Our last 4 days have gone like so:

1. Caught the sleeper train of hell, which actually turned out to be the sleeper train of luxury. Well apart from the orraanngee juiiicee man.... if you picture a man who has ridden a 13.5 hour train everyday for 20 years selling a fruity refreshment to people who dont want a fruity refreshment thats how excited this guy was!

2. Arriverd in Chiang Mai fresh as a daisy after the best night sleep yet! All got shoved into a rickety truck....we didn't look one bit like illegal immigrants! Went up the windest road known to man to get to a temple. It was up a trillion steps, was gold, and had monks in it that wanted our money...standard temple really! We paid 20 baht to get an excessive amount of holy water thrown at us and get a holy bracelt/piece of string, then nerys broke her foot on a broken brick (if i was the temple chief i would fix the floor before painting everything with gold)!

3. Oh I almost forgot.... on the windy windy road, Jonny realised he had left the money belt, with all our baht, dollars, credit cards, and cash cards on the table at the hotel....in other words he left our life savings on a table! Thankfully our ledge of a guide rang the hotel and they had already found it stole all our money and copied all our cards.....only joking we got it back safe and un-copied hopefully!

4. Next we went to tiger kingdom which was pretty amazing. There was tigers everywhere and they actually looked like they were well looked after, apart from the fact that they were blatantly on drugs so they didn't kill us! Anyway, Jonny chose the big boy, while i chose the baby ones as i thought i could take that one down if it tried to eat me! When we went in to see the tigers it was clear they were on crack as they were constantly sleeping and when the trainer dropped one on its head as he went to put it on me it didn't even flinch! On the otherside of the kingdom Jonny was merrily playing with the big boys...loving life.....at the same tune Alan took a shot to the baby maker from the tiger and was flung against the electric fence (all part of living the dream though!)

5. That night we went to the night market ate some more thai food (definately not losing weight so far!) and did some more bartering!

6. Day 2....all aboard the immigrant trucks again went to a market to get our food for the trek...saw some fried chicken heads and feet...standard! Then went to a waterfall which was pretty amazing, but not all that warm....the nipon was definately out to play! Jonny pooed his pants at a massive spider and nearly fell down a cliff running after his bag! We then got back on the immigrant truck to start our trek...which was definately not a light to moderate walk.....did a bit off canyon swinging/stream swinging on a piece of tree, Nerys broken foot was deffo broken, some people fell on their face, and the crazy German lady on our trip decided to dress in her scrubs for the trek (deffo escaped from a mental hospice!)

7. Despite some hairy moments we all made it to the first tribal village which was fully equipped with rabies (alot of dogs), pigs, naked children, a bamboo shower, and some pretty impressive wooden huts. That night our guide coffeanan/ nan bread cooked us our best meal yet, we chilled round a camp fire, and the boys spoke to the local about the latest football transfers (its amazing how even in a hill tribe in the north of thailand they still manage to get tv!)

8. Next came attempting to sleep in the wooden hut, otherwise known as Jonny's first mental breakdown! The guide had told as all it was going to be chilly but we all thought we were man enough to hack it without wrap[ping ourselves in the flea ridden blankets....we weren't! An hour in i was wrapped in the blanket and Jonny was muttering away to himself hating his life and tribal villages! Next time i awoke Jonny was cacooned in his waterproof jacket and had stolen the flea blanket...not caring whether i could feel any of my frozen limbs or not! Anyhooo we got through the night and Jonny was loving life again!

9.Day 3. The big trek.....today we trekked for 4 hours up and down a lot of rocky terrain, but everyone managed without too much trouble. We arrived at the elephant village for lunch, and casually ate some pot noodle while the elephant wandered around. After luch it was time to ride the elephants...this was pretty cool, although down hill was a bit ropey especially when we realise our seat belt/piece of string wasn't even done up! Our elephant decide to have a poo on its sons tusk...friendly! We were then dropped off and were told to wait for the rest of our tribe/guide to take us to the village 10 minutes away. However, as none of us understood thai we thought they said walk to the village its only 10 minutes that way. So of the 6 of us went..after about 10 minutes we thought we'd found the village, but noone seemed to know of our presence and the person we did find thought our guide was a dog! We decided turn back and find our guide, but instead we found machete children...always reassuring! However, 5 minutes later we were found by our guide, and were saved from the psycho children :)

10. That night we all stayed in a nicer and cleaner looking wooden hut, and had a hog roast for dinner/a fat roast...which me and most ofthe girls kindly declined, but Jonny and the boys got stuck in muching fat!

11. This time we survived the night and Jonny stayed pretty mentally stable throughout the night....only having a little moment when he thought Claire's feet were his waterproof jacket!

12. Day 3.....Bamboo rafting. We set out early on our raft made by naked children and formed from 4 bamboo poles....so it was pretty sturdy! We had crazy nan bread as our driver but somehow we made it through all the rapids in one piece, unlike the group last week who apparently had to walk for 3 hours after there raft had a little collision with some rocks breaking it in half!!

13. Safely on dry land we all had some more grub, and got back on the immigrant trucks.....now our fave form of transport!

14. That night everyone finally gave in to the English food cravings as we all had a pizza...to Jonny's delight!

That pretty much sums up our hill tirbe trek, sorry about the grammar.. I'm going to rest my fingers for a bit on the sleeper train back to bangok!