We arrived in Bangkok after another very comfortable journey. After we had checked into our very basic rooms we headed to the main street Ko Shan Road or something similar. It could have been an 18-30's resort somwhere in spain. Outside of all the bars were busy stalls selling rip off designer clothes. we found a nice bar to sit outside and remained there for the rest of the day sampling their lovely beer 'Chang'. It was nice to sit and people watch on the busy street. We later sampled some of the street stall food which was so lovely and so cheap. I ate this way the whole time we were in Bangkok.

The next morning was very relaxing and in the afternoon we made our way to Lumphini Park in the more modern local area of Bangkok. It was a lovely well lanscaped park with two lakes where you could hire rowing boats. I walked a bit and sat for more people watching. There were so many people jogging around the park, some were walking or roller blading, there were men keeping up a small football and others doing yoga. At 6:00pm the whole park came to a stand still and some music was played over the speaker, after a minute everyone continued as they were, i have no idea why but it was very strange. Later lots of people congregated to take part in the free aerobics classes that take place all over the park, very amusing.

That night we went out and met lots of other travellers, two brothers in particular have invited us to stay with them in San Fransisco for new year. I was feeling very rough the next day after too many vodka and red bulls so did not leave the hotel much only really to buy some Ralph Lauren shorts! I'm getting a bit bored of my wardrobe so have to keep finding good deals, got some lovely shoes in Inida too.

We got an over night bus to Chiang Mai in the North of Thialand that night. The bus was so so comfortable i had a very good nights sleep. We booked ourselves into a nice cheap guest house with a swimming pool, what a luxory.

We explored by foot on the first day seeing many temples. After finding out about so many treks we decided it would be a lot cheaper and nicer to explore all the places ourselves with mopeds (I am so so sorry mum, I promise i wore my helmet and drove very carefully). I am glad we did as we came accross some beautiful National Parks with the most stunning water falls, there were no tourists, only locals if anyone.

The next day we booked ourselves on a one day tour. We had an elephant ride down a river and Annie even sat on his neck and steered very badly, it actually got quite scary. I love elephants and am quite sad that they are not free and have to carry us around but if it wasn't for us they would have been working for the local people. Many of the tribes own their own elephant as working elephants so at least we are probably a bit lighter than some of the things they carry. I really hate seeing the elephants being taken around all of the bars at night though. We did a little bit of walking through the rain forests and ended up at another amazing waterfullm this time there were lots of tourists and we all enjoyed a nice swim. We had the most amazing lunch and walked it off to our next activity which was bamboo rafting. This was so much fun and we even got a few rapids. Every now and then we would pass groups of children who would splash us, the man who was steering us also did lots of splashing too.

We have met some really nice English blokes (Rob and Si) who we have been meeting up with most night and we found an indie bar playing some great music.

We are now going to make our way to Laos via bus, it is quite difficult to do things the hard way here, everyone wants you to go on tours and all incusive deals but we want to go on public transport so that we see more of the real country as we did in India.