Hey all currently swinging in my hammock, escaping the heat, probably 35, wasting away the day in Pai, up in the northern mountains of Thailand, about 50km from the border with Thailand.

Arrived in Pai yesterday and it is the most chilled out place I have been to yet, full of hippies and other like minded travellers, perfect place to waste a week relaxing and doing nothing. The ride here was pretty full on though, it was about 3 ½ hours and the majority of it was like driving up the clyde mountain, there are t shirts for sale here saying there are 762 curves in the road between here and chang mai which is only about 140 km away I think, so was pretty nauseous by the time I arrived.

Chang Mai was awesome as well, didn’t really do much on the first couple of days, but we did go up to the most famous temple in northern Vietnam, overlooking chang mai which was pretty cool.

On the way down we jumped in the back of a dual cab hilux for a free ride back to town, this was by far the scariest ride I have ever taken. There were 9 of us in the back of the ute, 7in the front and the bloke thought he was Michael Schumacher, he was overtaking on blind corners, doing well over 100 on the straights and just cruising on the wrong side of the road even when there was no traffic, was a relief to get back to town I tell ya.

The next day we got in to the Songkran festival, Thai new year, and participated in the water fight with everybody for about 6 hours, was awesome, got some awesome photos, Chang Mai is surrounded by an old moat so we jumped on the back of some strangers ute, got in the bumper to bumper traffic and started water fighting with everyone from the back of the utes (like everybody else) the flow of traffic was that bad that we only moved about 500m in an hour. Spent a couple of hours in the ute then decided we’d just go trekking through the water fight. Where else in the world can you shoot a policeman in the face for 10 seconds with a water pistol, had such a great day and the locals go spastic for it, the festival actually lasts for 3 days and they never seem to get sick of it. I think the dirty moat water made me a bit crook as well.

Once again, have met some more cool people that ill be keeping in touch with, an aussie couple from Sydney who I got on really well with and spent a fair bit of time with and a gorgeous Californian bird who I might catch up with in Paraguay when in south america, later in the year cause she will be working over there for the peace core or something similar.

The next day I took it pretty easy and don’t think I got up to much. Te next day I went to tiger kingdom which was awesome, got to play with baby lion cubs and some full size tigers, check out the photos when I get them up, was really cool, got to pat a full sized tiger as well even though it was heavily sedated, looked like he just came out of the geesh, im glad he was as well because I was s***ting myself with about the other 2 tigers in there, they are so big, don’t really understand how big they are until you see them up close. Got some cool videos of them jumping around as well. Have been meaning post some videos up as well but will get around to it soon.

The next day I came up here and have us been really doing nothing since which has been a cool change. I think ill go down to the elephant park tomorrow and the hot springs to chill out.

When I go back to chang mai im thinking about doing a thing called flight of the gibbons which is 2 km of flying fox’s through the jungle about 40m from the floor so looking forward to that.

Also Gallipoli is not far away as well and hopefully ill be able to pick up a credit card in a weeks time at Bangkok.

Got to go, get back to you soon