We arrived in Chiang Mai by plane via Bangkok, and it was quite a culture shock having spent the last month or so in Cambodia and Vietnam. I would even go so far as to say that it was nice to see Starbucks and Burger King again.Anyway, we spent nearly a week in Chiang Mai, and Ellie only had one major 'incident,' so that was quite good going.

We spent one full day at a Thai cooking school, which was excellent. We firstly stopped off at a local market to see the herbs, spices and vegetables that we'd be using, and then went off to the school that was out of the city in the countryside. Over the course of the day we made (and ate) about 7 dishes, including spring rolls and various curries, soups and rice dishes.We even learned how to make curry paste, which actually isn't as hard as you would think.And they let us play with massive meat cleavers, so that really made my day (as you can see from the photos).

Anyway, the next day we decided that we needed a bit of an adrenaline fix, so we decided to do an ATV (quad bike) and rafting day.It all started well, and we had about 2 hours in the countryside blasting around on our ATVs in the morning, which was good fun, even though Ellie kept bumping into the back of me as her brakes were a bit on the dodgy side. She surpassed herself on the way back though, as we were speeding back on tarmac roads to the base with about 2k to go. I was only a little way in front of her when I suddenly heard a funny scraping sound. I turned around and out of the corner of my eye saw something that looked suspiciously like an ATV wheel come bouncing past. As my brain was trying to come to terms with that, I then saw a rather white-faced Ellie come shooting past, across the middle of the road and into a bush, on an ATV that seemed to be missing the left front wheel. It was quite bizarre from my point of view, and I think rather scary from hers.You can see her proudly standing next to her rather second-hand looking ATV in the photo album.

The ironic thing is that we chose the company we went with because they supposedly had the highest safety standards of any tour group in Chiang Mai.

Anyway, the afternoon was brilliant fun, with white-water rafting on some grade 4/5 rapids, as it's the wet season. As you can see from the photos, Ellie seemed to have quite a bit of trouble staying on her seat, and spent most of the time in the bottom of the boat trying to get up, which was quite amusing. Having said that, she did have to grab my lifejacket to stop me falling out the raft several times so I shouldn't be too mean.

The rest of our time in Chiang Mai we spent taking it easy and generally wondering what trouble Ellie would get into next.And you can read all about the next few 'incidents' in the blog on Pai.