Sometimes when you are doing the city thing, shopping malls & coffee shops, it’s easy to forget that incredible wilderness and raw adventure is just outside the city limits. This weekend, we decided to escape the city, and see what lay beyond it’s borders. And it was epic.
We started the morning at Tiger Kingdom, hanging out with some baby tigers. This is definitely a tourist stop in all the guidebooks. Tour vans arrived regularly as we waited. But sometimes it’s OK to be touristy…especially if tigers are involved. For a price, you can play with and photograph yourself with 4 different sizes of tigers, and we picked the smallest ones, only 4 months old! They were so cute!
I know a lot of people criticize places like these because of animal cruelty or drug use, but I didn’t see either. Sure, the tigers were lethargic and sleepy, but who wouldn’t be in this heat? The ones that we were active and moving around seemed totally fine. It was just a bit pricy for a limited experience. But the photos are kinda priceless.
Then, we followed this a beautiful, windy road on motorbike through northern Mae Rim to the rustic Pong Yeng Elephant Camp. We had a friend set this up for us, as it’s pretty obscure. There are plenty of elephant riding camps in this part of the country, but we went with a less touristy option, and we got a great price. We spent an almost an hour riding this beautiful beast through narrow trails, down hills, into a waterfall, and back again. It was incredible. This has been on my bucket list for years, and it lived up all to my expectations. It was an amazing day.
An American Mom in Asia 
1 thought on “Tigers and Elephants, Oh My!”