Flying to Thailand I think has to be the quickest flight we've ever done, not because of the length of the flight but because we slept from practically the moment we took off until about 10 minutes before we landed! Perfect! This did however mean we missed the information about filling in landing cards so after a wait in the passport control queue we arrive at the front of the queue to be turned around! Luckily the queue had gone by the time we arrived back to passport control.

Our number 1 reason for visiting Chiangmai in the north of Thailand was to visit their Tigers. I'd seen friends pictures on Facebook and in awe of how amazing it looked and added it to my bucket list of things to do in my life. When we first started planning our whole trip we had intended to join a group trip in Australia starting on a particular day, therefore we planned around this day and were left with a week gap around Singapore and Malaysia. I joked at the travel agents about going to Chiang Mai for the tigers but we laughed it off thinking that it wouldn't be possible and surely there were other things we could do area the Malaysia area.

We researched around the area but nothing massively took our fancy. So I spent a whole morning looking into Chiangmai flights and was chuffed I'd be able to fit it in! Now to convince James... Which actually turned out to be very easy!! Yay!

So.. We're finally here! We get a £2.50 taxi to take us direct to our accommodation, a 20 minute drive from the airport and pull up outside our guest house, looks great, friendly staff all thumbs up, until they can't find our booking and eventually when we look through my paperwork there are a number of Thae Pae accommodations as we are right by Thae Pae gate. Great! They kindly give us directions to our correct guest house and we struggle to find it misunderstanding her instructions about 3 roads to on the left which actually meant it's the road named something 3. After abit of advise from tuk tuk drivers we find it.

After seeing the first guest house and how friendly they were I worried ours may not be a great but luckily it was lovely, not quite as lovely but properly half the price, after all we were paying £5 each a night with a swimming pool!

There's lots of tourist trips to do; elephant parks, trekking in the rainforest, cooking classes, hundreds (and that's not an exaggeration.. I think there was 300+) temples with about 5 main ones recommended for visiting, zip wire rainforest activities and lots of day and night markets. Oh and the tigers!

The tigers in fact weren't advertised as much as I thought they would be and received mixed reviews when we spoke to other tourists about visiting with some adamant that the tigers must be drugged. Now I'd done my research, reading a lot online and yes there was controversy around them but on the whole I found the majority of the feedback to be positive with tourists on trip advisor and blogs saying the tigers looked well, active and were simply hand reared so used to humans being close from birth. I'd read about a person who'd worked there and was content that the animals appeared to be well looked after.

So we planned our time;

1 full day elephant park visit; feeding, riding and washing the elephants.

1 morning at Tiger Kingdom

1 full day cooking class

1 full day of trekking

Pretty busy! :-)

Baan Chang Elephant Park

Again there was a little controversy over which of the many elephant parks to visit. I'd researched again finding friends had visited Baan Chang Elephant Park which stressed that there were other parks claiming to be Baan Chang so we had to ensure we booked the right one.

As it was our first trip and our first early morning start in Thailand we packed and got everything ready the night before. And thank goodness we did because... my alarm was on silent so we overslept! But thankfully being woken by a knock on the door when the trip guide came to find us. We rushed around like blue arsed flies and were grateful that the trip guide had chosen to look for us rather than presume we didn't want to go or not at this accommodation.

I could talk about this trip for ages as it was one of our favourites! After a brief safety talk, a change of clothes (so the elephants recognise us and we don't get dirty) we get to meet the elephants! They were huge, we got to stand right next to them when feeding, although they were hungry fellas or simply loved food and the sight of food made them get excited so slightly scary for me when they grabbed the food out your hand and tucked their trunk around you. James was well on there though! We fed them bananas (still in the skins- not fussy) and sugar cane which they crunched really loud on! One thing I couldn't get over was the speed they demolished their food and their small mouth in comparison to their body!

We were taught how to sit on the elephant, some simple commands to tell them to let us down, go left, right and bend down to let us on. We learnt how the seats you see other elephant parks use are bad for elephants as they put strain on their spines and attempt to flatten their spines. We had no idea, and felt guilty for visiting and seeing nothing wrong with the seats on our last visit to Thailand. So, although I was scared if sitting right on the elephant and getting on and off I felt better knowing this was the best way for them.

We trekked for a few hours, stopping and getting to know the elephants more. One, we fed water from a bottle and it would squirt the water back at us. They were so sweet!

Our favourite part of the day was washing them! I worried I'd get stood on but it was all done brilliantly, the elephant lyed down in the water on its side with all it's feet on one side. We then stood on the other side Nd using a hard brush scrubbed their backs! It was such a great experience. We got to play around with them, stand on their backs for some pictures and then the guide at the end cheekily got us soaked by getting the elephant to squirt water at us! A perfect end to the day! I'm writing this a month on and am annoyed I can't remember the elephants name.

Tiger Kingdom

I was really excited about our anticipated visit to tiger kingdom, trying to work out when best to visit during our stay. We chose the middle of our trip and even though we had lots of other stuff planned I couldn't wait!

We organised a tuk tuk to drive us to the Tiger Kingdom, about an hour north of Chiangmai. For 400 he would drive us, wait for us to visit tiger kingdom and drive us back. Not bad when you think it's only £7.

A tuk tuk is a moped with a 2/3 person wide seat attached to the back with side panels to make the moped wider.

We arrive at Tiger Kingdom and immediately see the largest tigers... Oh my, they are big! I feel a mixture of excitement and nervousness!

We pick to meet the babies, middle sized and biggest tigers and chose to pay £5 for a pro photographer to be with us in with the biggest tigers.

It's hard to say what we enjoyed the most?! We entered the room where the baby tigers were and they were just like adventurous cats really. Cute as anything and very playful. We had 15 minutes with them and loved every second. We watched them play together, smell us and eye us up before practically sitting on us and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Next we met the biggest tigers and this is when it got a bit more scary for me! We were told all the rules of, always approaching from the back and never touching their faces and off we went! Easy as that! The guides/keepers have just a long bamboo stick with them and basically just wave it sharply to the side of the tiger, not touching them at all, to get them to move direction if they are getting too close to people or tell us to move to certain areas. Mostly the tigers are chilled and sleeping. We managed to lye down next to a couple tigers, 1 that was sunbathing and another who was asleep and then we both stood either side one of them but it quickly moved and was a little unsettled so we stayed clear of that one!!

I have no idea if they were drugged or anything but they looked healthy and fat, the enclosures were big with only 2/3 in each, except 1 cafe which had about 6 and all seemed good. We were told that the tigers had all been hand reared on sure which made them friendly and used to human contact and that tigers sleep for 18 hours a day so that's why some looked sleepy. I guess we'll never know for sure but it was a damn amazing experience I'll never forget and one we'll never do again! I'm chuffed we did it! It left us both on such a high!!