Breakfast was waiting for us this morning covered with little baskets to keep bugs off. The littlest thought they were giving all of us hats.
Superman & NixiRay went off on an adventure this morning. A van came to pick them up and took them to a jungle zipline roller coaster. They had a blast doing 33 zips including the longest one in Thailand (900 meters), a crazy rope drop, and a roller coaster zipline that was about a mile long. They had a blast! The others in their group spoke French and were hilarious singing American songs. They got fed yellow curry chicken and radish stew (tasted like turkey broth and radishes) with rice balls in coconut milk for dessert.
(pictures coming soon)
Meanwhile the rest of the kids took another cold swim and then we walked to a park. The kids had fun floating leaves down a creek and playing on the (mostly broken) exercise equipment. We picked up pizza for lunch on the way back. It was nice to have a slower -paced morning as we’re still transitioning night to day.
When we were all back together again we booked a Bolt car to take us to the Chiang Mai Night Safari. The driver had two cell phones, one for each eye. He was texting on one and had navigation on the other and would use Google translate to tell us things… But all he said was complaints about how we got the location pinned wrong and how we probably got scammed by buying our tickets online and how we better follow him on WhatsApp because there won’t be taxis when we’re done there. (His profile picture was him in slacks and a button down shirt posing on a fence like a cowboy with one hand behind his head. Hilarious.) It’s drivers like him that made us really nervous to get a rental car because we thought all drivers would act like him- passing people when there wasn’t another lane (so close to other cars we almost clipped mirrors… Like half an inch away), running motorbikes off the road, cutting people off to get one car ahead in line, and slamming on the brakes all the time. We were glad to get out and not call him to pick us up later.
The Chiang Mai Night Safari is such a fun zoo! Definitely the most fun and interactive zoo we’ve ever been to. Animal shows, petting areas, animal feeding, trams, inexpensive food & souvenirs. (Disney World’s Safari experience is similar but no feeding or petting, they are better at the branding & visual entertainment though.) There are tons of animals that we’ve never seen before and we lucked out by seeing feeding times and animals awake.
We got to see two baby hyenas getting bottle fed! So cute! Pigmy hippos got fed piles of lettuce just as we got there and it was so fun to watch them eat! Spud was SO EXCITED about the albino raccoon! We walked passed it several times today and the first time was the only time when it wasn’t sleeping. Lucked out!
Tiger show was incredible! They leaped, climbed, went through obstacles, growled and are gorgeous! The trainers have nerves of steel– one grumpy tiger kept swiping at a guy who would dodge backward a few inches but never stepped away. Some of the tigers had gorgeous golden fur and light stripes – a natural variety called Golden Tabby Tigers. They also had White Tigers.
We had animals walk right over our heads and got to pet a little African owl at the Night Predator show.
We got on the Safari tram just after the sun went down. The guide was awesome telling us about the animals and which ones we could hand feed and which ones like carrots or bananas better. She told us “Don’t touch the zebras unless you want to visit the hospital, they bite hard. Throw their food on the ground!” I had to push a Zebra away with my foot because it reached into the tram trying to get food from little Miss L.
The coolest was that a giraffe came right up to the tram and we all got to feed it little bananas! We got licked by it’s long purple tongue. So fun!! (Pictures are hard in the dark with no flash and moving animals) We wished we could do it again but were told “only one time” per ticket.
We caught the Cowboy Show & petting zoo – for a donation you could take a cup of carrots and feed goats (with tiny babies!), sheep & a pony. The Thai cowboys put on a show spinning knives, guns, fire knives, lassoing and cracking whips. We cracked up at the American Cowboy music soundtrack.
After the show they offered anyone to ride the horses– NixiRay and Miss A took turns riding around the paddock.
We also took the Predator Prowl tram and loved seeing the animals in the dark.
The kids got to hold a bunch of different lizards, snakes & a little owl. The owl sat so still on it’s perch we thought it looked fake… Then suddenly it turned it’s head.
Last thing at the Night Safari was a fountain and light show. We loved it but laughed again because the whole thing was set to one song and the only lyrics were “Oooooh Oooooh Chiang Mai Night Safari” for 15 minutes. So funny.
Our Bolt driver was right… It was hard to find a taxi back to our hotel afterward. We ended up taking a Red Truck and sat in the open air back. The driver lady was typical – impatient, jerking across lanes and slamming brakes. We are 99% positive that she hit another car at one point- we were all tossed around the back. But, somehow we made it safely back to our hotel.
Highly recommend the Chiang Mai Night Safari if you ever have a chance to go– get there early so you have time for all of the animals and all of the shows! And try the Swee Buns with all the funny fillings- they’re delicious! (Green is Thai pandan custard, yellow is called Foi Thong {egg through a funnel cooked in sugar water = golden threads}, Nutella, condensed milk, custard, and ferrero rocher)
