So I'm going through my friends list and culling everyone I think is no longer active on LJ. If you don't post or comment, i am assuming the account is inactive. If you are reading and not posting or commenting, speak up now.

Today we went to the Tiger Kingdom. Getting to play with a tiger was one of my primary motives for wanting to visit Thailand. This is also something that left me fairly ethically conflicted. I don’t approve of the exploitation of animals for money and human entertainment. But I also acknowledge that tigers are endangered and breeding programs need ( Read more... )

Back in Chiang Mai, in a different hotel near the night market, my knees decided it would be a great time for an arthritis flare up. I’d kind of been expecting this and just glad it didn’t happen in the jungle. Being in different locations can cause immune reactions, which my kind of arthritis is, something about all the different germs and ( Read more... )

Today was the reason we were in the north of Thailand. We headed to the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre (TECC) for a three day adventure with elephants. This place came highly recommended by friends as the place to go for elephant adventures. They are home to a free elephant hospital and provide a living for elephants, mahouts and their families ( Read more... )

So we left Cambodia and headed to Thailand. Our first stop in Thailand was Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is the major city in the north of Thailand. A regional centre might be a more accurate term. This was out jumping off point to TECC and tigers. If you wanted to visit hill tribes, villages or jungle trekking in Thailand, this is where you go.

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I guess there are only so many temples you can visit, although there were many we didn't find time to see. On Day 6 we opted to visit Tonle Sap. Tonle Sap is the biggest lake in Cambodia, this is a huge lake that numerous rivers run into and the size of the lake varies greatly between wet and dry season. Lonely Planet recommended the Tonle Sap ( Read more... )

This was my favourite of all the days I spent in Cambodia. Certainly the tour I enjoyed the most of my whole adventure. The tour was a 75km ride out of Siem Reap to Beng Melea, a temple out in the jungle that is not part of the Angkor Complex and not protected by the UNESCO world heritage listing. This tour was also run by Grasshopper Adventures.

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There was a group called Grasshopper Adventures that does a range of cycling tours throughout Asia. I can't say enough good things about these people, we ended up doing three tours with them and would happily do more. We decided to start with an easy one to see what we thought and if their bikes were any good. We opted for a 25km kilometre ‘country ( Read more... )

This morning our alarm was set for 4am. At 4:30am we were in a car heading out to Angkor Wat to watch the sun rise along with hundreds of other tourists ( Read more... )

Day 2 began with meeting our driver and a guide, again part of the package. We started with a guided tour of Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is the big one, it’s the main temple, one of the largest and in the best condition. It was built in the 12th Century as a monument to Vishnu and to the King. However, as Buddhism rose to prominence, much of the Hindu ( Read more... )