You start your day along the Mae Rim- Samoeng route - inside the Mae Sa Valley - with a visit to the Pong Yang Elephant Training Centre -30 kms from town, where elephants demonstrate their formidable and highly valued forestry skills.

Visitors can watch elephants bathing, dragging logs and performing other feats.

Back on the road, you head for the Mae Sa Waterfalls, a eight level waterfall which occupies a tranquil setting amid gigantic trees.

Your next attraction is the Mae Sa Butterfly Farm where a large variety of beautiful butterflies are raised in a spacious garden. The farm gift shop sells framed butterfly specimens, a wide variety continuously blooming orchids and jewellery (cf.Shopping Tour) made from fresh flowers electroplated in gold.

You have the option of stopping at the ChiangMai Snake Farm to safely observe these dangerous reptiles.

Then it's time for lunch. You come back on the road and head for Huay Thung Thao, a big lake in the vicinity of ChiangMai - where you can eat fried chicken, fish, shrimp, and various local dishes - and fish from bamboo bungalows situated on the water.

You start your day heading for Chiang Dao, north of ChiangMai, winding along the bends of the road high above the Mae (River) Ping. You will arrive at the Chiang Dao Elephant Camp in time for the 40 minute, 10 am show.

The show begins with a majestic procession of elephants marching up the Mae (River) Ping. Then it is bath time with much splashing and trumpeting. Later, the elephants demonstrate how they move large teak logs as if they were matchsticks, a skill employed for more than a century in the teak forests of the North.

After the show, you have the option of taking a one hour elephant ride. Perched high in a wooden howdah, you gain an impressive view of the forest and an unforgettable experience.

Next on your programme is an exciting bamboo raft ride down the Mae Ping to Tha Rua. Your raft can hold up to four persons and the boatman who paddles and steers the craft on a 45 minute journey through lush tropical vegetation and, quite appropriately, large stands of elephant grass.

Returning to the highway you will drive to Chiang Dao and its famous caves. These sacred caves are filled with Budda images and deep recesses that must be explored with oil lantern carrying local guides.

The caves consist of a series of rooms reached by climbing stairs and, in one instance, a ladder through a narrow passage. The rooms extend for more than 10 kms but you need not explore beyond the Reclining Buddha which lies only a 15 minute walk away.