Elephants

When we were in Chiang Mai, we signed up for a trek that included a visit to a local village, a hike through rice paddies to a waterfall, lunch, an elephant ride, and a bamboo raft ride. All of this for the bargain price of 650 baht, or about $19. I love Thailand.

The elephants were so cute! They were trained and were eager to be fed bananas. Our elephant was especially amusing given that he was very hungry AND had an itchy butt. He kept on veering off the path to find more food (which the trainer wasn't too happy about) and stopping to scratch his butt against trees. He would get so much food, that sometimes other elephants would steal food from him. The other highlight was a baby elephant. It was about 3 months old and would stick by its mother. When we crossed a river, he rolled around in the water! So cute :)

The Long Journey

I'm finally back in Boston. It was a long set of flights from Hanoi, Vietnam back to here... A 31 hour itinerary
Hanoi -> Taipei
Taipei -> Los Angeles
Los Angeles -> JFK
a 6 hour layover in JFK from 1am - 7am (oo fun)
JFK -> Boston

So happy to be back, except I'm delirious since I stayed up for all of the first 2 flights and only got some sleep on the LA- JFK flight. We'll see how the jet lag battle goes today. All in all the trip was fun! I'll put up some posts of the travels highlights with photos in the days to come...

Some top picks:
Halong Bay - where the kings and queens used to vacation back in the dynasty days... gorgeous limestone rock jutting out as we stayed on a boat for the night
Chiang Mai - elephants.. need I say more
Hue - amazing tombs of the Nyguen dynasty emperors
Koh Samui - really nice beach resort!

Thailand...

During my month off, I'm traveling to Thailand and Vietnam. After a really long set of flights, we arrived in Chiang Mai Wednesday morning Thai time. We toured around the old city and had some yummy Thai food. I'm a total fan especially of Kao Soi - it's curry with egg noodles - a Northern favorite. The highlight today was riding on elephants! We went on a day trek where we visited some tribal villages, rode elephants, and then went on a bamboo raft. All were cool, but riding on the elephants was by far the best part. We also got to see a baby elephant - only 3 months old, it was so cute!