My final few days in Chaing Mai.

Everyone tells you that Chaing Mai is the place to do a cookery class, so even though I've done one before I enrolled in another! This one was at a place called Thai Farm Cooking and it was great. I really didn't want to do an all day thing crammed into a little kitchen in the city so I chose this one which is an organic farm about an hour out of the city centre. It was truly gorgeous...a completely peaceful cookery school with beautiful buildings and luscious surroundings. The lady that ran it ('Fierce'..that was her name not her attitude) was lovely and took us all to a local food market in the morning which was interesting! Highlights included deep fried cockroaches, bee's and maggots and lots and lots of different types of rice! When we got to the farm she spent an hour or so taking us around the gardens showing us a variety of herbs, spices and vegetables. She was a wealth of knowledge, especially when it came to organic beauty treatments. Throughout the day I cooked Thai Green Curry (with tofu), Stir fried (tofu) with cashewnuts, Thai Vegetable Soup (with tofu), Vegetable Spring Rolls (with tofu), Banana Spring Rolls, and then finally Sticky Rice With Mango! Yum Yum. Unbelievably I am still a vegetarian, although as someone pointed out the other day, I am the worst vegetarian in the world as I spent hours talking about roast chicken and I swear, I almost dribbled on someone's steak the other day. It wasn't pretty. I am so BORED of squid and prawns and sodding bloody tasteless mingin TOFU! I know I am bringing this on myself and could just easily eat meat but I think I would feel like a failure, and I'm scared how my stomach would handle some MEAT. mmmm...meat. The other thing is, everything vegetarian seems to come with a healthy dose of spiciness, and that's just not my thing (even when I ask for 'low spicy' it still burns the roof of my mouth off and makes my lips numb). Anyway, the cooking class was brilliant and I'm looking forward to whipping up some thai culinary delights when I'm home. That evening we all went out to a Thai bbq (exactly the same as a 'Cambodian bbq') at this insane food hall with loads and loads of people, clowns, comedy sketches, and some interesting Thai interpretations of James Taylor songs. We were the only westerners there which was excellent - the best thing about Spicy Thai is that they take you to some proper local places which you would never get to see if you were travelling on your own.

The next day a couple of us went to a local orphanage in the morning to play with the kids. They were so cute!! All under two years old and all so beautiful. It was nothing like PACDOC, the orphanage in Cambodia, for a start this one had buildings and electricity. The kids all seemed really happy and the people who worked there were lovely - it was so nice just spending a couple of hours playing with them. There was this one little boy who kept crying and whinging and would stop the instant you picked him up and gave him a cuddle. He just lollopped on you and it wasn't pretty when you tried to put him down again, so I spent a lot of time balancing him and other kids. I'm really glad we went. Afterwards everyone else went swimming but I headed off the zoo. I know I know...its bad...it's a zoo..the poor animals... but im sorry, it was awesome! There's something about being at a zoo that makes you feel 5 again. I was running around (well...walking slowly - it is HOT!) so excited at everything. Although the flamingo's were much more interesting at the beginning before I'd seen the tigers and lions and giant panda. I know - panda's are so endangered (blah blah blah) but it was amazing to see them! Evidently they don't like...reproducing..so they are shown porno films to get them in the mood! That's what someone told me anyway and if its true it's genius! The zoo was huge and you had to get a little shuttle bus to take you from one place to another. Although seeing the panda's was amazing, my favourite animal was the giraffe who I fed for ages and fell in love with a little bit. That evening we all went out to 'Riverside Bar'..suprisingly a bar on the riverside with lots of live music. Lots of fun.

Sunday there was a trip to another temple and then we hit 'Sunday Walking Street' which is essentially a huge market through loads of streets in Chaing Mai centre. You can get pretty much anything you need there but it is mainly little handicrafts or clothes. It was incredibly busy with Thai's and Westerners but it had a really nice atmosphere with some street performances. We ate there from some venders - the food you can get off the street venders in Thailand is so amazingly delicious and different and so so cheap. Everything is so fresh and things like fruit shakes and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf are so good! I picked up a couple of wee presents for people at the market - God knows how I am going to shut my backpack now, each time I move on from somewhere it seems to double in size and I am really worried its just going to split open one of these days.

The last couple of days have been very chilled out - I went for another prison massage, did some clothes shopping for Cambodia and generally chilled out. Last night we went 'disco bowling'! It was fun but a bit dissapointing on the 'disco' front! Tomorrow I am catching two flights to Phomn Penh in Cambodia and I start my course on Monday. I am excited to be going back to Cambodia but very sad to leave Thailand. I seriously love it here - I wish I didnt love it so much - but I do!! I will definately be coming back here before I could home (I have booked myself in for a week volunteering at an elephant conservation park!) and will hopefully spend a couple more weeks exploring Thailand after Laos and Vietnam. Hopefully! Although in total now I've been here about 6 weeks there is so much to see and do!!