that similar items were cheaper . But you should buy a few things to support the village.
Then you're taken on a river raft tour. Vey nice and relaxing. The captain may even let take a turn steering the raft.
You break for buffet lunch, which was actually pretty good. Curry chicken, frind chicken wings, sweet and sour chicken, soup, rice and tea.
Finally there's the elephant ride. Truly breathtaking. And a little scary. You start to appreciate the awesome power, sheer size and gentleness of thes creature. Our mahout was even nice enough to stop at some point a take a few great photos of my wife and i on the elphant ( saving us from buying the expensive tourist photo at the trips end) In reading other reviews about other elephant farms (and even about this one), several people were concerned about the treatment of the elephants. They all seemed well cared for to me. The mahouts do carry a stick with a sharp hook at the end (probably for prodding or in case something goes wrong) but i never saw our mahout use it once during our 30+ minute ride. Yes, the elephants have a loose chain around 1 leg when the are not with a trainer, or being ridden - but this is and open environment (no cages) and you wouldn't want to be trampled. Our guide noted that there are only 5000 elephants left in thailand - 2000 are at camps like this one, and 3000 still roam wild.
finally, the tour took us to an orchard and butterfly farm. it was ok.
Overall, i'd highly recommend this day tour. It'll be very memorable.
23 reviews
4 attraction reviews
Reviews in 12 cities
8 helpful votes
No comments:
Post a Comment