Lions? Check. Tigers. Check. Bears? Oh, no bears . . . wait a minute, I qualify! OK, check! So we’re set to go and Judy Garland’s spirit has been appeased. There’s a new tourist attraction in Chiang Mai, and while I usually avoid anything billed as a tourist attraction. I have to admit this one was worth the trip. Not that I had a choice. I’d already given Noom, my bar boy friend from Bangkok, the right to decide where we went and what we did during our trip north. So after climbing out of bed at 11 am (it was an early day yesterday) we headed off to Tiger Kingdom to play with tigers. You can get there cheaply by baht bus, but with our late start on the day I opted to grab a driver from in front of the hotel negotiating a price of 300 baht for the day (Tiger Kingdom, an Elephant Camp, and various wats Noom needed to see). Good call. Air conditioning. And someone for Noom to chat with in Thai.

At the entrance to Tiger Kingdom you have a choice. Or several of them. The easiest is to forgo actually getting into a cage with any tiger and just roam through the grounds. Though I think that would be quite boring. Otherwise you can choose to visit with the adult tigers (300 baht) the teenage tigers (300 baht) or the baby cubs (500 baht). Now if I wasn’t the nice person that I am, I’d make some rude comment here about the Thais always willing to sell off their young for the right price, but I won’t go there. And I just pissed a whole bunch of you off anyway. Go for it: spew out your anger by posting a comment – I won’t read any of your drivel anyway. But back to the tigers . . .

Noom had done wonderfully making decisions so far on the trip. But this one had him stumped. Here were three choices and he had to pick one without knowing which I’d prefer. His hesitation quickly turned into a downright lack of response. Which the lady booking the ‘visits’ mistook as a shrewd bargaining tactic and offered up a visit with both the adults and the teenagers for 500 baht total. Done deal. As we headed off to the first compound (cage in any other language) I asked him, “So which one did you really want to do?”

“Which one you wanted?” He replied.

“I asked you first,” was my comeback.

“But I wanted to know first” was his.

Isn’t it amazing the cute little conversations you have when you’re in love? First up were the teenagers – tigers 8 – 10 months old. There is a warning sign they make you read first that says to approach the tigers from behind, not to touch their face or head and a few more directions which we both promptly ignored. There were four tigers in the cage, all dozing. A farang trainer was there to explain about the tigers and there were several Thai guys holding small sticks hovering over you and the tiger. I assumed the sticks were some form of protection in case you pissed off one of the tigers but they seemed rather small to accomplish that job in my estimation. I thought an elephant gun, or at least a 500,000 volt taser would have been more appropriate.

Now I’ve seen the Thai version of construction safety standards so I wasn’t feeling totally secure with the idea of cuddling up next to one of these wild beasts regardless of how ‘safe’ they were suppose to be. Yeah, big brave farang . . . but then I can always claim being a faggot as justification for any lack of manliness. Noom’s straight. And Thai. So he immediately laid down put his arm around one, his head on its side and started rubbing its ears. “Uh, don’t touch its head,” the trainer warned.

Noom smiled. And picked up a blade of grass and started to tickle the tiger’s nose. That woke the beast up. ”Uh, don’t touch his face,” the trainer warned with a bit more concern in his voice as I contemplated what kind of bar fine I was going to have to pay for a dead bar boy.

Noom smiled. But the tiger just rolled over to have his belly scratched, quite content to allow Noom to have his way. I’d hate to think so, but part of me believes they have these tigers are on some serious downers. But then that’s the part of me that also figured it was safe enough to play with one myself and I was soon nestled up against a female tiger pulling her paws onto my lap and scratching her ears like a total idiot. I think the trainer decided we were both fools and would get whatever we deserved as he quit warning us about touching their heads. The other three tourists in the cage with us stood watching with looks of awe and admiration at our bravery . . .or maybe those were looks of disbelief at our stupidity. Having tamed the teenagers we headed off to the adults.

Now to be a bit more accurate, these guys (and gals) are not full adults. I guess even the Thai know better than to throw touri into a cage with full grown tigers. The ‘adults’ are 12 – 14 months old. At 18 months they have to separate the girls from the boys. But they are a good deal larger than their teenage counterparts. And more awake, too. Mmmmmm, I thought. Maybe they need to adjust their meds. But what the hell, I’d already survived one tiger encounter so the gods were either looking over us or not. Besides, you have to admit being mauled to death by a tiger would be a pretty cool way to go out. This group wasn’t quite as docile as the previous bunch but still tolerated hugs and stroking – not unlike straight bar boys: They’ll put up with your attention as long as you don’t go too far. For 100 baht the handlers will take about 100 photos of you with the tigers (comes on a CD). Great souvenir. I’ve got a great shot of Noom and a tiger eyeball to eyeball staring each other down. It’s amazing the totally insane things you’ll do when on holiday that you’d never even consider at home!

So Tigers done, check . . . off to the elephants. Any one of these camps is worth a visit and all offer a ride through the jungle for various prices. New for Noom, but I’d done one years before and knew how boring riding an elephant is after the first 5 minutes. The cheapest ride was for 15 minutes and it took some hard bargaining to get them to agree to a five minute ride for the same price (farang are sooooo strange!) But afterwards Noom agreed five minutes was plenty, and in fact joked, “Two better.”

The show was cute (elephants pulling logs, elephant swaying to music, elephants playing soccer, elephants challenging touri to dart throwing competition – and winning). The highlight was having the elephants paint pictures, which I guess all the camps are doing now. And though I guess it is only a matter of training, some of those pictures were pretty fucking amazing. You can buy one for 2,000 baht. Right. Guess I’m just not that much of a patron of the arts.

We ended the day visiting three wats – haven’t the slightest idea which three. I mean each is unique and has something different about it, but after you’ve seen a few dozen they all tend to blur. That night we finally hit the Night Market – yep, it’s big, but then how many fake Tiffany jewelry booths do you really need to see? Though if you are a first time visitor to Thailand and just have to buy souvenirs, with the proper amount of bargaining you’ll get cheaper prices at Chiang Mai’s Night market than anywhere in Bangkok.

The next day we made the pilgrimage to the handicraft villages (yawn). I guess it’s something everyone has to do at least once. Every driver in Chiang Mai wants to take you on this excursion. That’s cuz they get food, money and bottles of whiskey for delivering you to the various factories and showrooms – and get even more if you buy something. Everything you see at these places you’ll also see back in town at half the price. You can arrange one of these tours for 50 baht and up. My advice would be to not take a tuk tuk – private car is air conditioned and much more comfortable. My second piece of advice is to be very firm in not stopping at a carpet factory. These have sprung up in recent years offering extremely over priced carpets from Afganistan and India – the perfect souvenir from Thailand. I think they pass out the biggest bottles of whiskey to drivers because they all want to take you to one nowadays. Pass. Some of the smaller jewelry places are interesting as they’ll show you how they make the merchandise (Educational Tourism). Same for the silk places . . . you can let silk worms crawl about your hand at some of them. Noom had an large Om painted on his T shirt at the umbrella village (‘cuz he’s Hindu now). And after realizing I wasn’t going to buy him an overpriced gemstone at any of the jewelry factories proceeded to inform the sales clerks that I sold better gems at cheaper prices in the U.S. (that was well received!).

Our next outing of Noom’s choice was the zoo. Primarily to see the pandas. Another one of Noom’s major quests as he knew their names, dates of birth, and more details about each of them than I know about my immediate family members. Admission to the zoo ended up being a bit over 600 baht with the tiered farang / Thai prices. We rode the free shuttle to the aquarium first . . . nice layout, kinda cool underwater tunnel to walk through, but overall a bit boring. Noom summed it up with, “No big fish”.

At this point the free shuttle becomes a 60 baht shuttle. Which we rode non-stop as Noom had no interest in seeing any other animals. He’d come for the pandas. So another 100 baht to get into the panda exhibit, and while I was trying to keep good thoughts flowing it ended up being the same as every panda exhibit I’ve visited at zoos around the world: Small peak at a tiny portion of a sleeping panda. The female (Ling Ling, I believe) was in her house safe from the prying eyes of visitors. The male was nestled down behind a bunch of trees and if you looked carefully you could spot part of his head. But then having no idea what a pile of panda shit looks like . . . who knows what we were really looking at.

We ended our day at the Old Chiang Mai Cultural Center, which Noom kept (properly) referring to as a Khantoke . He’d discovered it from talking with one of our drivers and was quite excited to have me experience dinner there. Which he described as the place all the locals go to for a dinner out, sitting in large groups on the floor to eat. OK, I did say it was up to him where we went and what we did, so as dreadful as it sounded I smiled and headed off to eat dinner on the floor. Which you do. But the floor is carpeted. And they have nice cushions for you to rest on. And while you are eating, they put on a rather fantastic performance of traditional Thai dances, the performers weaving their way through the crowd. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was only disappointed in having not brought my camera (as the original picture of the evening I had in my head wasn’t promising to be a Kodak moment).

After a day of silver shopping (my purpose of being in Chiang Mai) we headed back to Bangkok and a final night together before I flew off to KL and beyond (though I’ll be back in Bangkok in a few weeks, so who knows?)

I usually travel solo, but have traveled with friends before. And have traveled with sex partners before, too. But have never enjoyed myself as much as I did on this trip with Noom. And the really amazing thing to me is that I am just as crazy about him now as I was at the start of the trip – that speaks volumes about the man he is, trust me on that one.

So end of our trip to Chiang Mai, at least this one. But the tale of Noom and my relationship continues . . .

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