After crossing the Mekong River from Laos into Thailand we caught a local bus to Chiang Rai and then to Chiang Mai. Since we had booked a liveaboard dive trip for December 1st we didn't have much time to spare! Chiang Mai is famous for trekking in the mountains and elephant safaris but seeing as we had done a fair amount of both already we opted for something different. On our first day we visited a couple of pandas who were on loan from China at the zoo. They were very cool and cuddly cute animals but pretty boring to watch as they basically sleep all day except when they are eating! We also saw a white Bengal tiger in the zoo and the other usuals!

The next day we went on a Thai cooking course! It was actually really good and everything seemed a lot easier to make than expected! It was useful to find out which dishes had nuts in as well! Also very nice to have someone else coming round to collect all the dirty pots etc and replace with clean ones! We are now just about able to make spring rolls, Thai green curry, panang curry, sticky rice and mango, pad Thai and Tom Yam hot and sour soup. They also gave us a recipe book with lots of other popular dishes in it so as long as we don't lose them along the way there should be some fun experimenting when we get home! We also had a go at adding all the ingredients to a wok and creating a massive flame (see pic), we would have had an awesome video of us both doing it simultaneously if the girl we asked to video it had pressed the record button!!!

That evening we began the long trip back to the south west of Thailand, spending about 26 hours travelling by bus!!