The elephant riding is of good quality in Chang Mai. Keep in mind that the tour I went on was 1/2 sales promotion. The ox cart, raft ride and elephant rides were fine. The elephant dung paper factory, orchard farm and such were just sales pitches for the most part.

I took another elephant ride in Phuket and it was of bad quality, although they did let me daughter ride on the elephants head for a bit.

You can find some decent deals in the night market, but I still found the Weekend market in Bangkok to have a much greater selection and better prices.