| Elephants & Rafts Tour |
10 days |
Wat Phra Kaeo, Bangkok, Thailand
Get right into the heart of the countryside with this adventurous holiday to Bangkok and northern Thailand. After some cultural sightseeing in Bangkok, we head north to Chiang Mai and into the hills to enjoy a jungle trek, elephant ride and a bamboo river rafting trip, spending 2 nights in remote hill-tribe villages and learning about the ways of life in rural Thailand.
Doi Suthep, Chaing Mai, Thailand
This is one of our more active
family tours in Thailand, but is still suitable for children aged 7 and over. We start in Bangkok staying in a high standard family-friendly 5-star hotel to allow you to relax in comfort for your first few days. While in Bangkok, we tour the huge Grand Palace complex, and have an optional afternoon boat trip around the surprisingly green and peaceful canals of the Thonburi area of the city.
An adventurous overnight sleeper train journey takes us north to Chiang Mai where we stay in a resort outside the city. An afternoon tour to the hilltop Doi Suthep temple enables us to learn more about Buddhism in Thailand, before we head down through forests into Chiang Mai itself where we visit its famous zoo with a wide range of animals in natural surroundings, including the only pair of Giant Panda in Thailand.
Elephant ride and bamboo raft, Chiang Mai, Thailand
From here we head out for the main feature of this tour, 3 days and 2 nights in the hills outside of Chiang Mai, where we start by visiting a local market and refreshing waterfal, before enjoying two days of jungle trekking (approx. 2-3 hours and 3-4 hours walking respectively). We spend the nights in basic hut accommodation in remote hill-tribe villages, and learn about how these different tribes live in the mountain forests. Our second afternoon features an elephant ride along narrow paths through the forest for around 1 1/2 hours - an altogether different experience to the elephant rides available in the towns and cities in Thailand. Our last day in the hills features around 3-5 hours of fun-filled river rafting on basic bamboo pole rafts, on which you can just sit and watch the scenery go by, or stand up and help to pole the raft down the river.
After returning to Chiang Mai, options are available to try a cookery course, or to visit more temples and sights by car or bicycle, before we return to Bangkok on the sleeper train.
Back in Bangkok you'll take an afternoon long-tail boat trip through the peaceful canals of Thonburi and can finish the tour with an optional dinner cruise along the Chao Phraya River, and there's also some free time to do some last minute shopping or just relax and enjoy the end of a memorable holiday.
This tour can be followed immediately by our Wet & Wild in Thailand tour to make a longer holiday covering southern Thailand as well. We also offer
extensions to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or just to relax on the beach for a few days before flying home.