So the last few days have been a combination of pure amazingness and really horrifying! I've had food poisoning for the last few days which meant being so dehydrated yesterday that I felt like I was underwater all day and everyone was really far away, and ended up in me projectile vomiting all over a bus and some thai woman. Good times. Pretty funny in hindsight but the bus driver didn't even pull over and I was left sitting there for half an hour covered in sick putting up with the disgusted stares of the thai woman... probably one of the lowest points of my life right there! This is what happens when you take a 4 hour bus ride down one of the most winding roads ever (seriously the person who made this is a sadistic twat, it's apparently known for making people sick!) when already having spent all night puking! But yeah, I'm in Pai now which is so lovely and chilled out, and probably the best place you'd want to be while feeling a bit crap! But I'm feeling ok now and renting some scooters later, should perk me up a bit!

So yeah back to cheerier times, I arrived in Little bird hostel and was supposed to meet up with Coralee who I met ziplining, but couldn't get in touch with her so went out with people from the hostel instead. Some of the guys from nappark hostel in Bangkok who I'd been out with while I was there turned up, so that was great and what was supposed to be a quiet night out turned into a mojito bucket fueled night in a reggae bar and wandering the streets of Chiang Mai.

Unfortunately this meant that I only had two hours sleep for my elephant adventure, so slightly concerned that I'd just topple off. I'd booked onto a whole day of mahout (elephant trainer) training including bareback riding, a mud bath with the elephants and a bath in the river. It was with the Thai Elephant Home and was the most expenive one on offer (Chiang Mai has millions of elephant parks) but being the big kid that I am I chose the one that lets you play in the mud... Definitely worth an extra twenty quid that! It's a good park though, lots of places have their elephants in chains and jab them with sticks a lot whereas these are treated to a mud spa every day, so kept my conscience happy anyway. It was pretty awesome, my elephant was called Ruby and was a massive fatty, literally stopped every two minutes to grab some leaves, which was a bit worrying as we were on the thinnest of paths on the side of a steep bank and she kept wandering off it! I naturally loved the mud bit, I got carried away of course and covered myself in it, but it was special black mud so my skin was silky smooth afterwards at least! We rubbed it all over the elephants, until one elephant did a big poo in it and we all realised we'd probably been rubbing elephant poo all over ourselves and it became a bit less appealing! So then we got into the river which was also poo filled ( with this and the bat cave I'm spending a bit more time than is desirable covered in poo...) but really good, the mahouts got the elephants to pick us up and kiss us (they actually suck your face, it's really weird) and spray us with water, a great start to the water festival activities! I gave my camera to an American girl called Carla and we took photos of each other so there should be millions, I really need to upload some but there's no tiiiime! Anyway I was shattered when I got back in so I had a few beers then went to sleep.

So the next day was the official first day of Songkran the Thai new year water festival which is essentially a three day waterfight. The staff at Little Bird were ridiculously keen and had started two days earlier, positioning themselves on the gate so there was no way of getting past without getting soaked, especially if you tried to run which meant three buckets to the head! So I'd been soaking for days already but it was payback time now and I invested in a gun and a bucket and went off to SpicyThai to see what they were up to. I bought a gun that comes with a backpack in the shape of a cat, obviously I couldn't resist the cat but the gun turned out to be useless and I got annihalated. Chiang Mai is surrounded by a moat and everyone uses this to fill their buckets by attaching them to ropes. Walking down along the moat is crazy, there's people in trucks on the road with ice water which is horrible then people lined along the moat on the other side with warm moat water which is green but so nice after the ice! So it's a constant barrage of water with music blaring everywhere and is basically AMAZING.

Got to spicy thai where I thought they were going out in the truck but turned out I'd missed it so I hung around for a while catching up with Amanda who was leaving that day, until the truck came back and we had a massive waterfight in the garden, before walking back into town and ending up on a stage getting attacked by a massive waterjet watching a Thai rockband. I went to the loo, got lost for bloody ages and half hour later when I got back everyone was gone which was a shame that I didn't have the chance to say bye, but it was an awesome day anyway. That night I went out with the hostel to this club called Zoe's, then wandered off with a girl called Amy and a guy called Peter who'd been at Nappark too. We went to his hotel which was one of the prettiest I've ever seen, with a little forested pathway and a massive pool. We did a bit of midnight swimming which was good fun until a bunch of naked australians came along and made so much noise that the guard came along to throw us out. Bummer. We stayed there doing a really crap job of hiding underwater, blatantly not fooling anyone and the guard was just staring at us so we eventually ran away! Fun times. Went back to the hostel the other guys from nappark were staying at and made friends with the rest of the gang who I'm now travelling with. Spent the next day with them in Chiang Mai doing a bit more waterfighting and chilling out, and ate the fateful chicken balls which lead to the bus incident!

So yeah decided to tag along with them to Pai which meant missing the last day of the festival but seeing as I was ill I woudn't have been very good anyway, I''m not sure if chundering on people is an acceptable technique for waterfighting really. I've loved Songkran but after five days of being soaked there's no better feeling than being properly dry!

We're taking it easy here so hopefully I can upload some photos and skype some people :)