Chiang Mai started off badly. We arrived at the bus station after a 5 hour journey and got our bags from the luggage compartment. The back of Matthews bag was soaking and i mean dripping wet. Neither the bus driver or the conductor apologised when Matthew showed them, they obviously knew that someones bag would get wet. We think it was from the air conditioning. Anyway, it took about half an hour for his bag to be remotely dry so he could carry it!

We found a Tuk Tuk driver to drop us off at a hotel, it was a bit more expensive than we wanted, but it seemed a nice place so we decided to stay. When we got to the room, Matthew emptied his bag to check on his clothes, they were all dripping wet, and all our electrical stuff had got wet too, he was obviously fuming and very pissed off. We had to take all the clothes to the laundry and dry out his sleeping bag and our pillows in the room!

This put a bit of a dampner on our first day as we were really annoyed that there was no warning or apology! We walked round the city and came to a chinatown market, where we saw some gorgeous looking sausages, we bought them, bit into them to find they were stuffed with spicy rice, they were nice, but we were looking forward to proper sausages! We then headed to the night market, which was the biggest either of us have seen, there were loads of stuff i could have bought if i were going home soon, but never mind, it was still good to browse!

The next day was a late start as we had to wait for our laundry to be done as Matthew had nothing clean to put on. So got to the first temple at about lunch time, it was ok, 'same, same but different' as it says on the T shirts, very true! We then went 16km out of Chaing Mai to another temple and to look at the views of Chaing Mai, this temple was good, with loads of people giving offerings and praying to Buddha. Matthew had a blessing from a really cute old Monk as he thought he needed some good luck, it was a good experience.

Thats all to say about Chaing Mai, nothing against the place but i think we are both a bit 'templed and buddha'd out' as i'm sure you will be once you have seen the photo's. We are both looking forward to something a bit different now.

Pai next stop.