The tale of Edward the tiger and the women's prison

So as you can see from the pic- Si recovered from his squits and felt well enough yesterday for a trip out of Chiang Mai to Doi Suthep- a jungley mountain with a beautiful temple on top. We had a wonder around there for an hour before heading to the zoo. What a brilliant zoo set in acres of jungle and with such close access to the animals. We got ace snaps of hippos etc but highlight was pandas (I speaky Thai here!) We saw the daddy P eating bamboo and generally lapping up the attention and then we had special tickets for seeing baby P(anda). Whilst wandering around the vast zoo until baby panda time an almighty storm broke out and we were in the middle of this jungly bit and had to hide in a sort of bamboo hut watching the torrential rain (It was still so hot though)

Although the zoo was surprisingly quiet (we could walk for 10 mins or so without seeing human life) the queue for baby panda was immence and after about 10 mins I lost my zen and had to flee. Simon waited in vain as he couldn't see the baby anyway except on a screen. :(

Today we went in a tuk tuk to Tiger Kingdom- a tiger zoo/breeding/research programme. It was incredible as we actually got to go in and pet some baby tigers (the photo shows us with Edward the tiger!!) We also saw Leo and Anakin Skywalker tiger. The experience was well worth the money and we got a cd with 100 or so snaps of our tiger cuddling experience. We were abit concerned about how above board this was as we'd heard that the Tiger Temple near Kanchanaburi was bad news for the tigs. This however proved to be really well run, the tigs had loads of space and pools to play in. The were obviously in fine fettle running and fighting and playing and growling at us.

This afternoon we popped by the women's prison (as you do) as we'd heard they did massages (they train the ladies in vocational things so they can find work when released) We decided against the massage though and had an iced frapelattemochacino instead made by a prisoner and served by a guard.

Tomorrow we're booked on to a safari through the jungle on an elephant!! Boring boring it is sooo boring here. Anyway must dash we've cocktails to drink!!