Good Morning Everyone,

For those of you who follow me on Facebook you msy well be aware of my escapades in Chiang Mai, but for the purposes of those who don't here is a little summary of what we got up too in our 5 days in Chiang Mai.

The first day we decided to relax a bit after our 11 hour night bus we were both pretty knackered, so we went and found a place for breakfast, Chanmai Backpack House, this is where we decided to stay for the rest of our time In Chiang Mai, it was a really nice family run hostel, restaurant, bar and travel centre. I would recommend it too anyone backpacking in Chaing Mai, and it was really cheap too. Anyway after breakfast we went to visit the Wat Luang temple in the centre of the square. We then walked back had a cheeky power nap and then went to Chiang Mai's famous Night Bazaar and went for a cheeky pint or two at The Red Lion.

The next day we went to Tiger Kingdom, where we got to stroke and have our photos taken with fully grown Tigers in their enclosure. From here we went to Monkey world, this semt a bit unnatural to both me and Earl as the Monkeys were chained to a little wooden stump meaning they could only walk around in circles around the post. Though it was entertaining to see a Monkey cracking himself off, and the monkeys were doing some impressive things in the show riding bicycles, doing press-ups, picking the right numbers even though they were upside down and we both got to feed two little monkeys. After this we went the Crocodile show, we first fed chicken to a pit full of crocodiles, the sound of a crocodiles jaw closing is pretty impressive, then watched the show where the man lay on a croc and put his head inside a crocodiles mouth amongst other things. We both then had our photos took with a crocodile and held a small crocodile. This was pretty cool. On our return we still had plenty of time so decided to have a walk around a few more of the local temples.

The next day was probably the best day I've had since I've been tavelling and there has not been a shortage of quality days! We started off by going to see an Orchid and Butterfly farm, Earl especially enjoyed this, we followed this by going to see a local hill top tribe where we had photos with the locals and got to look at their way of life. We then got to ride an elephant through the jungle, we had a girl elephant called Poopet and we both got to sit on the Elephants neck until we reached our destination. From here we had lunch and my first experience of the dish known as Pad Thai, which is just really noodles and veg wrapped up in a leaf. After this we trekked an hour through the jungle to a waterfall where we could have a cheeky swim. We then trekked back an then went White water rafting and bamboo rafting, and to top it all we got back in time so I could go and watch Man Utd beat West Brom and go top of the league :)

We had a pretty busy day the day before so just ecided to chill the next day, we had a walk around the local park and then found a pub too have a few cheeky drinks in and a game of pool, we got challanged by a couple of Austrian guys for a game of doubles and we steadily beat them 2-1. I also wasn't feeling too great through sickness and dizziness so decided to have an early one.

Luckily I had perked up a bit for the next day and we went to learn the art of Thai cooking, at Sammy's Organic Farm. Sammy was a brilliant crazy man, if anyone wanted to learn Thai cooking I would recommend them to go to Sammy's farm it really is an experience, here i learnt how to cook green curry and the paste, chicken in papyanda leaves, banana in cocunut milk, chicken in cocnut milk soup and chicken with cashew nuts stir fry. Many had ingredients in I never thought I would eat but they turned out to be quite tasty, so many lucky ladies may experience my new talent of Thai cooking once I am back home, my former work colleague Les will also be please to know I had some Lemon grass Tea, which was pretty tasty.

Ayway that pretty much sums our time up in Chiang Mai, we have now arrived in Chiang Rai after a 3-4 hour bus journey and I will update you on our time here shortly. I'm a bit pushed for time too so will upload pictures of Chiang Mai at a later date.

Hope you are all well

Speak Soon

Adi

xx