We arrived in Chiang Mai three hours later than expected and were dropped off a fiar bit out of town - we headed to a place in lonely planet - it was run by a very eccentric Scottish man - he loved the fact we were scottish - sat us down started playing different types of scottish music making us guess who it was etc - to keep us occupied while our room was made up! We spent the day wandering around Chiang Mai - very cute little town - we stayed in the citadel - so there were lots of little ponds, fontains and adoreable little back streets. we were in search of a trip which would occupy us on the following day - we knew we definately wanted to see elephants. We had picked up lots of leaflets so went back to guest house to decide which trip - we fell asleep and woke up at 8pm. we had by then decided that we didnt want to ride the elephants - we didnt want to see them being hit with a stick with a big spike on them - and all the elephant riding trips involved riding an elephant for an hour then doing loads of other stuff we didnt fancy like visiting a butterfly and orchid farm! hmmmmm so we decided to push the boat out and spend the whole day at an elephant nature park (www.elephantnaturefoundation.org). It was the best day of the trip so far - it is run by a thai lady called Lek and all the elephants here have been rescued - either from abusive owners, as orphans, or bought from people who have elephants in city centres. Lek also runs an elephant hospital called Jumbo hospital and she will go visit, treat injured elephants - its just amazing. All the elephants are allowed to roam freely in the daytime and have beds at night - they have a large area to roam - although each elephant has its own mahout (its caretaker) the mahouts are not with them all the time. After having a safety talk we were able to go and feed the elephants - they were eating a massive basket of corn on the cobs and bananas - they reached out their trunk and we places it on it - then they curled it around the food and popped it in their mouth - their trunks were weird - really hard and muscular but at the same time they were so gentle. we fed them twice during the day - some were greedier than others - one had a fighting match with me as i tried to pull another elephants food basket away from it - the elephant won! we then took the elephants down to the river where we threw buckets of water all over them and then scrubbed them with a brush - again some elephants were more interested than others. the young elephants (5years old) liked to throw themselves into the river and travel down stream on their side - it was really funny to watch! we also got rather wet in the process! One of the cutest parts was seeing the mummy and baby elephants - the youngest was 5months old - and it just stayed by its mother the whole time - at the end of the day our tour lady took us out so we could feed it :) My favourite elephant was one called Hope - he was orphaned when she was months old and is now 5 - but she is the naughty elephant and has to have a bell round the nect so people can here trouble coming! The elephants were so amazing - it was a real experience when they kissed us on the cheek with their trunks - it made the kissing sound but really they were sucking our cheek - it was a weird sensation. we were sad to leave at the end of the day. That evening we hit the Sunday night market - absolutely massive - it was the best market so far - we decided to have a foot massage as we had been on them all day - but oh my god was it tickly - we were both in stitches - at first our thai ladies thought it was funny but we think it started to annoy them a little bit - but by the time they were on to the second foot it wasnt nearly as tickly! Chiang Mai were preparing for a massive festival so at the gate of the citadel - there were hundreds of yellow lanterns - it was sooo pretty.

Mon 10th - up and out of room by 11 - we decided to hire bikes today in order to get around the town easier and see some temples - we saw some cool temples. we cycled along the river front and found a tescos - it was soo exciting so we went in for a nosey and bought a drink from there with a little tesco carrier bag hehe we then sat along the river front having our drinks - our legs were dangling over a wall and when we looked down there were loads of big frogs everywhere - eugh, but then we spotted some turtles - they were soooo sweet - but we didnt know turtles could live in rivers! we spent late afternoon watching a film that was awful and were then back on the bus at 6pm back to Bangkok. We were clever on the bus - as there is normally extra seats - some people get two chairs to themselves so we take two seats each - one in front of the other and if bus gets full we move if not we have more room! clever girls! This bus journey was slightly better as we got two blankets each but we still didnt get too much sleep - and for some reason the bus kept stopping all the time in the night - oh well its the cheapest way to travel and isnt really that bad!

Loving Thailand so far :)

love Gill and Mel xxxx