Now then now then, it has been a pretty amazing 2 days. I'll save the mega details for later, but here are a few for now. The seven of us are pretty shattered. We have just finished a trek in the mountains of Northern Thailand, near Chiang Mai. The "tour" included a night in a tiny and remote village, white water rafting and also a ride on an elephant. But, you'll all be glad to know, we looked at the elephants and decided they were looking pretty unhappy, so all 7 of us gave it a miss. That is a lie. Mike rode a small one. What a let down. But good luck to him, he had a great time, even when it tried to tip him into a tree. The mountains were simply incredible, like nothing I could imagine in a way. The clouds got more dense as we climbed, and although a lot of tourists are involved with these tours, a lot miss out on what is a really special part of Thailand. We climbed for about 2 and a half hours on day one, which was really sweaty stuff (not to overdo the sweaty theme), and found ourselves in a village made of bamboo. There were only about 8 "houses" there, and our leader "Wee" was a pretty funny fella too. We were up there with a Canadian, a Brazilian, an Argentinian and an English couple. The whole team were really chilled and pretty cool, so that meant we could stop worrying about some other leary travellers ruining the whole thing. Of course, there are 7 of us, so maybe the others were worried in the end....

Day two (today) was also pretty tiring. We were up and out by 9ish, and the steep descent was stressful. Sharon nearly killed herself by falling on some rocks, I was wearing woefully inadequate trainers (which I then gave to Wee as a present at the end), Laura screamed every time she lost her balance and the other four seemed to coast through it! To be honest, we all did really well, especially as we didn't know what to expect. But seeing the indigenous people of the country was awesome, and reminded me a lot of my previous travels in South Africa. 

Tomorrow we go back to Bangkok, and we all go separate ways next week. Faye, Sharon and I fly to Vietnam for our volunteering project, and everyone else is off to the islands in South Thailand. We don't know when we will see eachother again, but probably near the end of the month.

Right, I'm off. Thanks to everyone who have been sending messages, and keep em coming. Photos to follow, either from this amazing hotel with free internet access, or from Bangkok...

Love you all, PEACE

Matt the Greek