We arrived in Chiang Mai, which is the second city of Thailand early in the morning and is located near the forests of North Thailand and can be a bit chilly in the night or early morning, we obviously did not know this, otherwise we wouldn't have worn our shorts and t-shirts. Most people come up here for trekking and most book there accomo and trek in advance.

We however were one of the few groups that did not do this, only booking accomo is frowned upon in this area and so once we got off the VIP bus outside the city, all us passengers where allocated small shuttle mini vans to take us to our guesthouses. Every shuttle bus looked good, apart from ours. Our bus had a crazy bloke driver, who made us sit at the back of his pick up truck with no roof, let me tell you at 6.30 in the morning driving 50 MPH down the freeway in just your t-shirt and shorts is not a pleasurable experience, and to make matters worse he dropped us to the city centre and not our guesthouse, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

We spent the first few days relaxing and catching up on sleep, we had spent a lot of money on drinks, shopping and slap up meals in Bangkok meaning we had to close our wallets to late night drinking for a few nights which meant instead either going to the night market and not buying anything or staying in the apartment watching CNN, Star Sport, ZEE TV and a few funny Thai channels.

On our third day in Chaing Mai, we went to an adventure trek which involved us going first to an elephant show. The show was like a circus all the western faces were in awe and clapping every 2 minutes but to be honest I thought it was quite exploitive and couldn't imagine how the keepers treated the elephants when the tourists left, although I was very impressed when the elephants started to play football.

After the show we went on an elephant trek which was an amazing experience even though Nims who was next to me was petrified and screamed constantly! The trek was followed by a 10 km bike trek across the forest, uphill and downhill. About 12 of us started this and by 7 km only 5 of us were standing, it was petrifying my brakes failed more then once going downhill and once nearly fell off a cliff while the other time nearly went under a truck, but apart form that it was great. Would love to tell you that I finished but I bailed out at 9.8 km, if I knew I was so close to the end I would have carried on.

The last activity was the most fun. White water rafting through the forest was an amazing experience, after the first rapid, Rik, who was opposite me and an Austrian girl who was next to me, nearly fell into the water if it wasn't for my heroic self, who caught both and carried on rowing! I am D man.

After this exhausting day I went for an oil massage, costing only 2 pounds for an hour and then went for a nice Thai meal and a few drinks. We have signed up for the slow boat experience to Luang Prabang in Laos so have spent this last day in the City chilling out and watching the footy.

Best Experience - White water rafting in the forest

Worst Experience - Traveling 12 hours on the VIP bus with no sleep

IPOD song most played - No more pain - 2Pac