This weekend we went to Chang Rai for two nights! On the Thursday evening Sophia and Sarah came to stay and we cooked them a delicious meal! We then set out on Friday morning walking down to the river at Mae Salak where we were to meet Martha and Fliss for some pre boat trip noodles!! The boat arrived just after mid-day and we all jumped in. Another boat came from Tha Ton with 6 more AV's!! The trip was great fun where we saw many thais fishing and listened to some amazing music on our speakers!! Our boat song is "Alright" and we enjoyed dancing and singing in our boat whilst taking the beutiful scenery!! The other boat didn't look like they appreciated our dancing too much as we sped past them......!!

On arival we took a song taew to the Akha river house a supposedly pieceful resort, however not so peiceful as it turned out, where bulldozers woke us at 7 each morning!! On the first afternoon we went to see two temples in Chang Rai itself before going out in search of the night market where we had dinner from the stands and watched some ladyboys doing a dancing performance....!! We then headed onto the TeePee bar (Yipee bar) which was a Thai Hippie bar!! We enjoyed some buckets before heading back!!

On Saturday we organised ourself a tour round the Buddah Caves, Waterfall, White Temple and Snake farm. We were in the back of a pick up truck for most of the day which was not the most comfortable particularly when heading to the Waterfall!! The first stop however was the White Temple the only one in the world which was very beutiful. On entering the temple there were a sea of hands reaching up from under the bridge made out of white concrete with eyes, heads and mouths engraved. The Temple was made all white with mirrors and the inside displayed a very beutiful buddah and interesting painting of all the evil in the world entwined with a dragons head. With delights such as Keanu Reeves and Osama Binladen in the eyes.

After lunch we headed out once again to the buddah caves in the hills. The 7 buddahs were inside one for every day of the week. We then participated in some fortune telling from insence sticks... Fran's wasn't too promising saying not to marry soon otherwise she will have an evil spouse and Susie wisely avoided! We then took a diversion to a Snake farm were we saw elephants and then were persuaded to hold a 7m long python between us! We faced our fears and took some brilliant photos!! Luckily the python had just eaton so we weren't to worried although we could feel whole chickens inside it! After this we headed to the waterfall... Fran wisely took a nice seat in the front for this section whilst Susie was bounced around in the back with clumps of dust flying in her face!! Highly amusing!! Once getting to the waterfull we had a nice little walk however compared with the one we saw in new zealand it was rather small...... infact about an 8th of the size!! but was pritty. That evening we decided to go out for a meal and Susie after advice from James tried the Massaman Curry which was delicious! We all felt rather out of place in a rather nice restaurant with a great guitar player playing robbie williams!! although it still only cost us about 3 pounds in total!! We then went back to the market to purchase some friendship rings and final buys before heading back to the Teepee bar for some more buckets!! Weirdly Fran bumped into Olivia Hickey by complete coincidence but was very nice and she is out here for a while too!! We were given some classic hippie wigs to try on which were very fetching as the pictures will show!! We moved on to 24 bar where susie, sophia and martha made up some pritty cool dance routines!! We had a lock in and was a great night!!

On Sunday we rose ealy and headed in to town to the post office and for a nice breakfast!! We then caught our song taew back to Tha Ton where the first stop was the Sunshine Cafe!! We went back to visit the resort and watched a DVD ("Keeping Mum") which although was slightly odd was nice to relax before heading back to plan some lessons!!

On return we arived to yet another power cut!! We were then invited to join some of the older students in making a clay farm!! It was great fun and Susie's pond was a classic!! We then had a very early night after all our weekend excitements!! It was a brilliant weekend with Susie's 25 bites on her lower legs alone to show for it!! 60's/80's weekend in Chang Mai next weekend to look forward too!!