Thailand - Day 7 - Chiang Mai

Jamie and I woke up early to go to the Flight of the Gibbons. We were taken outside of Chiang Mai about 30 miles and up a mountain. It was freezing cold at first, but once we were outfitted for our flying gear, it was pure excitement after that. A group of 9 followed our two guides as we zip lined across the tops of trees in the mountains. There were 18 platforms in all ranging from 60 - 120 meters long and most about 90 meters above the ground. We took quite a few pictures and they are in the album for Thailand - Day 7 - Chiang Mai. After our gibbon flying from platform to platform, they fed us a nice Thai lunch and then we hiked up the waterfall you see here in this picture. Great way to spend a morning and we loved every minute of it.

This evening, we went to Muay Thai boxing matches which is the national sport of Thailand. The pictures are online now under the Thailand - Day 7 - Chiang Mai folder. I think I will just provide the link every time now instead of transferring the pictures to the slideshows at the bottom of the blogsite. It is much easier.

Muay Thai was interesting as there were 6 fights in the night, the first one was actual children fighthing. The kids were about 7 or 8 years old and went 3 rounds. Interestingly, we saw on the flyer that said "Charity Child Fight," which we took to mean that one of the fights was for a children's charity. Nope! They actually had kids kicking and punching one another. Interesting to say the least and something we can say we witnessed. It was disturbing seeing the adults encourage them though.

The fights themselves are much like kickboxing. The customs and traditions are interesting as each fighter comes into the ring and does an individual routine before the fight. Music is played with drums and wind instruments during the fight and speeds up toward the end of each round. We aren't exactly sure how scoring is kept, but I plan on reading up about it. Several times, we thought the other guy should have won. The Thai nationals were cheering and chanting and seemed very excited the entire time. I think most westerners just saw it as a novelty I'm sure like many people see American sports as odd.

Tomorrow morning, we wake up early again and set out for Chiang Rai, the Golden Triangle, and the Hill Tribes of northern Thailand. Of course, I'll blog tomorrow night and post the 100s of pictures I'm sure we'll take. We bought a battery charger for Jamie's camera, so she should be good to go, although it has already died again after just one day of use.