I have to admit to being a bit slack today as I declined the days tourist activity and sent Nina along with our guide Saruda out on their own to partake of the "city tour by walking and public transport".

Arriving in Bangkok was a bit of a culture shock, it is a big city (almost 11 million) and with traffic that is widely known for being terrible. Even at mid day it lived up to that reputation and our drive from the airport was full of waiting and then darting.

Today was a sort-of city tour and started at two inner city makets. The first was the wholesale food market and the second a large drygoods market. As is typical with such market visits we got to see all the obvious foods as well as some not so obvious.

Today was billed as one of the highlights of this trip and so it turned out. We visited one of the 100s of Elephant Sanctuaries in the Chiang Mai area and really did not know what to expect. At a roadside cafe overlooking a vibrant fruit and veg garden we met our host Dom and after a short wait and coffee we got started with a ride of 10-15 minutes on a bamboo raft which took us to the Elephant Sanctuary. Later in the day we would discover that these rafts are a popular afternoon entertainment with the local young set, and by the time we finished our elephant visit, many groups of locals were riding rafts and stopping for beer and food at one of the many riverside impromptu cafes.

This is our only day in Chiang Rai and we were scheduled to see "some temples" and an "old house". But as it turned out this was a very inadequate description. But before starting on our tourism activities for the day the first 2 photos are of a plant at our hotel called a Cannon Ball Tree