Our flight from the Philippines landed us once again in Bangkok. Having already spent over a week there, we were keen to move on without much delay. Seeking cooler temperatures and the 'real' Thailand, we decided to head north to Chiang Mai. The twelve hour train ride was pretty comfortable, with glimpses along the way of rural living, untouched forest and farmers tending their young rice paddies.

We knew that Chiang Mai was a large city, but still had drawn an inescapable image of a friendly and local town with fresh mountain air and an abundance of greenery. Although we came to appreciate its charm by the end of our stay, when we arrived we were a little shocked. The traffic was almost as bad as in Bangkok, there were tourists walking down the street bare-footed with bottles of 'Chang' beer in hand, and worst of all, there were tourist agencies attached to every second shopfront selling tours to see 'unseen wilderness' and adventure packages which managed to cram a visit to a Karen 'Long Neck' hilltribe village, elephant riding and white water rafting into one day..! Despite first impressions, after a couple of weeks we started to find that friendly, local charm we were looking for.

We decided to stay for a couple of weeks and challenge ourselves by learning about some typical Thai pastimes. Aidan, intrigued by the exhibition in Bangkok, and missing some good physical exercise, decided to sign up to the Lanna Muay Thai kickboxing gym. Jess, inspired by Roni (one of the volunteers in SB) and impressed by a couple of good massages so far, decided to enroll in a two week beginners course in northern Thai Yoga massage.

As strange as this sounds, apart from the great physical and mental challenge, one of the most enjoyable parts of these courses was simply the routine they offered. Being able to properly unpack our packs, getting up early and eating at the same place for breakfast everyday was refreshing and a necessary sanity protector when backpacking for so long.

Aidan started his morning with a 6.30am run around a tranquil lake, followed by an hour and a half of intense training. After filling his day with sleeping, eating and travel planning, he was back at the gym for another two hour session in the arvo. By 6.30pm he'd return to our room literally dripping in sweat, nursing various bruises and corks, but with a big contented smile. Over the two weeks lots of enthusiastic culture vultures came and went, but there were also a few experienced international fighters who'd been there for a while. All of the Thai trainers were retired champs or young up-and-comers, keen to show all of the Falangs why Muay Thai is considered one of the most effective and dangerous martial arts of all. Two weeks was a good length of time to learn some of the basics and experience a way of life for many young Thai's and gambling taxi drivers.

One night we all jumped in a couple of Sawngthaw and went out to watch a couple of the guys put their training to use. The spectacle was much less professional than what we saw in Bangkok, but still taken very seriously. The night began with a fight between an armless amputee and a guy with his arms tied behind his back! Very strange but both fighters were just as keen, and seemed to enjoy themselves. The skill level improved as the night went on, and both of the Lanna fighters won their bouts with good style!

Meanwhile, Jess was in class from nine until four learning about energy lines and satisfyingly awkward ways to twist and heal the body. With plenty to learn, Jess took on the challenge with nerd-like enthusiasm and found herself even waking up early to study the material. Despite being mentally and physically exhausted each night, she found the energy to practice each days lesson on Aidan's aching body! It sounds like a raw deal but Jess was so fascinated by this new art that she relished the opportunity for extra practice. The whole class got along really well and Jess made some great friends, while gaining a valuable life-long skill.

Considering the Muay Thai training started early and finished late, we stayed close to the Lanna gym, outside of the city centre and away from all the backpacker buzz. We found a simple clean room in an apartment block packed full of Thai university students. It was interesting to be among typical students, who weren't that different from the ones back home. Most evenings there was a congregation hanging out in the garden with piles of study notes and even bigger piles of beer bottles! The street food around the area was abundant, generous and dirt cheap, and as English was less commonly spoken, we found ourselves once again pointing at picture menus and struggling to learn a bit of local lingo, which is always good fun!

Towards the end of her course, Jess's massage teacher, Dot, asked if anyone would mind giving an English lesson to a temple full of teenage novice monks. Dot usually does this every Sunday but had an examination on this particular weekend. Keen for the experience, Jess eagerly nominated both of us to go instead. The program was run by a group of Chinese and Taiwanese Buddhists who were also teaching the monks their native language. The idea was to develop a generation of more tourist friendly monks along the Chiang Mai temple circuit. The temple was a good hour out of the city, so we met at a Chinese temple first, and after a good vegetarian lunch, piled into a mini van. We sat through a Thai/Chinese language lesson first and tried our hardest to recognise a few familiar words from the Chinese leg of our journey, six months ago. Afterwards we attempted to teach a bit of conversational English. The monks were a bit shy but really keen to learn and had a good laugh when we tried to translate what we were saying into the minuscule amount of Thai that we'd picked up.

After two weeks Jess finished her course and Aidan couldn't bare any more punishment, so we moved back inside the city wall, closer to all the action. We hired good old fashioned bright orange bicycles to visit a few of the hundreds of beautiful and intricate temples scattered throughout Chiang Mai. At first glance they all seem pretty similar, but each temple was designed with slightly different cultural influences, and all are seem to be subtly competing to best represent the ideals of Buddhism. There seemed to a bit of local history to be learnt too, with some of the temples dating back to the 1300's and containing semi-preserved Chedi ruins.

We made a couple of attempts to visit the famous Sunday Night Market but were both times ambushed by that damned wet-season rain! What we did see of it through raincoats and umbrellas was great. The street stalls seemed never ending and sold all sorts of local products, from funky fisherman pants and brightly coloured hilltribe style handbags to local sweets and delicacies. To complement Jess's massage training, we bought a nice relaxing traditional music album. The Thai who sold it was a very talented musician who had a little shop full of beautiful handmade wooden instruments.

To complete our stay in Chiang Mai, we thought it was appropriate to visit at least one of the hundreds of elephant sanctuaries. We had heard that some of the 'sanctuaries' were mistreating the animals to make money from tourists, and were a bit concerned about supporting them. An hour from the city, the Elephant Conservation Centre seemed to have earned a better reputation, so we made a day out of it. The Centre was massive, seemed to be pretty well run and for the right reasons. They had an elephant hospital to care for sick or injured elephants, a breeding centre, and a small factory for generating biogas and even paper from elephant dung. Due to their incredible strength and intelligence, traditionally elephants in Thailand were used for labour and construction. Most of the elephants at the centre are retired workers, inevitably replaced by bulldozers and dump trucks, and apparently too domesticated to be returned to the wild. With threats of deforestation and poaching, they are probably safer living at the centre anyway. Each elephant is paired with a Mahout trainer who care for them, and train them to entertain tourists for a bit of extra fundraising. Three times a day the Mahouts put on a show displaying their elephants' strength and intelligence. We watched the amazing animals carry logs between trunk and tusks, paint pictures, play musical instruments and even bow and courtesy to the crowd. At first we were a bit uneasy but the elephants genuinely looked happy and seemed to enjoy the attention. In the end we were so impressed and satisfied by the projects treatment for the elephants that we payed for a ride. Our Mahout directed his elephant, with us perched on top, through a river and some beautiful patches of jungle. It was a lot less comfortable than we expected and actually quite scary when the elephant heaved himself out of the river onto dry land and we were looking directly over a 10m cliff face! Nevertheless it was a great experience and afterwards we needed little convincing to purchase a photograph of us and our ride framed in elephant dung paper.

We're now on another rickety old bus and heading up into the mountains, satisfied but also looking forward to getting out of the city and spending some time at a Lisu hilltribe homestay near the Burmese border!