So, We arrived in Chiang Mai at 6 o clock in the morning and found somewhere to stay quite quickly. We spent the first few days just relaxing and walking around the city. It was so nice. Really calm and clean compared to Bangkok and Phnom Penh. There is a big moat around the city centre and we started walking round it everyday - just like in Gili. On the Sunday there was a massive night market - it took us 3 and a half hours to walk round it and we missed bits. The best bit of Chiang Mai for us was the cooking course. We went out to this wee organic farm in the hills, picked our own ingredients and learned how to make a load of Thai dishes. Darren was much better at it than me so he has offered to cook for everyone when we get home!!! We ate so much, we couldnt finish so took home a picnic for later that night. We had a TV in our room and we were glued to the news. Protesters had taken over Bangkok airport. Its all everyone was talking about. We decided it was time to move on to Laos. Everyone always raves about it so we wanted to spend as much time there as possible.