Norb's Thailand Adventure: Tiger Kingdom, Ziplining and a Thai Cooking Class

I am going to wrap up our time in Chiang Mai rather quickly. As mentioned earlier, we did some basic touristy things.

Ziplining: If you have ever done ziplining before, then the ziplining we did in Chiang Mai is really nothing special.

A platform

View from the platform

The forest is nice and some of the views are okay, but it’s like most other ziplines, nothing more. To me the most exciting part was the ride in the van up the mountain. The driver was late picking us up and I think he was trying to make up time. He was barreling up the twisty mountain road pretty fast. Other than that, an average time.

Aerial walkway

Abseiling

Sign says it all

Tiger Kingdom was pretty cool. They have a range of options for the size of tiger you want to get into a cage with: smallest, small, medium and large. You can choose any one or a combination of sizes. They range from 3-4 months old to full grown adults. We chose the smallest, small and large. The combos are more cost effective. There is some controversy on whether or not the cats are drugged. Tiger Kingdom claims the cats are not drugged and based on my observations I would to agree with them. The smallest ones are very cute and some of them were quite active, while others lounged sleeping. They acted like any normal cat would.

Smallest cats

Smallest

You get to touch and pet them, but they do not allow them to climb on you like the lion cubs we visited in Africa. Even at their small size you could feel their power. When you get into the cage with the adult cats you can really feel their strength. Their paws are massive. The adult cage contained 5 or 6 cats. The largest male was 500-600 pounds. A very big animal. Again some of them were just lying around as cats do, while another was walking around lime she owned the place. They are hand raised from babies, trained, and well fed which is why I think they are not drugged.

Large cat

There were several “trainers” in the cage along with the cats. They carried a small stick about the size of a baton. I don’t know how much good it would do if one of them decided to attack. I kept thinking of Zigfreid and Roy, Their cats were probably brought up in a similar fashion and yet one almost killed Roy. No matter how much training and love they are given, they are still wild animals and that thought never left my mind until we were well out of the cage. The one thing that I do wonder about is what happens to the animals on the back end. They must always have a supply of baby animals to appease the tourists, but those babies grow into adults.

Large cat smiling

Large cat turning to eat me

Then what happens to them? The number of babies seemed to outweigh the number of adults and taking care of a full grown adult must be expensive, so what happens to them? The one fellow I raised the question to said that they sell them to zoos, but I’m not sure the demand is that great. So that question remains in my mind. Other than that is was a pretty cool experience being so close to such a beautiful animal.

Large cat

Open wide

Cooking Class: The cooking class was a lot of fun. They had six courses from appetizer to desert and three options in each category to choose from. You went to the local market to pick up your ingredients and were given a little lesson on each one. The market was a bustling place with all sorts of sights and smells. Fresh vegetables, meat and fish abounded.

Vegetables

Market food

Many of the fish were live, the meat unrefrigerated, and the vegetables were fresh. The market lesson wasn’t as thorough as I would have liked, but it was great experience. We returned to the school and proceeded to cook our dishes. We were first shown how to cook the dish and then everyone got their own wok to recreate the dish.

Market fish

Market meat

After cooking it you got to eat it, which was the best part. We all shared our dishes so you had the opportunity to taste everything on the menu. You also received a cookbook of all the dishes in the course. I learned a lot about cooking in the wok properly and a valuable lesson on the ingredients. Is is certainly going to improve my cooking technique for Asian food. I would highly recommend taking a cooking class if you are in Thailand.

Men cooking

Finished product

Spring rolls - mine are on the left

Women cooking

We finished our time in Chiang Mai with a “cruise” on the Ping river. I had read that it wasn’t that great and the reviews were quite accurate. The river at this junction isn’t really that interesting. You can take it all the way down to Bangkok which may be nice, but I would pass on the Ping river cruise.