Trip Advisor comments

Chiang Mai Centara Hotel

Very nice hotel, swimming pool area excellent and on a busy road within 50 yards of some ‘lively’ bars.

Great location – in one direction you have the night market for the tit and tat Chang T-Shirts, floaty patterned trousers and knock off Designer bags, and in the other direction you have a very lively street with bars where you can keep to yourself or be next door to ones that have plenty of ladies of the night keen to provide attention to the men walking past. Definitely not seedy or intimidating – we were there as a family of two 40-somethings, 3 teenage kids (19, 18 & 13) and my mum (66 yrs old) and it was just an amusing experience!

There is a 3D museum within 15 mins walk – definitely put aside 90 minutes for that – great fun. Won’t spoil it with pictures but it’s a must!!

We (well my wife) found Sipohn through recommendations on Trip Advisor and I’m so very glad she did. Cannot recommend what he organised for us highly enough. I appreciate people have differing standards and ideas of what’s good or not so a bit about us and if you’re anything like us I would definitely recommend asking for the same tour we did!! We’re an active, sporty, adventurous family (me 46, wife 44, boy 19, girl 18 & boy 13) and my mum (66) all happy enough camping, staying in Days Inn Hotels or at the Hilton and not overly fussy with what we eat!! We, (well not so much my mum), enjoy zip lines, skiing, scuba diving, visiting different countries, resorts & restaurants, partying and having one or two drinks!

The tour we agreed meant being picked up at 6.40am and being dropped off at 6.30pm, so a long day from the off – not a huge amount of travelling but enough for catnaps between places – but 90mins drive home so decent snooze at end of tour!

I won’t spoil you with exact details because that defeats the object of you experiencing the tour but it included: (rough estimate of times)

Early morning Alms with the boy monks – 30 mins
Visiting the main Chiang Mai Temple on the hill – 1hr 15 mins
Visiting the Long Neck Tribe Village – 45 mins
Visiting Tiger Kingdom (not included as standard tour – pay extra at location) - 1hr
Buffet Lunch at Orchid farm – 1hr
Bamboo raft trip down river – 30mins
Visiting Elephant Sanctuary (bare-back trek through jungle terrain, and wash/play in river) – 2hrs

We had a personal guide called Bammi who really was excellent. She is such a stereo-typical Thai, enthusiastic about all she was telling us, honest, great English and great knowledge on everything going on that she was keen to share so it was such a good learning experience. She will likely cause some converts to Buddhism with her natural explanations of the teachings Buddha. My daughter is hooked!!

Concerns?

Tiger Kingdom – are they drugged & beaten? There are signs explaining why we can go in the cages with the animals and why they’re slow (need 18 hours sleep a day). My personal feeling from the experience is that they’re just tame. There were 2 week old cubs (not accessible to anyone – but visible) and if those cubs are trained from day one then they’ll definitely be tame when adult tigers. I don’t buy into the theory they’re mistreated and would recommend anyone to pay a visit

Elephant ‘Sanctuary’ – same sort of reasoning with Tiger Kingdom – again, I think there is no mistreatment at all. We had 13 elephants for our trek and each Mahout (trainer) is responsible for their own elephant and all seemed caring etc. One thing I would say, perhaps because I was on the biggest elephant there, I found the trek hard. You’re not in a wooden seat and being carried, you are riding bare-back, legs astride which for an old-football player with dodgy groin muscles wasn’t the most comfortable – and my balance was appalling, felt like I was going to fall off with every step. However, everyone else loved it so don’t let me put you off.

We deliberately did the elephants as a 2 hour visit and that definitely was plenty of time. I’ve read people complaining about their full day experiences, and I’m not in the least surprised, 2 hours is more than enough, anything more would be boring as hell!! We were even lucky with our timing in that there was a 12 hour old elephant that we were able to see – and after 20 mins ahhing him that was time enough…

I haven’t added too many updates to Trip Advisor in the past but as it was TA that made us go with Siphon I feel obliged to add my recommendation because for all the searching you do online to make the most of your holiday and get it right this was invaluable. Oh, if you use his website to send a message and don’t get a reply, try his personal email because the original messages didn’t get through to him for some reason.

I’d be more than happy to provide more details to anyone if you want to ask me questions personally I feel that strongly about the recommendation I am giving.

Cheers, Julian