We are now in Chang Mai, quite a large city in Northen Thailand. I think its actually the capital of the northern province. Chang Mai is renowned for being a very "cultural" city in Thailand, where the food and dialect are quite different to the rest of Thailand. We took a 14 hour train ride to get here, it was an overnight sleeper train. Getting off the train, we were immediately surrounded by about 30 touts trying to get us to stay at their guest house or ride in their cab to their mate's jewelry store. Fortunately amongst the chaos we found a lady who seemed to be offering quite a genuine deal at a very nice guest house. Loaded into the back of her ute with our packs, we were driven to the guest house, and we found it to be as comfortable as she had promised. Within an hour of arriving at the guest house, we had booked a Thai cooking class (for today), and a 1 day trek/elephant ride/white water rafting/bamboo rafting expedition (for tomorrow).

I had a thai massage soon afterwards. Its the third one i have had since being here. For about $8 AU, these thai women give you an absolute pummeling for an hour. The smaller women quite often walk all over you. Kerry has only had one so far, and it was a bit too strong for her. I am going to take her to a special clinic on friday where they train blind people to massage. Apparently blind people are exceptionally good at massage because their sense of feeling is so much better than anyone else, so they are highly regarded. It gets them off the streets from begging as well, as there seems to be a lot of.

We went to a local market last night which has everything. They sell immitation products and many home-made quality products. I bought a new pair of sandals (Tevas Guy!!) because my old ones fell apart while swimming through the cave at Khao Sok. Kerry bought a very nice skirt aswell.

We just got back from the thai cooking class, it was absolutely fantastic. We made 6 thai dishes which were:

Penang Chicken CurryChicken Tom Yum SoupSpring RollsPad Thai NoodlesChilli Chicken NoodlesSpicy Soy Dipping Sauce (for dipping raw vegies into)
After we made the food, we ate it. I know this sounds a little bit biased, but i think the food was probably the best food we have eaten here. The guy who was running the cooking was great, he took us to a local market before the cooking class, to show us what to look for at an Asian market when buying fresh ingredients. I'm fairly sure that we would be able to obtain all of the ingredients at an Asian market in Oz.

They seem to like their food much much hotter than Kerry and I do!! Ouch (the next morning).

We left the cooking class, fat, happy and armed with a cookbook written by the instructor so that we can remember how to do it at home.

Tomorrow we will do the trek and friday afternoon we will catch the overnight train back to Bangkok and fly out to India on Saturday. Will post an update from India.

Heath