hangovers are horrible!! chiang mai has been fantastic, there's just so much to do here and you never get board. since i arrived in chiang mai i have been to a thai cooking course for a day, rode (more like fell!) down hill on a mountain bike and got really hammerd most nights. buckets will be the death of me!! the cooking course was alot of fun. i can actually cook more things than thousand on a raft and 3-minute pizza. we all went to the market to by the ingredients which was not all that nice because i had a stinking hangover and the smell of fish sauce made me want to throw-up everywhere. on the course i managed to cook 6 things: massaman curry, chicken and cashewnut stirfry, coconut soup, chicken in black bean sauce with big noodles, spicy chicken salad and bananas in coconut milk. after cooking it all we sat down and scoffed the lot. the stirfry was beautiful!! the down hill mountain biking was fantastic, if not a bit painful! i signed up to do the 1st route which was looked quite hard but i was assured it would be fine. when the guide picked me up he told me i was the only one doing it that day so we could do something different. my first mistake!! it had been raining the night before and pretty much all morning aswell so the ground was really slippery. the guide decided we should do route 4 which i later found out was really difficult and your fitness levels were ment to be good to exelent! straight away the guide was off, flying down the track and with me being a complete muppet i tried to keep up with him... mistake 2!! i went flying down the track after him and couldn't slow down for a sharp corner. it's a horrible feeling knowing that your going to crash and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. i went flying at high speed into a wall of mud and stones screeming like a little girl, my bike shot off down the track leaving me in a bush wondering if this was the start of things to come. thank god for all the protective gear they give you. after that i crashed about another 10 times, not as bad as the first crash but quite often involving me shooting over the handle bars and then having the bike come to rest ontop of me. every morning since i've woken up to new aches and pains, the latest find is a load of scratches down my back and a handle bar shaped bruise on my leg. all that aside it was such a good laugh and i might do another (easier) route when i get back to chiang mai. other than that i met some great people and we went out every night and got hammerd. tom, northen bird sally, laura, due south, dudley mat, big rob and glen if you guys are reading this thanks for such a good laugh and i'll be sure to bump into you again soon. chiang mai... it was so hard to leave, but the travels must continue. speak to you all again very soon. smartie pants.