Happy New Year everyone! Katie and I uploaded the Northern Thailand photos but forgot to write a blog, so here it is you lucky people!

We arrived in Chang Mai, from Luang Prabang in Laos, after a fairly uneventful 24 hour bus journey. There was a bit of an issue at the border where we thought we were going to have to wait eight hours for our next bus, but after a bit of shouty time with the bus company we were on our way.

We spent our first day in Chang Mai on the Baan Thai cookery course to learn how to make all the local dishes. We spent the morning going to a local market where they told us all about the ingredients etc, Katie and I got distracted from the lesson when she put a pineapple on her head so I could get a photo, the market stall owner was unamused. We then spent the rest of the day cooking and eating six Thai dishes, I made a pretty mean Green Curry but when I asked the teacher if it was the best curry she had ever seen, she looked at me like I was an idiot... The cookery course was great, and hopefully we'll be able to make it all again when we get home.

The next day we headed to the awesomeness that is Tiger Kingdom. This is a tiger sanctuary and breeding project, which is funded by visitors being able to cuddle the hand reared younger tigers. I realise that they all look pretty tired in the photos but we were assured that this is because they are big lazy cats that sleep 20 hours a day, rather than any sedation... who knows! Anywho, on arrival to the 'Kingdom' we were giving a shopping list of the tigers we could go in and meet e.g the big cat combo - 15 mins with a big tiger and 15 mins with a bigger tiger for $20. I was ready to empty my wallet at this point but had to restrain myself and we opted to go in with the babies and the big boys.

As we got there early in the day there weren't many people about we got to bottle feed the 5 month old cubs. It was amazing and I really wanted to take one with me, however stealing a tiger cub carries a pretty hefty prison sentence and is quite impractical for travelling. When you go in to the cages you are told not to go near their heads or front paws, and to always approach from behind(!), I thought these rules didn't apply to me and got a little bit close to one of the little ones heads and it swung round and growled at me. You have never seen me move so fast!

We then went in to the 20 month old tigers cages, massive! Neither of us made the mistake of going near their heads! Katie scratched one of their bellies and it sprawled out on its back like a house cat only ten times the size. It was an amazing experience and you will tell from my cheesy grin in every single photo that I really enjoyed it!

To carry on our animal encounters, we decided upon a Mohout course and trek the next day. This is where you go and learn the elephant trainers commands and ride an elephant around the forest without a harness and then get in the river and give her a bath etc. It was amazing, and better still our elephant had a 5 month old baby elephant (Katie assures me the correct word is Calf but i'm not sure) which followed us around the whole time, was so cute!

After our day of feeding, washing and playing with elephants we stayed at the Mahout lodge. It was just us two and some of the mahouts staying there. We spent the night sitting around the campfire drinking and chatting, and the Burmese Mahouts who spoke barely any English played the guitar and sang local Burmese songs. At one point we heard a familiar sounding melody.. they were playing a Burmese version of Ronan Keating "when you say nothing at all' , I wasn't aware that Ronan was big in Burma! The Thai bloke who ran the elephant lodge told us that the Burmese copy everything so this should be no surprise..... tarring everyone with the same brush, but there you go!

At about midnight we walked in to the forest. We were told that as elephants only sleep for three hours a day it is quite rare to see them sleeping, so when we got to the field where they slept with our torch we were lucky enough to see one sprawled out on the floor snoring. Although one was sleeping the other ten elephants were all just standing there in the pitch black staring at us. It was really surreal and a little bit scary... elephants are massive!

On the second day we trekked to a nice waterfall, did some white water rafting and then went bamboo rafting. It was all really fun but the elephants were the highlight!

We had decided to head to Pai for Christmas which is slightly north of Chang Mai. It is a lovely place with a much more relaxed atmosphere than Chang Mai. We spent our time driving mopeds to local waterfalls and hot springs, lazing around swimming pools and just enjoying ourselves. Thai's are aware that Pai sounds like Pie, so every shop is called either 'Pai in the Sky', 'Easy as Pai' 'Apple Pai'..... the list goes on.

We spent Christmas day around the swimming pool, and as a proper Christmas dinner wasn't available anywhere in Pai, we had a Christmas Fillet steak instead. A close second in my book!

After Pai we headed back down to Bangkok for the second time, did usual Bangkok things like eat Burger King and go to shopping malls. We then flew out of Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and then on to Kuching in Borneo.

We will update Borneo blog soon as we have already seen Orangutans and monkeys knocking about the place which is awesome

Hope everyone had a great Xmas and New Years and speak soon

Love Dean and Katie