Two Saturdays ago, I took a plane to Bangkok, Thailand, just to take another plane to Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand. The plane to Bangkok was 10 hours long, and I watched movies the ENTIRE TIME. On the plane to Chiang Mai, I (tried to) sleep, but I was awake the whole of that plane ride, too. When I got to our hotel, the DusitD2, my Dad made my family sleep for 3 hours, just in time for our Temple Tour in Chiang Mai. On the tour, I saw 3 temples that I forget the names of, the main one being on top of a mountain (you can see my family on the steps in the slideshow). After the tour, I was exhausted and went to sleep back at the hotel. The next day, I got up early to go Elephant Trekking at Ran-Tong Search and Rescue Elephant Camp. After a 45-minute drive to Ran-Tong, we went down a steep slope to a “courtyard” for the elephants to live in. There, we could feed the elephants bananas. There was a young one that was really crazy for the bananas, and once we were out of bananas, the young elephant still wanted more. After feeding time, we were instructed how to use vocal commands for riding the elephants. You can see in the slideshow what the commands were. Then, we were instructed to change into special clothes so we would have something clean and dry to wear afterwards. So we changed, then we started to get ready to ride the elephants. Me and my dad rode an elephant called something like Boom-Pot. Boom-Pot was very slow as we rode him, we were screaming one command, Pie (the word for go) at him the entire time. When he did move, he moved two yards and stopped. Then we had to scream Pie! at him again so he could move another 2 yards, and this repeated for the entire trail. The trail lead to a pond, so the elephants could wash up. My sister helped out, (as you can see in the slideshow), and finally we went back to the “courtyard” again. There, they gave us lunch, a Thai ice cream woman gave me and my sister ice cream for 30¢ (I got vanilla bean with actual beans and my sister got green tea), and I took the van back to my hotel. There, I went in the pool for a little bit, relaxed, and after 2 hours or so, went for a walk, took a tuk-tuk (a motorized rickshaw), and got dinner at this place called The Whole Earth. Then, I went back to the hotel and went to sleep. The next day, I woke up, ate a big breakfast, and took a bike tour. The bike tour started with going to the Leprosy Hospital, which there are no pictures of, then going by a university, where we saw cotton trees and huge beehives. Then I passed through a rice paddy, and got lunch for $3, and that was for the ENTIRE FAMILY. Then the tour guide brought me to a bakery, and I ate something like a cupcake. We took a bag of cupcakes for the orphanage, which was up next on the tour. After 20 minutes or so, we arrived at the Piyawat orphanage. My sister was shocked at how “normal” the orphans were. She thought they would be like orphans from Annie. We gave them the bag of cupcakes, spent an hour or so there, and finally returned to where the tour started. Then we returned to the hotel, relaxed for a bit, had some dinner, and went to bed. The next day, we packed up our stuff, went to the airport, where my mom got some egg yolk and bean dessert thing, BUT we didn’t take a plane to London or New York. Instead we took a plane to Phuket, Thailand… To Be Continued in Thailand – Phuket…