When we were looking at hotels in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, we had two choices: either we stay at a major hotel chain or we stay at a boutique hotel. Since we wanted a more personal touch, we chose a boutique hotel.

Our first step was to research which boutique hotel could offer us the best value for money. We went through tripadvisor.com, as well as googling many other sites about boutique hotels in Chiang Mai, then we emailed the hotels that we had short-listed, and based on the replies we chose to stay at Sira Boutique Hotel for 6 out of the 10 days we were there.

One thing we’ve found is that if a boutique hotel or other business replies promptly and politely, it usually means that the person is friendly and good to do business with. We arrived at the airport at around 8am and a driver was waiting to pick us up and take us to the hotel. They gave us no problems for the early check-in and we also had an early breakfast on arrival.

Initially Grace was (very!) reluctant to stay as she found the bed quite hard compared to what she’s used to. I was ok with that as I’ve slept on far harder beds before. And while it did give her a bit of a backache the first nights, we made sure to treat that with a trip to the spa

The best thing about the hotel was the friendly staff! Everyone from the receptionist to the owners were very accommodating and helpful, and near the end of our stay I had a very interesting discussion with Robb (the owner), who bought over the hotel a few months ago and is in the process of making it a truly cozy boutique hotel. He explained to me about the current business situation in Thailand, the history of Chiang Mai, and a lot more!

After moving to our second hotel “The Field Village”, we missed the friendliness of the staff at Sira, and if we would have stayed longer, we would have gone back!!!

We’ve told you all about riding elephants in Thailand. What we didn’t tell you about are the conservation efforts that are being done to preserve these magnificent animals. These efforts are very important as there are only a few thousand elephants left in Thailand and very few of them live in the wild.

In parts of the jungle that are too difficult to reach by motor vehicles, elephants are used by loggers (some legal but many illegal), to move logs from the forest to a river. In some cases the elephants are not well-cared for and are injured while moving logs that are too heavy for them.

That is where some elephant camps step in - they take in injured or abused elephants and nurse them back to health. Many of the camps also provide a large enough space for the elephants to roam “wild”.

Some elephant camps, like the one in this video, seem more for tourist entertainment rather than to help elephants. They do care for their elephants, but the elephants are still required to take tourists around. Another thing about these camps is that many of the mahouts (elephant masters), seem to be children! This shows that a lot of child labor still goes on in Thailand.

This mahout is a young boy!

As our regular readers will know, we’re back in Singapore for a bit while we get everything ready for our year-long non-stop round-the-world trip. A lot of dashes in that last sentence just think of them as connecting our destinations

Anyway, back to the subject on hand, Worldiki got its first main-stream media attention on Tuesday the 20th of November when it was featured in the Digital Life of The Straits Times which is the main newspaper in Singapore. Also today, Grace went to film a segment about trading that should appear soon in Channel NewsAsia (the major news channel of Singapore and parts of Asia). And while this segment isn’t about our travels, it is about trading which is what Grace does.

So even though we’re back “home” for a few weeks we’re busy busy busy with everything from media, travel planning, and of course, our day-to-day work.

I’ll keep this post short and let you all get back to your Thanksgiving dinners Look out for our video on elephant riding tomorrow!

The picture which appeared on The Straits Times about Worldiki TV.

Did you know that they grow butterflies in farms and use them to make lacquered pendants and earrings? I didn’t, till we went to a butterfly farm in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Meng Peeseua is the Thai word for butterfly, and in Thailand they have over 800 species!

The butterfly in this picture I took looks a lot like the Monarch Butterfly of North America. I wonder if it’s some Asian relative. Because of the odd focusing of the camera, I had to take 3 pictures before one got properly focused.

I think this picture looks quite cool as the background that the butterfly is resting on looks like the canvas of a painting. In reality, it’s just the netting of the butterfly enclosure

Some of you may ask why I’m talking about butterflies on a blog about working while traveling the world. The reason is, if we don’t take the time to appreciate the small things that we encounter - for example these butterflies - then traveling ends up being a chore of going place to place rather than really experiencing each place with all the little details that make it beautiful!