Basics of the trip
UA40k EWR-PVG-BKK
Thai Lion Air DMK-CMX-DMK 50$ RT
Kuwait Airways BKK-MNL 125$
UA 80k First MNL-TPE-NRT-EWR
Hotels/Airbnb
Airbnb Bangkok 64$ a night
AirBnb Chiang Mai 45$ a night
LK The empress Pattaya 98$
B&B near Chabad for shabbos 1200 Baht a night
Grand Hyatt Manila City of Dreams Hyatt free anniversary night
Grand Hyatt Taipei Cash and points for a king suite 85$ and 4k points
Driver in Chiang Mai 600 Baht
Tigers about 300 per cage I think
Monkeys-Snakes-Crocs 200 each
Elephants if 2 ride one its 2400 each 1 to 1 is 4800
This trip came about only because of my last trip to the Phillippines which turned out to be a lot greater then I could have imagined and surprisingly better then all my friends who said "just go to Florida it's so much better...ugh"
I was going with a friend or shall I say I was to meet up with my friend in Thailand. He was traveling Emirates (economy) via Dubai and I was traveling United via Shanghai. The route we took to Shanghai was the Polar route which was my first time taking that route and man was it cool. It got semi dark in the middle of the day with a only a glimpse of the sun.
Landing in Shanghai we needed to collect our luggage and go through Chinese customs which was surprisingly easy. I got out a little but didnt have much time so checked back in to continue the flight on Thai Airways which was my real first taste of Asian service, man they put American service or lack thereof to absolute shame. Although I flew economy they made sure my cup was always full and a smile was on their faces at all times.
The flight from Shanghai to Bangkok was uneventful and I landed at around 9:15PM. The issue with booking AirBnb in places you are not familiar with is communicating with taxis and giving the right address. Needless to say it took over 2 hours to finally get to our location. Place was ok as it had 2 beds/2Bedrooms a small kitchen and a living room. Location was near the main mall and near the train. We walked to the mall to get a little taste of Bangkok. It happens to be that we came during the Chinese new year and they were setting up huge floats and stuff for the parades.
The next morning we woke up pretty early as we had a 9am flight to Chiang Mai. We took a taxi to the airport was around 600Baht. We flew Thai Lion Air which is their equivalent to Spirit but you get free drinks free luggage and free smiles so it kind of crushes Spirit in the States.
Chiang Mai is in the northern part of Thailand near the border with Myanmar. Its a relatively small town that is on the edge of the forests/jungles/mountains of Thailand. There is an old city which is surrounded by a moat and a wall. The wall has mostly fallen down and mostly the corners are left standing. Chabad is on the southern side of town outside the walls/moat. We went straight to Chabad as we had both not eaten since shabbos. (although they served Hermolis on the plane it was in my opinion nasty). The food was great decent selection of food although everything was Chicken not meat. After we finished eating we went next door to the Israeli tour guide place to book our Elephant tour and get a driver to take us to Tiger Kingdom and the rest of the attractions. We left our luggage at Chabad and headed out for the start of an amazing tour.
If you look carefully you can see it says tour place and israeli restaurant Someone claimed that the place is kosher. When I asked Chabad he told me there is absolutely NO hechsher on the place so ask your LOR.
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We headed first to the Tigers where some say they are drugged and cant really hurt you however a few days before we came someone was mauled to death so drugged or not they are scary. We bought the package which includes Biggest big and smallest. We started off big and went down from there.
After the tiger we went to see the Snakes. This place could have been boring however the trainers were absolutely hysterical. We danced to a bunch of Israeli songs with them, They knew the words and the song. We held a 6 foot snake not sure which one, played with a scorpion and watched a pretty entertaining show with them completely praising us "Israelis" and knocking these 5 Oman arabs that were there. (When they took around the King Cobra to show us the snake up close they held it up to the arab and screamed "נשוך נחש!!") Overall I can see the place being a 3 out of 10 without the trainers and 9 out of 10 with them. We seriously had a awesome time there.
This next picture was me minding my own business when someone put that nasty thing on my back.....lets just say I didnt take it very well....
After the snakes we went to the Monkeys which was nice but again there was ONE monkey that came to play with us. My buddy fell in loe with him and danced with him massaged him and got a bunch of kisses from him....I just sat there jealous!!
There is a monkey show which is pretty lame until they get to the monkey picking up these face down bricks which have numbers on them and you tell the monkey which one to pick and he picks the right one.
After the monkeys we did the crocs where the trainers were extremely lame and the show even more then that. I would skip unless you get to feed them and you want to hold the tail of one.
To be continued.......
